Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny

Portland’s Iconic Waterlilies Returns
Refreshed and Revitalized

March 1, 2025 – August 17, 2025

After more than 65 years, Claude Monet’s celebrated masterpiece Waterlilies emerges in a new light at the Portland Art Museum. Thanks to a meticulous conservation process, the painting has been carefully returned to its original brilliance—without varnish—to reveal Monet’s intended color harmonies and luminosity. This newly revived Waterlilies painting will be the star of the exhibition Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny, a tribute to the artist’s groundbreaking work and the influences that shaped it. The exhibition opens March 1, 2025, and will be on view through August 17, 2025.

Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny offers visitors new insights into Monet’s artistic lens, revealing his inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints—ukiyo-e, often referred to as “pictures of the floating world”—that captivated Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. Featuring 45 artworks including prints, photographs, and paintings, the exhibition begins by stepping into Monet’s world with a recreation of his collection of Japanese woodblock print masterpieces by artists such as Toyokuni (Utagawa Kunisada), Utagawa Hiroshige, and Kitagawa Utamaro from the Museum’s expansive print collection. It continues with Impressionist European and American responses to Japanese aesthetics, featuring works by Mary Cassatt, Bertha Lum, Henri Rivière, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others who also drew inspiration from Japanese art, also from the Museum’s own collection. The exhibition concludes with the newly conserved Waterlilies, which will be displayed alongside documentation of the research and restoration process that returned the work to its intended state.

Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny also includes contemporary photographs of Giverny and Portland’s Japanese Gardens by celebrated photographers Susan Seubert and Stu Levy, offering fresh perspectives on the gardens that profoundly inspired Monet’s art.

“In the late 19th century, Japanese art introduced radical perspectives and vibrant new aesthetics to European audiences, reshaping traditions in beauty and perspective that Monet and his contemporaries eagerly embraced,” said exhibition curator Mary Weaver Chapin, Curator of Prints and Drawings. “Japanese prints had a transformative impact. The vogue for all things Japanese that swept through France was dubbed japonisme, and could be found in art, fashion, and home decoration. Graphic artists immediately adopted the radical perspectives and insistent flatness in their own work, echoing—but not mimicking—the Japanese aesthetic. Some adopted Eastern methods of printing as well, seeking to create the beautiful color effects so distinctive of ukiyo-e woodcuts. American artists were equally entranced by Japanese prints and created their own version of japonisme in the United States.”

Monet defies conventional composition in Waterlilies. With no horizon line and no clear depth, the painting immerses viewers in a tranquil but detailed world of floating lily pads, blossoming flowers, reflections of willow branches, and a raindrop-mottled surface. While invoking a moment in a natural scene, this “nature” is an artfully cultivated setting: Monet’s Japanese-inspired garden pond in Giverny, planted with imported waterlilies and maintained by a team of gardeners.

Monet’s garden-inspired series became an astonishing project of over 250 paintings, immortalizing his dreamlike water garden on canvas over nearly 30 years. The magnificent depiction of Waterlilies in the Portland Art Museum’s collection, which the artist painted in 1914-15, is widely regarded as one of the finest in the series. The Monet family kept it in their private collection, and Monet’s son Michel displayed it in the family home for decades after the artist’s death before the Portland Art Museum acquired the painting in 1959.

This past summer, with the support of Bank of America Art Conservation Project, the Museum began a restoration of its Monet masterpiece to remove a layer of synthetic varnish and return Waterlilies to its original appearance as closely as possible. PAM conservator Charlotte Ameringer has conducted the delicate restoration in the Museum’s new conservation studio—part of an ambitious museum transformation that will be complete in late 2025—and the community has been invited to follow along and learn more about the conservation process in a series of videos on PAM’s website, in a “pop up” gallery, and on social media channels.

