|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 
"Masterpieces from the World's Museums
in the Hermitage" The oeuvre of Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614), better known as El Greco, brought together the painting traditions of three countries - Greece, Italy and Spain. Born on the island of Crete, he began his artistic career as an icon-painter. El Greco spent the years 1567-77 in Italy; first in Venice where he picked up a broad, unrestrained manner of painting and a multicoloured palette, then in Rome, where he was most impressed by the monumental art of antiquity and the work of Michelangelo. Although El Greco already achieved recognition in this period, it was only in Spain that he developed into a great master. El Greco was commissioned in December 1596 to produce the main retable for the church of the Augustinian monastery that became known as the Colegio de Doëa Marýa de Aragon after its founder. He worked on the monumental images to be placed behind the altar for more than four years. In July 1601 the finished altar-piece was transported in parts from Toledo to Madrid and assembled. The retable then remained untouched until the early 19th century. After the invasion of the French Napoleonic army in 1808, the paintings were confiscated, removed from the monastery and separated. Today the majority of scholars are agreed that the altar-piece had two tiers. The centre of the lower row was a scene of the Annunciation, flanked by The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Baptism of Christ. The centre of the upper row was a scene of the Crucifixion, flanked by a Resurrection and Pentecost. With the exception of The Adoration of the Shepherds, which is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Bucharest, the paintings can now be seen in the Prado museum in Madrid. The splendidly painted, large-format canvases are among the masterpieces of world art. The loan exhibition from the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome comprises sketches for two of the retable scenes - The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Baptism of Christ, dating roughly from 1597. Back in his youth, soon after his arrival in Venice, in about 1567-68, El Greco painted a paired Adoration of the Shepherds and Baptism of Christ for the small portable altar of Modena (Galleria Estense) in which he followed the established iconographic tradition. The sketches for the Colegio de Doëa Marýa de Aragon reflect the artist's late style with his accustomed special mystical atmosphere and multitude of symbolic meaning. The tendencies that gradually developed in El Greco's work after the move to Spain - the elongated proportions of the figures, the distortion and dematerialization of them, enhanced contrasts in lighting and intensity of colour - found their ultimate expression here. The Hermitage possesses two works by El Greco - Portrait of the Poet Alonso de Ercilla (circa 1577) and The Apostles Peter and Paul (1587-92), belonging to his early and mature Spanish periods respectively. |
|
|||||
|
Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
