Immaculate Heart of Soult

The one known as Inmaculada «de Soult» is a painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, painted around 1678. It has been kept in the Prado Museum in Madrid since 1941, where it stands out as one of the most important works of the master's last stage.

History and description

Author of numerous Inmaculadas, this is possibly the last one that Murillo painted following the same ideal formula that he had been using since his first approaches to the subject: the Virgin dressed in white and a blue cloak, with her hands crossed on the chest, stepping on the Moon and looking towards the sky. The composition, as in this case, usually presents a clear ascending impulse, very baroque, which places the figure of the Virgin Mary in the empyrean space inhabited by light, clouds and angels, combining two iconographic traditions: that of the Immaculate Conception itself. and that of the Assumption.

In this Immaculate Conception, as in others by the painter, the disappearance of the traditional symbols of the Laurentian Litany is striking, a Marian prayer that is very frequently associated with Immaculate iconography; although in this case, the symbols omitted in the painting were represented in its frame. On the canvas, in their place, Murillo created a great glory of angels around Mary, painted in the most varied attitudes with a very loose brushstroke, which manages to merge the figures with the celestial atmosphere. The faces of the Immaculate Conception and the angels seem very realistic, as they differ from the classical beauty of ancient statues and are close to the physical types of the time, but they are captured with a calculated idealization.

The painting was commissioned according to Ceán Bermúdez by Justino de Neve for the Hospital de los Venerables in Seville, founded by him in 1675; It is also known for this reason as Immaculata de los Venerables. During the War of Independence, in 1813, it was plundered and taken to France by Marshal Soult, who retained it among his assets until his death in 1851; From this fact comes his other nickname. As a curious fact, Soult left the original frame of the work in the Venerables, a luxurious molding with the Laurentian Litany carved in relief and polychrome; It is preserved in its original place and has been restored a few years ago. The writer Balzac saw the painting at Soult's residence and said glowingly: «among the things that can remind us of the glory of first love, are the view of Lake Brenne, some motifs by Rossini, the Virgin by Murillo that possesses Marshal Soult...».

Soult's heirs auctioned the painting in 1852, and it was acquired by the Louvre Museum for the formidable figure of 615,000 francs; which presumably made it the most expensive in the world until then. It was exhibited for almost a century in the Louvre Museum, usually in a main room, surrounded by other masterpieces; But in this period Murillo's art was losing esteem as other painters such as Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya, taken as references by the Impressionists, gained it. This decline in its valuation helps explain why the Vichy Regime agreed to give Murillo's Immaculate Conception to Franco as part of an exchange of works of art in 1941, along with the Lady of Elche and several pieces from the Guarrazar Treasure. Murillo's painting entered the Prado, while the remaining pieces went to the National Archaeological Museum (the Lady, as a deposit in the Prado in 1971). Soult's Inmaculada passed through the workshop of the Prado Museum in 1981, for the preparation of an exhibition dedicated to this artist, directed by Federico Sopeña. The then restorer of the Prado, Antonio Fernández Sevilla, took care of its surface treatment. During 2009 the work underwent a more complex restoration process in the museum's workshops.

Murillo gained renown thanks to his mastery of chiaroscuro in the Sevillian tradition as well as the delicacy used in his faces, which earned him many devotional commissions.