Tota Pulchra - Spanish school, CIRCA 1600-50.

Spanish school, CIRCA 1600-50.
TOTA PULCHRA
Oil on copper.
With its antique frame.
Dimensions: 20 x 16 cm; 31 x 26 cm (frame).

Devotional image that follows the iconographic models of the Tota Pulchra, a theme whose purpose is to extol the immaculate and unblemished virginity of Mary. Thus, we see the Virgin Mary dressed in her blue mantle and surrounded by the mandorla of golden light. She is standing and in a prayerful position, raised on the crescent, symbol of Diana's chastity, and she steps on the serpent, alluding to her victory over Original Sin. Above her head we see the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, also enveloped in divine light. On both sides appear the symbols of the Lauretan Litanies, an iconographic set of symbolic images that alluded to the purity of the Virgin Mary as Mother of God. Starting from the upper left margin we see the stairway to heaven, the sun that is the image of the divine, the mirror, ”Speculum sim Macula: Mirror without blemish, the well of wisdom, the Tower of David, and the fleece of Gideon. Top right, the moon as a symbol of fertility and related to “pulchra ut luna”: neat like the moon, the door of Heaven, the starfish or “Stella Maris”, the sealed source, as a life-giving and purifying principle , the Temple of the Holy Spirit, comes to develop the idea of ??the purity of Mary. In the lower margins from left to right we find the closed garden that alludes to its fertile but virginal character, the city of God, the lilies come to signify its virginal being, the cedar as a symbol of perenniality, permanence, vigor, the nobility and immortality and the rosebush that links with charity.