The Onassis Cultural Center will bring together a group of Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century paintings, including early works by El Greco, in the exhibition “The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete,” from November 17 through February 27. Tracing the cross-currents of Byzantine and Renaissance influences in the workshops of Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Crete †the setting in which El Greco was trained †the exhibition is the first to focus on the evolution of the multifaceted relationship of Cretan painters with Western art during this rich period.
Curated for the Onassis Cultural Center by Dr Anastasia Drandaki, curator of the Byzantine collection at the Benaki Museum, Athens, “The Origins of El Greco” will present 46 works from public and private collections in Greece, Europe, the United States and Canada, many of which will be traveling to the United States for the first time.
According to Drandaki, “The icon painters in the workshops on Crete in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries were renowned for their skill in painting impeccable panels not only in the traditional Byzantine manner but also in a style inspired by Western models. Although a dialogue with Western painting was not new to Byzantine art, a number of special factors undoubtedly helped to encourage the immersion of Cretan artists in Western iconography and style, especially after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.” “The Origins of El Greco” will illuminate these fascinating developments as seen in rare panel paintings that span the course of two centuries.
At the core of the exhibition will be 11 superb icons from the collection of St Catherine of Sinai Monastery in Heraklion, Crete. Founded around the Tenth Century as a dependency of the monastery of the same name at Mount Sinai, the Church of St Catherine in Herkalion supported a large and learned monastic community by the Sixteenth Century and since 1967 has housed a highly important collection of Orthodox icons and religious objects. Ten of the panels from the collection of St Catherine have left Crete only once before, in 1993, for an exhibition in Athens. The 11th of this group, a “Last Supper” by Michael Damaskinos, has been outside of Greece only once, for a 1999 El Greco exhibition that traveled to Athens, Madrid and Rome.
Four icons in the exhibition from the State Hermitage Museum have never traveled at all since entering the St Petersburg collection in 1930. A “Deesis” by Nikolaos Tzafouris, from the Antivouniotissa Museum in Corfu, is also traveling for the first time.
As another unprecedented feature of the exhibition, the Onassis Cultural Center will reunite two wings of a triptych by El Greco †a “Baptism of Christ” belonging to the municipality of Heraklion, and an “Adoration of the Shepherds” belonging to Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario †which have only recently been identified as having once belonged to the same altarpiece.
Two other exhibition highlights are a famous early painting by El Greco, “The Dormition of the Virgin,” which travels very rarely from its church in Ermoupolis and will be lent by the Metropolis of Syros; and a late, Spanish-period work by El Greco, “The Coronation of the Virgin,” on view in New York for the first time courtesy of the collection of the Onassis Cultural Center’s parent institution, the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.
The Onassis Cultural Center is in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue, entrances on 51st and 52nd Streets. For information, 212-486-4448 or www.onassisusa.org .
