It is not, however, to pictures of this type that Murillo owed his widespread popularity. Generations of enthusiastic admirers have stood in silent awe before his large painting of _The Immaculate Conception_ (No. 1709, Plate XXVI.), which is certainly one of the best of innumerable versions of the same subject—the Virgin standing on a crescent moon, with ecstatic gaze, and hands pressed to her breast, and surrounded by swarms of joyous angel-children—painted by Murillo to meet an apparently insatiable demand. There is something of real ecstasy in this conception. To find a similar _morbidezza_ of pigment one must turn to certain famous works by Andrea del Sarto: it is a quality which is generally conspicuously absent from Spanish painting and which, if carried a step farther, as it sometimes was carried by Murillo, would result in fuzzy vapidness. This famous picture has the distinction of being the most costly purchase ever made for the Louvre, the price paid for it at the Marshal Soult sale in 1852—that is many years before American competition had established the vastly enhanced standards of value which now prevail—being as much as 615,300 fr., or £24,612. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI.—MURILLO (1618?-1682) SPANISH SCHOOL No. 1709—THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (La Conception immaculée de la Vierge) The Virgin, wearing a white robe with a blue mantle over her left shoulder, has her hands crossed over her breast; she is standing in the hollow of a two-horned crescent, and gazing heavenwards. About twenty-one cherubs and ten heads are seen in different parts of the composition. Painted in oil on canvas. 9 ft. 0 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (2·74 × 1·90.)] Apparently of earlier date is the other version of the same subject at the Louvre. This _Immaculate Conception_ (No. 1708) is not painted in the same spirit of exaltation as the version just described, but has a happy passage of realistic character-painting in the six kneeling figures on the left. On the right two angels carry a scroll with the inscription IN PRINCIPIO DILEXIT EAM. The picture was painted in 1656-57 for the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca at Seville, and was carried off to France, with many other of the master’s works, by Marshal Soult. THE “BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN”