A seventeenth century painting by El Greco has recently been bought by the foundation created by wish of Greek magnate Aristotle Onassis and last Wednesday it was displayed for the first time at the National Art Gallery in Athens.
The painting “Coronation of the Virgin” was bought last summer, for an unstated amount, by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, as confirmed by its chairman Antonio Papadimitriou. The chairman stated that the seller would be an unidentified US dealer and he also added: “We were lucky that the work was on sale and we decided to act fast. . .because very few works by El Greco are available on the market. This work is a unique piece from the artist’s mature period”. Therefore the Foundation is particularly satisfied with its purchase, which also makes more substantial the number of this artist’s works within the Greek territory, now reaching the amount of nine.
The director of the Athens National Art Gallery, Marina Lambraki-Plaka, stated that the painting belonged to El Greco’s personal collection, and was found in his studio in Spain, where the painter lived from 1577 until he died in 1614. Lambraki-Plaka then added that the work appeared at auction in 1913 and that subsequently it was passed from one hand to another before becoming part of the collection of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. From a report drawn up by the United Nations Office against drugs and presumed crime, it resulted that Marcos had illegally accumulated between 5 and 10 billion dollars before being expelled. When the dictatorship was overthrown in 1986, the painting was put up for auction on behalf of the US government and bought by its previous owner, more exactly the United States seized the work in 1986 and sold it in 1991 at Sotheby’s New York for $2,100,000.
El Greco – whose real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos – was born in 1541 in Candia, on the island of Crete. After an initial orientation towards the Byzantine tradition, the artist operated for nine years in Italy, before moving to Spain, were he refined his technique according to the stylistic dictates of the admired Tiziano and Tintoretto. His artistic production was mainly concentrated on portraits and religious representations, common themes approached in an all but trivial way. His art, made of spasmodically lengthened figures and sometimes unnatural colours, was characterised during his maturity by a deviation from the realistic-naturalistic code of his youth in favour of dramatic-visionary expressionism. His oeuvre was rewarded during his life, but afterwards it lost approval. The artist regained fortune and was rediscovered in all his modernity in the twentieth century.
The “Coronation of the Virgin”, the painting that has been bought, is a study which shows only slight differences with respect to the final painting, which is bigger and initially decorated the semi-cupola of the apse of a chapel at the Hospital de la Caridad in Illescas (a town in the province of Toledo). The building, dated between 1592 and 1600, houses various works by El Greco: Besides the canvas mentioned, originally placed next to an Annunciation and a Nativity, there are – moved from their original position – a “Virgin of Mercy” which belonged to the same commission of the “Coronation” and a “Saint Ildefonso”, probably executed previously.
Papadimitriou said that the marvelous oval will be on display at the National Gallery for the next two years, before being moved to the new cultural centre of the Onassis Foundation, which is currently being built in Athens. Therefore, the Foundation, which already owns three of the artist’s paintings, will display its last arrival in its new venue, the “Onassis House for Arts and Letters”, which should open in the Greek capital in 2010 with the intent to celebrate the Hellenic culture in its multiple forms and will also include a theatre, an auditorium, a library and an exhibition hall.

For more info: http://www.onassis.gr/main.php?lang=en

(Translated by Giorgina Arcuri)