El Greco in the Prado
Madrid 12/4/2007 - 2/17/2008
Madrid 12/4/2007 - 2/17/2008
The exhibition opens with the earliest works by El Greco to enter the Prado and which came from the Spanish royal collection. Together they conform a gallery of portraits and include paintings of the stature of Gentleman with his Hand on his Breast. For much of the 19th century these paintings gained El Greco fame as the portraitist who best expressed the Spanish aristocratic spirit. Together with these portraits visitors will see The Trinity, painted as part of the altarpiece for the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo. It is one of the artist’s great masterpieces and the first religious painting by El Greco to enter the Prado.
The way in which the collection of El Greco’s work was gradually assembled in the Prado directly influenced the artist’s critical fortunes. Until 1872 he was primarily viewed as a portraitist due to the predominance of this genre within his oeuvre in the Museum, but the arrival in 1872 of fifteen paintings from the Museo del la Trinidad enabled El Greco to be increasingly appreciated for his religious compositions. Outstanding among these is The Annunciation from the “Altarpiece of Doña María de Aragón”, the only commission that the artist secured in Madrid and the focus of the second room in the exhibition.
The fourth room is devoted to the various bequests and donations received by the Prado between 1915 and 1962. These added other major works by El Greco, including Saint Sebastian (donated by the Marchioness of Casa Riera in 1959) and the two unique sculptures of Epimetheus and Pandora (donated by the widow of the Count of las Infantas in 1962). Such donations were exceptionally generous given that the artist’s work was fully appreciated by that period. At the time of the Prado’s foundation in 1819 El Greco was considered a minor member of the Italian school but in the 20th century his unique genius was definitively recognised.
The fifth and final room in the exhibition brings together works purchased by the Museum or by the Spanish State. These purchases have resulted in the addition of further masterpieces, such as The Adoration of the Shepherds, which El Greco painted for his own funerary chapel. In addition, they have functioned to complete gaps or fill out under-represented areas in the Prado’s holdings of his work, including Apostles series, secular paintings such as the magnificent Fábula, and the Italian period. The Museum’s most recent acquisition of a work by the artist, The Flight into Egypt, acquired in 2002, dates from the Italian period.
The publication of this catalogue is a further milestone in the Prado’s ambitious project to completely revise its painting collection through the publication of catalogues raisonné covering the works of all the artists, periods and schools that make up the collection. The present volume, which offers a detailed study of the work of El Greco (Candia, Crete 1541 - Toledo, Spain, 1614) and of his closest disciples and followers, is the third catalogue raisonné published by the Museum following the publication of the catalogues of Flemish paintings in 1975. The result of years of research involving technical study and the restoration of the entire group, the catalogue contributes important new information. This updating of our knowledge of the works by El Greco in the Prado has clarified numerous artistic and monographic issues.
The core of the catalogue comprises the thirty-seven works that are considered to be autograph, among them the sculptures of Epithemeus and Pandora. The remaining works are by the artist’s school, workshop and followers, including a smaller-format version of The Disrobing of Christ signed by the artist’s son, Jorge Manuel Theotokopoulos.
The catalogue offers a detailed analysis of each of the works in the group, including information on provenance, bibliography, physical condition, restoration history, iconography, visual sources and critical fortune. It also separately analyses the role of those canvases that formed part of major decorative schemes, such as the altarpieces for Santo Domingo el Antiguo and for the Colegio de Doña María de Aragon.
The catalogue entries have been written by Leticia Ruiz Gómez, expert in El Greco and Head of the Department of Spanish Renaissance Painting at the Museo del Prado. She has also written the introductory essay which offers an illuminating survey of the role that El Greco has played within the context of the Prado’s collections over its almost 200 years of history, from his relatively minor presence in the early decades of the 19th century to his full recognition at the beginning of the 20th century.
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