At length, in July, 1615, Paul V. formally instituted the office commemorating the Immaculate Conception, and in 1617 issued a bull forbidding any one to teach or preach a contrary opinion.  “On the publication of this bull, Seville flew into a frenzy of religious joy.”  The archbishop performed a solemn service in the Cathedral.  Cannon roared, and bull fights, tournaments, and banquets celebrated this triumph of the votaries of the Virgin.  Spain and its dependencies were solemnly placed under the protection of the “Immaculate Conception,” thus personifying an abstract idea; and to this day, a Spaniard salutes his neighbour with the angelic “Ave Maria purissima!” and he responds “Sin peccado concepida!"[1]

[Footnote 1:  In our own days we have seen this curious controversy revived.  One of the latest, if not the last, writer on the subject was Cardinal Lambruschini; and the last papal ordinance was promulgated by Pio Mono, and dated from Gaeta, 1849.]

* * * * *

I cannot find the date of the earliest picture of the Immaculate Conception; but the first writer on the art who makes allusion to the subject, and lays down specific rules from ecclesiastical authority for its proper treatment, is the Spaniard Pacheco, who must have been about forty years of age when the bull was published at Seville in 1618.  It is soon after this time that we first hear of pictures of the Immaculate Conception.  Pacheco subsequently became a familiar of the Inquisition, and wielded the authority of the holy office as inspector of sacred pictures; and in his “Arte de la Pintura,” published in 1649, he laid down those rules for the representation which had been generally, though not always, exactly followed.

It is evident that the idea is taken from the woman in the Apocalypse, “clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”  The Virgin is to be portrayed in the first spring and bloom of youth as a maiden of about twelve or thirteen years of age; with “grave sweet eyes;” her hair golden; her features “with all the beauty painting can express;” her hands are to be folded on her bosom or joined in prayer.  The sun is to be expressed by a flood of light around her.  The moon under her feet is to have the horns pointing downwards, because illuminated from above, and the twelve stars are to form a crown over her head.  The robe must be of spotless white; the mantle or scarf blue.  Round her are to hover cherubim bearing roses, palms, and lilies; the head of the bruised and vanquished dragon is to be under her feet.  She ought to have the cord of St. Francis as a girdle, because in this guise she appeared to Beatriz de Silva, a noble Franciscan nun, who was favoured by a celestial vision of the Madonna in her beatitude.  Perhaps the good services of the Franciscans as champions of the Immaculate Conception procured them the honour of being thus commemorated.