After battling a dragon — i.e., Satan, with the apple of original sin in his mouth — she has trampled and subdued the beast with a heavy silver chain which she holds loosely in her open hands.

Probably influenced by 16th century European prints, such as that of Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse series, the “dancing” Virgin seems to float and gestures with open hands to her right amid an abundance of flouncing folds conveying both flight and ecstasy.

Both of these figures carry the iconographic trappings more of the Woman of the Apocalypse than of an “Immaculate Conception” (the colors [blue and white], the floating) or an “Assumption” (the wings, the upraised arms), although elements of all three Marian "epithets" are present.

Legarda had established his reputation when in 1732 he was hired by the Franciscan fathers for the commission of an image of the “Virgin of the Immaculate Conception” for one of the altarpieces in a side chapel of the Church of San Francisco.

In addition to the larger Popayán copy produced by Lagarda himself, countless small devotional images throughout Latin America replicate the famed original sculpture in the Church of San Francisco in Quito.