"We are thrilled to invite our community to see their renowned Waterlilies as it hasn't been seen in over 60 years—to see it as Monet intended, and to more deeply explore the art that inspired him," said Lloyd DeWitt, The Richard and Janet Geary Curator of European & American Art Pre-1930. “Just as our careful restoration peels back the surface layer to reveal Monet’s authentic painting, seeing his masterpiece in conversation with these works from our collection for the first time will allow visitors to appreciate the reflective depth of Monet’s artistry.”

Organized by the Portland Art Museum and co-curated by Mary Weaver Chapin, Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Lloyd DeWitt, The Richard and Janet Geary Curator of European & American Art Pre-1930.

Monet and Venice

The Brooklyn Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are pleased to announce Monet and Venice, a co-organized exhibition that will reunite Claude Monet’s extraordinary group of Venetian paintings. The exhibition will bring together more than twenty of Monet’s Venetian views from public and private collections around the world, including two masterpieces from the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco—

The Doge’s Palace

The Grand Canal - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

and The Grand Canal, Venice.

It will mark the first dedicated exploration of Monet’s luminous Venetian works since their debut in 1912, placing them in context with select paintings from key moments throughout his career, and in dialogue with portrayals of the city by artists such as Canaletto, Édouard Manet, John Singer Sargent, J. M. W. Turner, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Cocurated by Lisa Small, Senior Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Melissa Buron, former Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and current Director of Collections and Chief Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity for visitors to experience Monet’s unique vision of the fabled city

“It’s thrilling to reunite so many of Monet’s radiant, radical paintings of Venice,” said Lisa Small. “Although he avoided visiting until he was 68 years old—anxiously aware of how many artists had painted the famous city before him—once there he found it a unique and ideal environment to pursue his passion for rendering the changing effects of light and air. We are eager for our visitors to ‘travel’ to Venice and immerse themselves in the unfolding beauty of Monet’s paintings.”

“We are delighted to present this groundbreaking exhibition alongside the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, offering a fresh opportunity for visitors to engage with one of the world’s most celebrated artists in a bold new way,” said Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director at the Brooklyn Museum. “Through thoughtful interpretation and design, we are inviting our audiences to see Venice through Monet’s eyes and feel inspired by his vision.”

“In 10 weeks in 1908, Monet captured Venice’s ethereal cityscape in shimmering canvases, creating works unlike anything produced by the centuries of artists who painted the city before him,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. "Exploring Monet’s alongside other artists’ paintings of Venice deepens our understanding of his innovations in capturing atmospheric effects on canvas and the enduring inspiration of the Venetian lagoon. We are grateful to the Brooklyn Museum for their collaboration in bringing this exhibition to life.”

“Our exhibition partnership was inspired by two outstanding paintings of Venice by Monet in the collections of Brooklyn and San Francisco, respectively,” said Melissa Buron. ”FAMSF’s collections offer abundant sources for original exhibitions and Monet’s Grand Canal, Venice is one such inspiration. Moreover, FAMSF’s magnificent and recently acquired Canaletto, which features the same architectural subject, Venice’s sublime Santa Maria della Salute, provides a rich aesthetic dialogue between artists across several centuries. Brooklyn’s depiction of the nearby Palazzo Ducale by Monet anchors the collaboration, along with highlights from each museum’s rich collections. The fact that half of Monet’s Venice paintings are in private collections today makes this project a once-in-a-lifetime experience of the majestic city that inspired one of the most famous artists in the history of Western art.”

Monet himself once remarked that Venice was “too beautiful to be painted,” and it is perhaps this very beauty, and the city’s fame, that has obscured the significance and daring nature of the works he produced there. Often overshadowed by his iconic depictions of the French landscape, Monet’s Venetian works are among the most luminous yet underexplored of his career.

Although Monet visited Venice only once, the city had a profound impact on him. With its fragile beauty and delicate interplay of land and sea, Venice became a site of both formal experimentation and symbolic resonance for the artist. Key examples of Venetian imagery by artists who preceded or were contemporaneous with Monet, including Manet, Renoir, Singer Sargent, Turner, and others, will also be showcased, situating Monet’s works within a rich tradition of Venice as a subject of artistic inquiry. Unlike the bustling, populated scenes painted by artists like Canaletto, Monet’s Venice is almost uncannily devoid of human presence. His focus was instead on rendering the city’s architecture and canals emerging through and dissolving in the encompassing and unifying color and light that he described as the enveloppe. Monet’s hazy, depopulated images of Venice, a city already grappling with the effects of pollution and over-tourism when he visited, can also be considered through an ecological lens—both his, and our own.

