from the Song of Songs — surround the Virgin. The rose and flawless mirror signify purity; the palm symbolizes victory; and the obelisk drawn in white at left recalls the comparison of the Virgin's neck to the tower of David, impregnable 2 and pure. The crown of stars, crescent moon, and serpent all derive from Revelation 12, which describes the Woman of the Apocalypse who triumphs over the original sin of Eve (the serpent carries an apple in its mouth) to become the pure vessel of Christ. In the altarpiece Tiepolo further heightened the abstract majesty of the figure (fig. 10.1). He increased the relative proportion of the Virgin to the overall picture plane and brought Mary closer to the top of the canvas by reducing the space between the dove and the Virgin's crowned head. Tiepolo also expanded the Virgin's cloak outward, surrounding her with more shadows and thereby increasing the monumentality of the overall composition. In the final painting Tiepolo eliminated the strapping angel, who raised Mary up in the sketch, in order to empha- size the Virgin's agency in her ascent. The flashing, nervous brushwork of the sketch gives way to the more even handling of the altarpiece, and the contrast between the brightly glazed passages and the earth tones moves to a more modulated overall palette. FIGURE 10.2 Giambattista Tiepolo. The Immaculate Tiepolo no doubt knew of precedents for Conception, ca. 1732-34. Oil on canvas. Amiens, France, Musee the iconography in Spain—such as the promi- de Picardie. Photo: Marc Jeanneteau. nent examples by Guido Reni (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Bartolome Esteban Murillo (now in the Prado)—which depicted a delicate and beautiful young girl. He NOTE S had represented the Virgin long before his 1 For the iconography of the Immaculate Conception, the arrival in Spain, both as a figure incorporated key source remains Mirella Levi dAncona, The into larger compositions (cat. no. 8) and as Iconography of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages an independent subject, with versions in Amiens and Early Renaissance, Monographs on Archaeology and 3 Fine Arts, 7 (New York: College Art Association (fig. 10.2), Vicenza, Dublin, Udine, and Detroit. of America in conjunction with the Art Bulletin, 1957). The stately, placid Virgin had considerable For the Immaculate Conception in Spain, see especially precedent in Tiepolo's oeuvre (see cat. no. 2 for Suzanne L. Stratton, The Immaculate Conception in Spanish a related type, the Madonna of the Rosary). Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). However, in both the Courtauld sketch and the 2 The reference to the Tower of David comes specifically Prado altarpiece, Tiepolo transformed these from Song of Songs 4:4: "Your neck is like the tower prior representations into a totem of strength of David, built for an arsenal, whereon hang a thousand bucklers, all of them shields of warriors" (RSV). and orthodoxy. 3 For these works, see Pedrocco 2002, 234, 301, 314. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 71