JUAN SÃNCHEZ COTAN (Orgaz, Toledo, 1560 - Granada, 1627)."Immaculate".Oil on canvas. Re-linedIt has slight repainting.Exhibitions: "The Baroque in painting". CajaSur, Cordoba, December 2004 - January 2005.Bibliography: Pareja López, Enrique: "The Baroque in painting". Exhibition catalog. Publications Obra Social y Cultural Cajasur, 2004. pp. 176-177.Size: 145.5 x 104 cm; 169 x 128 cm (frame).This oil on canvas represents the Virgin as a young woman with long golden hair in a praying attitude, a common iconographic model in this counter-reformist period. All the elements surrounding the Virgin respond to the titles of honor glossed in the litanies. Also the colors used by the painter respond to a pre-established symbology, thus the tunic is of hyacinth color, the color of purity, and the mantle of an intense celestial blue, the color of eternity.It should be related to the Inmaculada made by Sánchez Cotán around 1617-1618 for the Cartuja de la Asunción in Granada, published in Orozco Díaz, E.: Las Vírgenes de Sanchez Cotán. Granada, 1954, pp. 54-58, nº 12 and Orozco Díaz, E.: The Museum of Fine Arts of Granada. Guides of the Museums of Spain. Num. XXVI, Madrid, 1966, page 42. This one of the Cartuja is the clear model of the Inmaculada that we present here; Orozco says of it... He repeated it many times, either as a literal copy, or with slight variations, in large and small. It must have been liked in the city and left its mark... so it is not surprising to find Immaculate Conception inspired by the one in the Cartuja like the one we present here.As for its style, we can appreciate some archaizing features for its time, such as the hieratism and the frontality of the figure. However, the quality of Cotán's painting in the small details such as the precious stones of the cloak, the vegetal embroidery of the tunic or the flowers connects the work with the proto-baroque naturalism that the painter so masterfully captured in his still lifes.Juan Sánchez Cotán worked in Toledo, where he had an important clientele, until 1603, when he joined the Carthusian monastery as a lay brother and settled in Granada. From then on, the bulk of his work consisted of religious paintings, especially the numerous ones he painted for the Charterhouse in Granada, although he also painted portraits and landscapes. However, he is famous for his still lifes, especially since the celebration in Madrid, in 1935, of the exhibition "Floreros y bodegones en la pintura española", which was key for the critical revaluation of the Spanish still life, and which turned Sánchez Cotán into one of its cornerstones. Sánchez Cotán enjoyed a comfortable life in Toledo, carrying out commissions for religious paintings for churches and also others of lesser importance, such as painting the arms of the archbishop of Toledo on each of a shoemaker. However, no disciples or assistants are mentioned in the documentation. Also around this time he made the aforementioned copies of Venetian works, and some landscapes. In his works of this time, a fully formed, refined and sweet style is evident, derived from the painters of the school of El Escorial, which remained virtually unchanged throughout his career. Works by Sánchez Cotán are currently held in the Museo del Prado, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada, the Museo de San Diego in California, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection in Princeton (USA), the Bowes Museum of Durham in the United Kingdom and other collections.