The Grand Canal - Nahmad Collection

In addition to Monet's paintings of Venice, the exhibition will present over a dozen other works created throughout his career that show his lifelong fascination with water and reflections. Paintings from Monet’s time in Normandy, London, and his home at Giverny—including some of his famed water lily canvases—will be on view, drawing connections between the artist’s Venetian experiments and his broader oeuvre. Monet’s trip to Venice was his last major international journey, and it served as both an interruption and a replenishment of his artistic focus. He returned invigorated, with a new perspective on the water lily paintings he was creating in Giverny. As Monet himself asserted, “My trip to Venice has had the advantage of making me see my canvases with a better eye.”

Claude Monet
Year	1908
Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	92.4 cm × 73.7 cm (36.4 in × 29.0 in)
Location	Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

At the Brooklyn Museum, Monet and Venice will further engage audiences through immersive elements, including an original symphonic score inspired by the artist’s Venice paintings by the Brooklyn Museum’s Composer in Residence, Niles Luther. Upon entering the Museum’s fifth-floor rotunda, visitors will be enveloped by a large scale visual immersive that conjures Venice’s unique atmosphere and features an ethereal soundscape Luther created using field recordings that he captured in Venice and fragments of melodic themes drawn from his symphony. This visual and aural experience sets the stage for the visitor’s journey through Venice in the subsequent exhibition galleries. In the culminating space, Luther's full symphony enters into dialogue with Monet's paintings of Venice. Just as Monet sought to render Venice‘s unique atmospheric enveloppe—where light, water, and architecture merge into unified sensory impressions—Luther translates these visually dissolving effects into an immersive sonic experience, deepening and enriching the visitor’s journey to Venice with Monet.

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue will accompany Monet and Venice, featuring essays by leading scholars of Impressionism and 19th-century art, including André Dombrowski, Donato Esposito, Elena Marchetti, Félicie Faizand de Maupeou, Jonathan Ribner, and Richard Thomson. These contributions will explore Monet’s Venice works from sociohistorical and ecocritical perspectives, enriching our understanding of this pivotal moment in the artist’s career.

Monday, March 3, 2025

El Greco from Santo Domingo el Antiguo

The Museo Nacional del Prado is reuniting the major group of works painted by El Greco for the conventual church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo.

Until 15 June and thanks to the sponsorship of the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado, eight of the nine works that El Greco painted for the conventual church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo will be displayed in the Central Gallery of the Villanueva Building for the first time since their dispersal.

The Assumption, the large central canvas for the principal altarpiece, which has been in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1906, is displayed alongside the two works from that altarpiece in the collection of the Museo del Prado, the canvases that remain in Santo Domingo el Antiguo, and those now in other collections.

Curated by Leticia Ruiz, Head of the Collection of Spanish Renaissance Painting, the reuniting of these works is a remarkable artistic event which will allow visitors to see an exceptional group within El Greco’s early output in Spain.

In mid-1577, having recently arrived in Spain, El Greco secured the two most important commissions of his career to date: The Disrobing of Christ for Toledo cathedral and the three altarpieces for the Cistercian convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, one of the oldest religious houses in the city.

The convent’s church was rebuilt in a classicising style between 1576 and 1579, funded by Doña María de Silva (1513-1575), a Portuguese gentlewoman in the service of the Empress Isabel, wife of Charles V, and by Diego de Castilla (ca. 1507-1584), dean of the cathedral. This new space was intended as the burial place of the two benefactors.

