The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete at New York's
Onassis Cultural Center (November 17, 2009-February 27, 2010) traces the development of religious painting on the Aegean island during the 15th and 16th Centuries. The exhibition brings together some 46 works from public and private collections in Greece, Europe, the United States and Canada, many of which are traveling for the first time. Included are: early Cretan and Italian compositions by El Greco (1541-1614); 11 icons from St. Catherine Monastery in Heraklion; and four revered images from the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
El Greco and The Dormition of the Virgin
Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known as El Greco, was born in Candia, the capital of Crete, then a possession of the Republic of Venice. During his first 26 years of life there, he was solidly trained in the post-Byzantine style of painting. As a Venetian colony, Crete was open to the naturalistic influences of Italian Renaissance art. They appear as superficial flourishes in El Greco's early religious compositions.
While
The Dormition of the Virgin (before 1567) was being cleaned in 1983, restorer G. Mastorópoulos discovered El Greco's signature (
Domenikos Theotokopoulos realized) on the base of the work's central candelabrum. The object's stem, made up of classical nude female figures possibly derived from an Italian print, is a seemingly deliberate antiquarian reference on the artist's part. The revelation of El Greco's name on the candleholder allowed later 20th-century art historians to attribute icons executed in a similar style to the painter.
The Dormition of the Virgin commemorates the death and assumption into Heaven of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. In the icon's foreground, she lies atop a funerary bier surrounded by the Apostles. To the left, St. Peter incenses Mary's body with a gold
thurible. Christ leans over his mother and receives her soul in the form of a linen-wrapped infant. The painting's upper portion features the crowned Virgin, her feet resting on a crescent moon while ascending into Heaven amidst angels. The kneeling and doubting Apostle Thomas accepts Mary's girdle as evidence of the event's occurrence.
The remarkable icon was a highlight of the special exhibition
El Greco at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 7, 2003- January 11, 2004) and London's National Gallery (February 11-May 24, 2004).
Other Works by El Greco on ViewThe exhibition marks the American debut of El Greco's
The Coronation of the Virgin (1603/05), an oval-shaped oil on canvas by the Renaissance master. The painting was purchased by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation from a New York art dealer in Fall 2008 for an undisclosed sum. It's joined by the unsigned
Adoration of the Shepherds and Baptism of Christ (both 1567/68), loaned by the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario and the Municipality of Heraklion, respectively. Attributed to El Greco, the unsigned rectangular paintings were previously hinged and most likely part of a
triptych (three-panel devotional work) housed in the Galleria Estense of Modena, Italy.
SourceDavies, David, et. al.
El Greco (exh. cat.). London: National Gallery Company Limited, 2003, 18-79.