The Royal Palace of Milano from tomorrow the great anthology dedicated to "El Greco" opens to the public.
Royal Palace of Milano presents, for the first time, a Milano, a large and unpublished exhibition project dedicated to the great painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos, universally known as El Greek (Crete, 1541 – Toledo, 1614), who will inhabit the spaces of the Piano Nobile of the Royal Palace from 11 October 2023 to 11 February 2024.
The “El Greco” exhibition, promoted by the Municipality of Milano Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and MondoMostre, with the patronage of the Spanish Embassy in Italy, is curated by Juan Antonio García Castro, Palma Martínez – Burgos García and Thomas Clement Salomon, with the scientific coordination of Mila Ortiz.
The exhibition project presents 41 works by the master Cretan and boasts prestigious international loans: a unique opportunity to discover the artist's work in light of the latest research on his work. The “El Greco” exhibition is in fact the fruit of a profound and innovative historical-critical reflection, whose strong points consist of the careful reconsideration of the impact of Italian models in the artist's training and the interpretation of the last period Toledano with the recovery of a broadly Byzantine compositional approach.
The exhibition itinerary is divided into sections designed to keep you constantly entertained the artist's relationship in focus with the places in which he lived and at the same time offer to visitors with a precise immediacy historical-biographical reconstruction.
The exhibition consists of five fundamental moments, conceived as thematic areas: from the first section, entitled "The crossroads", which deals with the painter's beginnings in the circle of Cretan icon production, to the second "Dialogues with Italy“, where the direct influence of the Italian painters he admired for their use of color and light emerges, including Michelangelo, Parmigianino, Correggio, Titian, Tintoretto, the Bassanos, chosen as models and of whom El Greco never abandoned teachings. In the third, “Painting holiness“, the exhibition delves into the first phase of El Greco's work in Toledo as a painter of religious scenes and devotional paintings, while the fourth section, “The icon, again“, illustrates how the artist returns, in the last phase of his existence, to refer to the compositional system of the icons of his native Crete, developing a production characterized by a direct, frontal approach, without anything that distracts from devotion. The exhibition concludes with a section in which homage is paid to the only mythological work created by El Greco, “El Greco in the Labyrinth“, a late and brilliant masterpiece, full of messages that still remain incompletely interpreted today.
For the realization of this exhibition project, major museums have granted the loan of authentic masterpieces, including the famous "Saint Martin and the Beggar" and the "Laocoön" from the National Gallery in Washington, the "Portrait of Jeronimo De Cevallos" from Prado Museum, the two Annunciations in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the “Saint John and Saint Francis” in the Uffizi Galleries. The exhibition also boasts the presence of extraordinary works from ecclesiastical institutions that arrive in Italy for the first time, such as the "Martyrdom of San Sebastiano from the Cathedral of Palencia", "The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple" from the Church of San Ginés in Madrid and “The Coronation of the Virgin” by Illescas.
El Greek
Annunciation
Oil painting on canvas, 117 x 98cm
Thyssen Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
©Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
El Greco – Biographical notes
Doménikos Theotokópoulos, known as El Greco, was born in Candia, on the island of Crete in 1541 and dies in Toledo in 1614. His life was marked by the constant search for artistic formulas which led him to explore unknown and absolutely personal languages.
In 1567, from his native Crete, he moved to Venice to become a "Western" painter, leaving behind the characteristics of icons. In Venice and then in Rome, in the exquisite environment of the Farnese family where he acquired knowledge of ancient statuary, his first transformation into a painter "in the Latin manner" took place, a style characterized by the use of color and stain as the basis of painting. However, in the complex Italian artistic environment, he is unable to find a patron and therefore decides to try his luck in Spain.
He arrived in Toledo in July 1577 at the age of 41, with the hope of obtaining a commission from King Felipe II and of being appointed painter of Toledo Cathedral. He failed to realize any of his dreams. His difficult character and the artistic originality of his compositions and iconography surprised everyone, as did his very high prices for the Castilian market. Despite this, Toledo provides him with an environment of friends and loyal clients with large commissions. At the same time he created a workshop, in the manner of Venetian workshops, where some versions of his most sought-after works were created. Far from fashions and currents, in Toledo he found the calm necessary to continue investigating an increasingly personal, abstract and extravagant language, which can be seen in works such as the Laocoön. Upon his death on 7 April 1614, leaves a vast Inventory that we know through his son Jorge Manuel Theotocopoulos.
El Greek
Coronation of the Virgin
Oil on canvas, 163 x 220 cm
©Fundación Hospital Ntra. Sra. de la Caridad – Benéfica de Vega Memory (FUNCAVE)
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