For the construction of the main altarpiece and the two lateral ones in the church, Diego de Castilla designated El Greco on the suggestion of his son Luis de Castilla (ca. 1540-1618), who had met the painter in the Farnese palace in Rome in 1571. Thanks to this recommendation El Greco secured a particularly complex commission, for which he had to design the structure of the three altarpieces, the five sculptures that surmounted the main one and paint eight canvases. The overall conception of the programme represented a renewal of the traditional Castilian altarpiece. The principal altarpiece was structured around a large canvas on the subject of The Assumption, to which the other paintings were subordinated: the four saints in the lateral sections – Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Bernard and Saint Benedict – and The Trinity in the upper section. Years after the church was consecrated, a coat of arms carved in wood and located above the principal painting was covered with a depiction of The Holy Face, also by El Greco.

The commission was completed in 1579 and the result must have aroused the admiration of those who saw it. El Greco proved to be a great master, bold and capable, who applied himself with dazzling ease to the composition of large-format works filled with Italianate reminiscences both in the figurative models and in the colour and pictorial technique.

Museo Nacional del Prado">Museo Nacional del Prado

Catalogue

Buy catalogue

Exhibition

El Greco. Santo Domingo el Antiguo

Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid2/18/2025 - 6/15/2025

Calendar

Until 15 June and thanks to the sponsorship of the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado, eight of the nine works that El Greco painted for the conventual church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo will be displayed in the Central Gallery of the Villanueva Building for the first time since their dispersal.

The Assumption, the large central canvas for the principal altarpiece, which has been in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1906, is displayed alongside the two works from that altarpiece in the collection of the Museo del Prado, the canvases that remain in Santo Domingo el Antiguo, and those now in other collections.

The dispersal of El Greco's works for Santo Domingo el Antiguo

With the exception of three paintings that remain in the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo (the two Saint Johns and The Resurrection), the remainder of the works were dispersed from 1830. At that time appreciation of El Greco focused on his early period, influenced by Titian, which meant that the works in the church were particularly admired.

The Assumption

On 13 August 1830 the Infante Sebastián Gabriel de Borbón acquired The Assumption for 14,000 reales de vellón. To replace it in the altarpiece, a copy was commissioned from Luis Ferrant (1806-1868) and Carlos Luis de Ribera (1815-1891), who were paid 8,000 reales for that work. In 1836 the original painting was confiscated by Isabel II’s government but was subsequently returned to the Infante in 1859 after his return to the Isabelline side. In 1868 the work was sent with the rest of the Infante’s collection to Pau (France). After his death in 1875 his collection was divided among his heirs. The Assumption was included in the first exhibition devoted to El Greco at the Museo del Prado in 1902 and was subsequently sold in October 1904 by the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. It was eventually acquired by Nancy Atwood Sprague, who donated it to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1906 in memory of her husband, Albert Arnold Sprague.

Saint Bernard and Saint Benedict

In 1830 the Infante Sebastián Gabriel de Borbón acquired Saint Bernard and Saint Benedict for 3,000 reales. Both works were confiscated in 1836 by the government of Isabel II and deposited at the Museo de la Trinidad in 1838.

Saint Bernard was returned to the Infante in 1861 and sold in 1890 in Paris by his son, the Duke of Dúrcal. It subsequently passed through several owners until 1943, when it was deposited in the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. At the end of World War II it was confiscated as war booty and taken to the Soviet Union. It is currently on display at the State Hermitage Museum.

Saint Benedict was not returned to the Infante and in 1872 passed from the Museo de la Trinidad to the Museo del Prado.

The Trinity

In 1830 The Trinity was acquired by the sculptor Valeriano Salvatierra, a key figure in the emerging art market. In June 1832 he sold it to Ferdinand VII for 15,000 reales for the collection of the Real Museo, now the Museo Nacional del Prado.

The Holy Face

This canvas was removed from its altarpiece in 1961 and sold to a private collection in 1964.

The Adoration of the Shepherds

In 1956 The Adoration of the Shepherds was acquired by Emilio Botín Sanz de Sautuola y López and is now in the Colección Fundación Botín.

