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.
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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
1577-79. Oil on canvas
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Nancy Atwood Sprague in memory of Albert Arnold Sprague, inv. 1906.99
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
1577-79. Oil on canvas
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
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
1577-79. Oil on canvas
Toledo, Comunidad Religiosa de Santo Domingo el Antiguo
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
1577-79. Oil on canvas
Colección Fundación Botín
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
1577-79. Oil on canvas
Toledo, Comunidad Religiosa de Santo Domingo el Antiguo
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
1577-79. Oil on canvas
Museo Nacional del Prado
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
1584-90. Oil on panel
Private collection
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
1
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 403.2 x 211.8 cm
1577-79
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Nancy Atwook Sprague in memory of Albert Arnold Sprague. 1906.99.
2
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)
Oil on canvas
1577 - 1579
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
3
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)
Oil on canvas
1577 - 1579
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
4
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 212 x 78 cm
1577-79
Toledo, Comunidad Religiosa de Santo Domingo "El Antiguo"
5
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 212 x 78 cm
1577-79
Toledo, Comunidad Religiosa de Santo Domingo "El Antiguo"
6
El Greco
Oil on panel, 76 x 55 cm
1584-90
Private collection
7
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 210 x 128 cm
1577-79
Colección Fundación Botín
8
Catalogue
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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.
