The image was printed in various formats and media for a range of uses and recipients – on paper for a general audience, on taffeta for important people. At the bottom, completing the scene, are the coats of arms of the king and of the city, held by angels. Below, to the right, is Pope Alexander VII, accompanied by several cardinals as he presents the Bishop of Valencia with the brief he had issued on 8 December 1661, defining the true meaning of the word “conception.” To the left are the jurors, representatives of the city, kneeling and wearing majestic cloaks. The Virgin is shown on her throne over the moon, trampling on a dragon representing guilt, and flanked by a pair of angels with laudatory scrolls. 4 The same image, reduced in scale, was included on the flyleaf of Juan Bautista de Valda’s account of the feast. 2 At the tail end of the procession was a handsome cart carrying a press, on which two officials were printing images of the Virgin Mary on marquilla 3 paper.
On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, 1662, a procession wound its way through the streets of Valencia, the bitter controversy that the mystery had aroused in the first half of the century now a thing of the past. Juan-Carlos Conde and Clive Griffin (New York and Oxford: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2020), 23-55.
Papeles efímeros en la sociedad hispana de la temprana Edad Moderna,” in La palabra escrita e impresa: libros, bibliotecas, coleccionistas y lectores en el mundo hispano y novohispano: in memoriam Víctor Infantes & Giuseppe Mazzocchi, eds. Originally published as: Antonio Castillo Gómez, “No solo libros.