A large, never-before-seen exhibition dedicated to El Greco at Milan's Palazzo Reale this fall.

In the spaces of the Piano Nobile of the Palazzo Reale in Milan, an extensive and unprecedented exhibition project dedicated to the great painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos, known as El Greco (Crete, 1541 - Toledo, 1614), will be staged from October 11, 2023 to February 11, 2024. Curated by Juan Antonio García Castro, Palma Martínez - Burgos García and Thomas Clement Salomon, the exhibition entitled El Greco is sponsored by the City of Milan Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and MondoMostre, under the patronage of theSpanish Embassy in Italy.

For thefirst time in the Lombard capital, the exhibition project presents more than forty works by the celebrated artist, making use of prestigious international loans. A unique opportunity to discover his production in the light of the latest research. The exhibition is the result of a profound and innovative historical-critical reflection, whose strong points are constituted by the careful reconsideration of the impact of Italian models in the artist’s training and the interpretation ofToledo’s last period in terms of a conscious recovery of a compositional approach in a broadly Byzantine sense. The itinerary will be divided into sections designed always to focus on the artist’s relationship with the places where he lived and at the same time to offer visitors with immediacy a precise historical-biographical reconstruction. At the same time, a series of close comparisons with great Roman and Venetian painting will bring out the powerful theme of the labyrinth, underscoring how El Greco’s life was a kind of immense training novel set among the cultural capitals of the Mediterranean.

The exhibition will start from the biographical data to propose a new look at El Greco’s work. Picking up on the myth of Ariadne, the labyrinth serves as a metaphor for delving into the artistic, thematic and technical evolution that the artist developed from his vital journey through the cities of the Mediterranean. The exhibition intends to bring attention to the influence that the great Italian artists, including Michelangelo, Parmigianino, Correggio, Titian, Tintoretto, and the Bassanos, chosen as models and whose teachings El Greco never abandoned, had in his artistic practice and particularly in his version of Mannerism. The exhibition also addresses the change of scale with respect to what El Greco painted on Italian soil, mostly small-format works such as the Modena Triptych or theAdoration of the Magi in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid. A striking change of scale, visible in compositions such as the version of El Expolio from the Church of Santa Leocadia in Toledo or The Baptism of Christ from the Ducal de Medinaceli Foundation. Finally, the return to the frontal and direct conception proper to Byzantine icons, with which El Greco constructed an unknown and impressive religious conception, such as the versions of the Apostolate or Veronica with the Holy Face.

Five sections into which the exhibition will be divided: the first section, entitled A Crossroads, deals with the painter’s beginnings in the circle of Cretan icon production and his subsequent apprenticeship in Venice and then Rome. A decisive stage in which he definitively becomes a painter in the Latin manner, abandoning the “Greek manner” proper to the madonnari. The second, Dialogues with Italy, exhibits a series of works made by El Greco under the direct influence of the Italian painters he admired for their use of color and light, as was the case with Titian and the Bassanos, or for their mastery of the figure in the case of Michelangelo. Here El Greco’s works and those of his “masters” dialogue. The third section, Painting Sanctity, explores the early phase of El Greco’s work in Toledo as a painter of religious scenes and devotional paintings. Once in Spain, the artist confronts the law of the art market in force at the time in the city of Toledo and the context of the Counter-Reformation. Under these circumstances he produced an enormous body of work as a painter of religious scenes and devotional paintings, through which he gave substance to a hitherto unknown empathy suited to a heterogeneous clientele, combining large commissions with others of an anonymous nature. The fourth section, Again the Icon, illustrates how the artist returns, in the last phase of his existence, to the compositional system of the icons of his native Crete, developing a production characterized by a direct, frontal approach, with nothing to distract from devotion. These are works of deep introspection, in which the expressive potential of gestures is thoroughly investigated. The exhibition concludes with a section in which homage is paid to the only mythological work created by El Greco, the Laocoon, a late and brilliant masterpiece, full of messages that remain not fully interpreted even today.

Major museums have loaned masterpieces for the realization of this exhibition, including the celebrated St. Martin and the Beggar and the Laocoon from the National Gallery in Washington, the Portrait of Jeronimo De Cevallos from the Prado Museum, the two Annunciations from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and St. John and St. Francis from the Uffizi Galleries. The exhibition also boasts the presence of extraordinary works from ecclesiastical institutions that are coming to Italy for the first time, such as the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian from Palencia Cathedral, theExpulsion of the Merchants from the Temple from the Church of San Ginés in Madrid and theCoronation of the Virgin from Illescas.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalog published by Skira Editore, which includes texts by Panayotis Ioannou, Giulio Zavatta and Alessandra Bigi Iotti, Palma Martínez-Burgos García, José Redondo Cuesta, Ana Carmen Lavín, Fernando Marías Franco and José Riello.

For info: www.palazzorealemilano.it; www.mostraelgreco.it

Image: El Greco, Saint Martin and the Beggar, detail (oil on canvas, 194 x 103 cm; Washington, National Gallery of Art) ©National Gallery of Art, Washington

A large, never-before-seen exhibition dedicated to El Greco at Milan's Palazzo Reale this fall.

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