El Greco
The Disrobing of Christ (after the restauration).
Oil on canvas, 300 x 178 cm, 1577-1579,
Cabildo S. I. Catedral Primada de Toledo
El Greco’s ‘Disrobing of Christ’ displayed at the Prado El Greco’s ‘The Disrobing of Christ’, which was one of the first commissions the artist received in Toledo following his arrival from Italy, will be temporarily displayed at the Prado following its technical study and restoration.]]>
October 30, 2013, source: Prado Museum
The Disrobing of Christ, which was painted for a room used to house religious relics in Toledo cathedral, depicts the moment when Christ has ascended to Calvary and is stripped of his clothes before being nailed to the cross. In this highly original composition, based on a range of both literary and visual sources, the traditional space has been compressed in order to convey Christ’s physical and mental suffering to the viewer. The intense expressiveness of the heads, intended to offer a complete repertoire of pictorial solutions, reveals the level of artistic mastery achieved by El Greco at this period.
The painting’s excellent state of preservation has meant that the work of the Prado’s restorer Rafael Alonso has essentially consisted of filling in and consolidating small areas of lifting and paint losses at the lower edge, in addition to cleaning the work. The result has been to recover the balance of lights and shades, improving the spatial and chromatic relations and consequently the overall visual reading of the work.
Shown alongside the painting are an infra-red reflectograph and an X-radiograph of it. Applied to El Greco’s work for the first time, these analytical techniques reveal that the artist did not make substantial changes to the initial composition, indicating that he conceived an overall idea that was carefully worked out beforehand.
Related content
El Greco and Modernism – Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (exhibition, 2012)
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