- El Greco in the National Gallery of Art and Washington-Area Collections: A 400th Anniversary Celebration
- November 2, 2014 – February 16, 2015
- West Building Main Floor
This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.
The National Gallery is fortunate to have seven paintings by El Greco (1541 – 1614), one of the largest collections of his work in the United States. Four of them (Christ Cleansing the Temple, two altarpieces from a chapel in Toledo, and the Laocoön) have recently returned from Spain, where they were featured in major exhibitions honoring the 400th anniversary of the artist’s death. The Gallery’s reunited paintings by El Greco are joined here by three others from Dumbarton Oaks and The Phillips Collection in Washington, and The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Domenikos Theotokopoulos, universally known as El Greco, was born on the Greek island of Crete, where he achieved mastery as a painter of Byzantine icons. Aspiring to success on a larger stage, he moved to Venice in his late twenties and absorbed the lessons of High Renaissance masters, especially Titian and Tintoretto. In 1570 he departed for Rome, where he studied the work of Michelangelo and encountered the style known as mannerism, which rejected the logic and naturalism of Renaissance art.
El Greco relocated to Spain in 1576 and spent the rest of his life in Toledo, where he finally received the major commissions that had eluded him in Italy. Unlike the Italian mannerists, who aimed at elegant artifice, El Greco used their dramatically elongated figures and ambiguous treatment of space for expressive ends, creating transcendent works that, like the icons of his youth, convey deep spirituality. Blending diverse influences — Byzantine, Renaissance, mannerist — he developed a unique style that captures the religious fervor of Counter-Reformation Spain.
Organization: The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art.
Image: El Greco, Laocoön, c. 1610/1614, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1946.18.1
Press
El Greco Anniversary Celebrated at National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rare Loans from Washington-Area Collections Included
(Release Date: October 15, 2014)
Audio and Video
- El Greco: An Artist's Odyssey
- Video, Released: November 4, 2014, (30:22 minutes)
- Press Event: El Greco in the National Gallery of Art and Washington-Area Collection
- Audio, Released: November 3, 2014, (17:35 minutes)
- Patrons, Artists, and Saints: El Greco in the Chapel of San José in Toledo
- Audio, Released: June 10, 2014, (33:00 minutes)
- El Greco: 400 Years After: The Apostolate of the Museo del Greco in Toledo: One of El Greco’s Greatest Series, Part 5
- Audio, Released: June 10, 2014, (41:58 minutes)
- El Greco: 400 Years After: Sainthood and Creativity: El Greco’s Portraits of Saint Ildefonso and Giulio Clovio, Part 4
- Audio, Released: May 27, 2014, (27:07 minutes)
- El Greco: 400 Years After: A Greek Painter in Toledo, 400 Years After, Part 3
- Audio, Released: May 20, 2014, (38:03 minutes)
- El Greco: 400 Years After: El Greco in Italy: Formation of an Ambitious Portraitist, Part 2
- Audio, Released: May 6, 2014, (18:26 minutes)
- El Greco: 400 Years After: Introduction: The Critical Fortune of El Greco: Causes and Effects, Part 1
- Audio, Released: April 29, 2014, (18:26 minutes)
- In the Conservation Lab: El Greco’s Saint Martin and the Beggar
- Video, Released: October 29, 2013, (6:29 minutes)