Help with very unique shell...

This is a very old, unusual shell with the Virgin Mary on it. I know it's old because it was given to Grandmother from her mother. They lived in Malta way back then. Has anyone ever seen anything like this?

 

This appears to be a painted conch shell. Quite a cottage industry around the Med at one time, now restricted by endangered species rules. They are not commonn but very far from unique.
Southern Italy or nearby Malta are probable origins. I have seen more cameo carved whole shells than painted ones though.

 

I sold some carved ones a few weeks back - those are almost always from Ercolani, near Naples.

af, that looks more like a Victorian applied transfer than painted?

 

OBB, can't see it well enough to tell. New eyes would help me.

 

It does look like a transfer. I didn't know they could do transfers that long ago.

 

Victorians loved what they called scraps which are printed paper things you stuck on screens and in albums. Yours is in the style of that. Transfers go back to, oh, the 18th century. At least.

 

I'm voting with ownedbybear. That looks like the stamps I've seen pasted around photographs in old Victorian photo albums.