The Assumption of the Virgin

Description

This painting was the central element of the altarpiece that was El Greco’s first major Spanish commission and first large public work. After living in Venice and Rome, where he absorbed the late Mannerist style, the Greek-born artist settled in the Spanish city of Toledo in 1577 to work on the high altar of the convent church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. The church of this ancient Cistercian convent was being rebuilt as the funerary chapel of a pious widow, Doña Maria de Silva. In El Greco’s grand design, the Assumption was surmounted by a representation of the Trinity and was flanked by two side altars decorated with paintings of the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Resurrection. The visionary imagery of the Assumption and the Trinity aptly expressed the patron’s hope of salvation. Here the Virgin floats upward, supported on the crescent moon that is symbolic of her purity, while the boldly modeled heads of the crowd of apostles gathered around her empty tomb express amazement and concern. The vigor of El Greco’s broad brushstrokes proclaims the confident achievement of this early work, as does this artist’s large signature in Greek, painted as though affixed to the surface of the picture at the lower right.

Provenance

Commissioned 1577 by Don Diego de Castilla for the convent church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, Toledo; installed with other paintings in the main retable by September 1579; sold c. 1830 to the Infante Don Sebastián Gabriel de Borbón y Braganza (died 1875), Madrid and later Pau, France, but confiscated from him by the Spanish government and installed in the Museo Nacional de la Trinidad, Madrid, in 1835 [Lavice 1864 recorded that the Assumption was on display in the Museo Nacional de Pinturas, but this cannot be confirmed]; returned to Don Sebastián in 1861; his estate in custody of the Spanish government, 1875–87 [see María Teresa Baratech Zelama, “La testamentario del Infante Don Sebastián Gabriel de Borbón y Braganza,” Archivo español de arte 62 (1989), pp. 372–77 for the status of his estate]; his widow, the Infanta María Cristina de Borbón (died 1902), Aranjuez and Madrid; offered for sale, Madrid, October 1902, no. 2, but bought in, then lent by the Infanta’s heirs to the Museo del Prado, Madrid, 1902–04 [see Cossío 1908, p. 594, no. 279]; purchased from them by Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, for 100,000 frs. ($17,000), October 1904, with funds provided by Henry O. Havemeyer, New York [see Havemeyer 1961, p. 155]; sold to the Art Institute, July 17, 1906.

The Assumption of the Virgin

Domenico Theotokópoulos, called El Greco

1577–79

Accession Number

87479

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

403.2 × 211.8 cm (158 3/4 × 83 7/16 in.); Framed: 461.6 × 256.5 × 14 cm (181 3/4 × 101 × 5 9/16 in.)

Classification

oil on canvas

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Nancy Atwood Sprague in memory of Albert Arnold Sprague

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