The Assumption of the Virgin by El Greco

The Assumption of the Virgin by El Greco

The picture that made him

El Greco arrived in Toledo in 1577, a Cretan-born painter trained in Venice and passed over in Rome, with nothing in Spain to his name. This was his first commission there — the high altarpiece for the convent church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo — and it is at the scale of a man arriving to make an impression: more than four metres tall. It worked. He stayed in Toledo for the rest of his life.

Two worlds, one canvas

The picture is split horizontally. Below, the twelve apostles crowd round the empty tomb in heavy, earthbound robes, gesturing, peering in, looking up. Above, Mary rises on the crescent moon of the Immaculate Conception, supported by angels, in a sky of light and cloud. The lower half is still close to Titian and Tintoretto; the upper half already has the elongated, flame-like figures that would become unmistakably his.

Where it went

The convent kept its other El Grecos, but sold this one in the nineteenth century. It passed through the collection of the Infante Sebastián Gabriel of Spain before being acquired for Chicago in 1906.

Where it hangs

The canvas is in the Art Institute of Chicago and measures 403 by 212 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 5,395-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 35 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Art Institute of Chicago · Wikidata Q11837891 · Wikimedia Commons