The reuniting of these paintings at the Museo del Prado constitutes an artistic event that will allow visitors to see and appreciate this exceptional group, a major commission from El Greco’s early period in Spain.

The Altar pieces of Santo Domingo el Antiguo

El Greco is first documented in Spain in June 1577. He was in Toledo, where he received the two most significant commissions of his career until then: The Disrobing ofChrist for the cathedral and the altarpieces far Santo Domingo el Antiguo, an important convent of Cistercian nuns. From 1579 the religious house hada new, classically designed church funded by Doña María de Silva 1513-1575, a Portuguese lady who had been in the service of Charles V's wife the Empress Isabella, and Diego de Castilla c. 1507- 1584, the powerful dean of the cathedral. The space was intended as a burial place far the two benefactors.

Don Diego hired El Greco to carry out the work which included the central and two side altarpieces - at the suggestion of his son Luis de Castilla c.1540-1618, who had met the painter at the Farnese palace in Rome in 1571. Thanks to this recommendation, El Greco had the chance to undertake a particularly complex project with an iconographic programme established by Don Diego de Castilla. He was to design the structure of all three altarpieces and the five sculptures surmounting the main one, as well as painting eight canvases, with an express request that everything should be by his hand. His idea for the ensemble breathed new life into traditional Castilian altarpiece design: in accordance with the Venetian manner, the main feature was a large central canvas to which the rest of the paintings were subordinated.

The painter must have prepared this commission conscientiously. Preliminary drawings and most likely a few oil sketches were necessary to effectively give shape to works of this size and compositional complexity, which he executed confidently with a wealth of solutions and nuances.

The result could not have been more dazzling. He proved himself to be a fully competent artist whose creative maturity placed him on a par with sorne of the finest painters of the Italian Renaissance. These canvases also established the fundamental aspects of El Greco's characteristic pictorial construction.

Four of the paintings were sold in the 19th century through the sculptor Valeriana Salvatierra, the first of them in 1830.

The Assumption of the Virgin

This was the central element of the altarpiece and most likely the first work El Greco executed in Spain, which is possibly why it is his only painting that bears a date.

It depicts a theme that is not mentioned in the Gospels: Mary's ascension to heaven, assisted by a group of angels. The Virgin, standing on a crescent moon, rises above the open tomb, watched by the apostles who are cloaked in stillness, with restrained gestures. Sorne of these figures appear to be portraits and others seem to be models learned by the artist during his Italian training. All of them, including the angels, display a monumentality that is further heightened by the a1tist's use of saturated, pure colours and thick, textured b1ushstrokes. The scene was completed by a painting of the Trinity in the upper storey of the altarpiece, which the Virgin gazes at with raised arms.

This connection between the two main canvases attests to El Greco's clever design.

The picture was sold to the Infante Sebastián Gabriel in 1830. It passed to The Art Institute of Chicago in 1906.

The Trinity

This painting on canvas topped the attic storey of the high altar piece, positioned above the Assumption, with which the scene is connected. Mary ascends towards this heavenly realm where God the Father, seated on clouds and flanked by youthful angels, holds the body of the dead Christ: a Compassio Patris or male Pieta. God is dressed as an Old Testament priest in a two-cornered mitre, alb and robe. The dove symbolising the Holy Spirit hovers above the heads of father and son.

This representation displays borrowings from medieval iconography. The painter used a 1511 print by Albrecht Dürer for the composition and drew on works by Michelangelo for the figure of Christ, with his powerful anatomy and unstable pose that causes him to slip from his father's grasp.

The painting entered the Prado in 1832 after being acquired by Ferdinand VII.

Saint John the Evangelist

This image of Saint John is unusual in Western Christian art, where he is commonly represented as a young, beardless man who is usually shown beside the eagle that distinguishes him from the other evangelists, holding a chalice from which a serpent emerges, or with a book, an attribute that is also characteristic of his status as an apostle.

