El Greco

El Greco, Saint Martin and the Beggar (detail), ca. 1597 - 1599 National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The Palazzo Reale in Milan is hosting the city’s first exhibition on the Cretan artist in the light of the latest research on his work. El Greco proposes a profound and innovative historical-critical reflection based on careful reconsideration of the impact of Italian models in the artist's training and on his recovery of a compositional setting in the broader Byzantine sense in the last Toledan period of his activity.

The exhibition itinerary is divided into sections designed so as to keep constantly in focus the artist's relationship with the places where he lived in order to offer visitors a precise historical-biographical reconstruction with great clarity and immediacy of impact, at the same time establishing a series of stringent comparisons with the great Roman and Venetian painting, bringing out the powerful theme of the labyrinth to underline how El Greco's life was a sort of immense bildungsroman that took place among the cultural capitals of the Mediterranean.

For the realization of this exhibition project, major museums have lent authentic masterpieces for this exhibition, including the famous Saint Martin and the Beggar and Laocoön 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 the Saint John and Saint Francis from the Uffizi Galleries.

Moreover, the exhibition includes works from ecclesiastical institutions that have been lent to Italy for the first time, such as the Martyrdom of San Sebastian from the Cathedral of Palencia, the Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple from the church of San Ginés in Madrid, and the Coronation of the Virgin from Illescas.