The Immaculate Conception

The Immaculate Conception — the doctrine that Mary herself was conceived without original sin — became one of colonial Spanish America's most heavily promoted devotional images, distinct from the shrine-specific pilgrimage Virgins in that it depicts a theological claim rather than a located miracle-working statue: Mary alone, crowned, often ringed with stars or a crescent moon underfoot.

Cusco workshops painted the type constantly, applying the same brocateado gold technique used for the pilgrimage Virgins to a subject with no specific hometown at all.