El Greco depicted the book, which accounts for the engrossed expression of the saint, an elderly, stockily built man with a long, white beard. He is portrayed frontally in a meditative, concentrated pose that was not originally planned by the artist, who had represented him contemplating the Assumption in the preparatory drawings for the painting.

The monumentality of the figure is heightened by the low horizon line. This device, together with the abstraction of the background sky with clouds, foreshadows later compositions by El Greco.

The Resurrection

The canvas shows Christ rising triumphantly above the place where he was buried and guarded by the soldiers. El Greco drew on compositions by various Italian masters to produce a unique and personal work steeped in dynamism. He only repeated this theme in another painting -on view in the Prado - at the end of the century and in a new style.

The painter emphasised the reactions of the soldiers: those still resting or lying 'as if dead' (according to the Gospel of Matthew), the one sitting up in surprise and fear, and the two standing guards - in opposite positions - who appear dazzled by the miraculous sight. The upper part is dominated by the serene and majestic presence of Christ, a tightly modelled Apollonian figure with an emphatically rendered anatomy.

El Greco also included Saint Ildefonso. His white robes are characteristic of the feast of the Resurrection. The conception of this figure, with clearly individualised features, attests to El Greco's masterly painting technique during his early period in Spain.

The Adoration of the Shepherds

The Nativity is a subject El Greco had depicted previously, always taking Italian compositions as his basis. In this first example produced in Toledo, intended for the lateral altarpiece on the gospel side, the painter avoided showing a conventional space and devised an original composition of his own centred around the Christ Child. Jesus is the focus of the radiance, which illuminates the surrounding figures who adore and recognise him: in addition to Mary and Saint Joseph, five shepherds and two female figures at a distance from the scene who have been identified as Zelomi nd Salome, the midwives who certified that Mary was still a virgin, according to one of the apocryphal Gospels.

In the upper area, a group of acrobatic, glowing angels hold a ribbon scroll displaying a verse from Saint Luke in Greek: 'Glory to God in the highest...'

In the foreground is Saint Jerome, whose presence was expressly requested by the dean Castillo.

Saint John the Baptist

Following chiefly Byzantine models, El Greco depicted the Baptist as an emaciated ascetic partially covered by the camel-skin garment he would wear during his retreat into the wilderness, where he did penance and announced the coming of the Messiah. An unkempt beard and hair and a thin reed cross complete the image of the 'Forerunner' - he who precedes Jesus, whom he baptised in the river Jordan. With his right index finger he points to the tabernacle, the place where the sacrifice of the Lamb of God is renewed.

The elongated figure completely fills the narrow space topped by a semicircular arch. The absence of any spatial elements other than a few patches of colour in the form of an abstract sky, and the contrasting lighting, give the saint the appearance of a sculpture placed in a niche.

Saint Benedict

Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-547) was the founder of the Benedictine order, to which the nuns who moved into the Toledo convent in the 12th century belonged. This would account for the presence of the painting of this saint and its companion piece, Saint Bernard, in the high altarpiece.

El Greco devised the figure with precise, far from idealised traits; his features, which are perceived as a portrait, are those of a mature, ascetic-looking man who gazes at the viewer while pointing with his right hand to the area below, where the main canvas (The Assumption of the Virgin) and the tabernacle were located.

The solid, precise modelling of the figure and the powerful shading contrast with the vibrant, loose execution of the background.

Saint Bernard

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) reformed the Benedictine order to create the Cistercian order, which the community of nuns of Santo Domingo el Antiguo joined in 1140. He was also a devout follower of the cult of the Virgin Mary, whom he praised as a merciful mediator with God.

As with the representation of Saint Benedict, El Greco devised an image of the saint with such specific features that it seems to be a portrait. He holds an abbot's crozier and displays the cover of a book, possibly a reference to his treatise De laudibus Virginis matris. The painting was sold to the Infante Sebastián Gabriel in 1830; it subsequently passed through several owners and was seized as war booty in 1943.

