MASP

Domenikos Theotokopoulos, nicknamed “El Greco” in Spain, underwent his initial art training in Crete, within the tradition of Byzantine art. By 1567 he had moved to Venice, where he especially admired the paintings of Titian’s final phase (1488/90-1576) and the dramatic effects of light and space in the works by Tintoretto (1518-1594). In 1575, perhaps hoping to participate in the works of El Escorial, he moved definitively to Spain. Two years later he was already in Toledo, the former capital and great intellectual center, where he worked especially on paintings of religious themes. Many believe that his dramatic style resulted in the artworks that best conveyed the city’s soul — proud of its great past, but then decadent after Philip II moved the capital to Madrid. The work The Annunciation (c. 1600) is mentioned in the inventory made after El Greco’s death together with another six nearly identical versions, currently located in Cuba, the United States, Japan, Spain and Hungary, all dated between 1595 and 1605. The bodies of Mary and the angel Gabriel are elongated to impart a spiritual tension to the scene. The white lily symbolizes purity, while the flaming plant represents the burning bush through which God first manifested his presence to Moses. The phantasmagoric and gloomy scene, with the explosion of light that represents the Holy Spirit — materialized in the dove — creates a stunningly dramatic atmosphere.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

---

In the inventories of the artist’s work compiled after his death in 1614, the theme Annunciation appears five times, thus indicating that El Greco returned to it on different occasions throughout his life. Indeed, the painting in the Masp Collection, The Annunciation, integrates a set of seven nearly-identical works dated from the period 1595-1605, of which the other six are conserved at the Toledo Art Museum, of Ohio (USA); Szépmüveszéti Múzeum, of Budapest (signed); Soichiro Ohara Collection, of Kurashiki (Japan); Cintas de Havana Collection, in Cuba; Zuloaga Collection, of Zumaya (Spain), and Ralph Coe Collection, of Cleveland (USA), respectively. The seven works in question are viewed as autograph by all scholars except Wethey, who believes the works were produced either by El Greco’s son, Jorge Manuel, or at his workshop. Waldmann and Pallucchini accurately note that the composition revisits the idea of early youth depicted in the left portion of the polyptych at Modena (1567?), that in turn seemingly reached back to a misplaced work by Titian reproduced in an engraving by Caraglio. In addition, the affinities between the scene in the polyptych and Tintoretto’s monumental Annunciation conserved at the Uffizi seem equally manifest. Ten or fifteen years later El Greco reviewed the composition and introduced, as variation, the figure of an angel crossing his arms on his chest as for example in the versions conserved in the chapter of the Cathedral of Sigüenza and in Museo de Santa Cruz, of Toledo. The authorship of both versions has been attributed to the Spanish master by all critics except Wethey. In any case, the version in the Masp Collection is unquestionably autograph due to its quality and superlative radicalness in terms of stylization of the bodies, as evinced, for example, in the dematerialized winding column of light that replaces the arm of the harbingering Angel. As previously mentioned, the composition is relatively unusual. Here the angel was situated to the right of the Virgin; the relationship between both characters is totally inflamed with spirituality and the encounter, devoid of the domestic set design that pertains in the iconographic tradition of the various Annunciation.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

---