The Veil of Veronica

The iconography of the vera effigies of Christ, which originated from an apocryphal account, became popular from the late Middle Ages. According to the story, a woman named Veronica had obtained an image of Jesus' face - also called the Veronica, literally meaning 'true image' (vera icon) - when it was imprinted on the cloth she offered him to wipe away his sweat during his ascent to Calvary.

The theme, although highly relevant to the Redemption based programme of the altarpiece, was in fact a later addition, after a coat of arms (probably belonging to one of the two patrons of the altarpieces) was discarded. This would explain the unusual format for this representation, which was hung high up, between the Assumption and the Trinity. The style of painting is clearly later than that of the rest of the ensemble.

The work was taken down in 1961 and sold in 1964.

Artworks

**The Holy Trinity**
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)
Oil on canvas
1577 - 1579
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

**Saint John Evangelist**
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 212 x 78 cm
1577-79
Toledo, Comunidad Religiosa de Santo Domingo "El Antiguo"

**The Holy Face**
El Greco
Oil on panel, 76 x 55 cm
1584-90
Private collection

The Adoration of the Shepards

El Greco

Oil on canvas, 210 x 128 cm

1577-79

Colección Fundación Botín

Catalogue

Buy catalogue

El Greco's nine paintings for the convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo, his first commission in Spain, were the painter's calling card in Toledo and are among the most memorable of his entire artistic output. The works executed for the church's three altarpieces were dazzling in their day for their quality and boldness, and were instrumental in forging a close relationship between the convent and the artist, who chose to bury himself there.

The ensemble began to be dispersed in 1830, with the sale of the Assumption, the large central canvas of the main altarpiece. This exhibition brings together, for the first time since then, eight of the nine works that El Greco painted between 1577 and 1579.

This book accompanying the exhibition, edited by Leticia Ruiz, head of the department of Spanish Renaissance Painting at the Museo del Prado, gives a complete overview of the history of these works, from their commission by Diego de Castilla (ca. 1507-1584), dean of Toledo Cathedral, to their dispersal from the 19th century onwards. The book also includes a part of the catalogue with comments and the reproduction of the nine works (eight of them present in the exhibition) that made up the three altarpieces.

Art History News

Thursday, March 6, 2025

The Cosmos of “Der Blaue Reiter”. From Kandinsky to Campendonk

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny

Portland’s Iconic Waterlilies Returns
Refreshed and Revitalized

March 1, 2025 – August 17, 2025

Monet and Venice

Monday, March 3, 2025

El Greco from Santo Domingo el Antiguo

The Museo Nacional del Prado is reuniting the major group of works painted by El Greco for the conventual church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo.

El Greco. Santo Domingo el Antiguo

The Assumption

Saint Bernard and Saint Benedict

The Trinity

The Holy Face

The Adoration of the Shepherds

The Altar pieces of Santo Domingo el Antiguo

The Assumption of the Virgin

The Trinity

Saint John the Evangelist

The Resurrection

The Adoration of the Shepherds

Saint John the Baptist

Saint Benedict

Saint Bernard

The Veil of Veronica

Artworks

Catalogue

About Me

Thursday, March 6, 2025

The Cosmos of “Der Blaue Reiter”. From Kandinsky to Campendonk

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny

Portland’s Iconic Waterlilies ReturnsRefreshed and Revitalized

March 1, 2025 – August 17, 2025

Monet and Venice

Monday, March 3, 2025

El Greco from Santo Domingo el Antiguo

The Museo Nacional del Prado is reuniting the major group of works painted by El Greco for the conventual church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo.

El Greco. Santo Domingo el Antiguo

The Assumption

Saint Bernard and Saint Benedict

The Trinity

The Holy Face

The Adoration of the Shepherds

The Altar pieces of Santo Domingo el Antiguo

The Assumption of the Virgin

The Trinity

Saint John the Evangelist

The Resurrection

The Adoration of the Shepherds

Saint John the Baptist

Saint Benedict

Saint Bernard

The Veil of Veronica

Artworks

Catalogue

Portland’s Iconic Waterlilies Returns
Refreshed and Revitalized