Back Where They Belong

Last week on my most recent visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art, I passed through a gallery which I described on this blog last winter... a gallery of Flemish, French and Spanish Baroque paintings.  When I was teaching I would take my students to the museum as a part of a unit on Spanish art, and this gallery is where we would always begin.  However, in February two of the paintings which were always a part of our tour were missing.  The museum owns two very fine examples of the work of El Greco.  El Greco was actually born in Greece, and his real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos.  However his most productive years as an artist were spent in Spain, and he is closely associated with the Spanish city of Toledo where he lived for 37 years until his death at the age of 72.

The two paintings had been a part of a pre-pandemic exposition in Paris and Chicago, and, when I was there earlier, they had not yet been returned to their usual place.  Instead they had a work by a lesser known Spanish-Flemish artist... a painter that I had never heard of, Juan van der Hamen y León.  (Since only around 4000 of the museum's collection of over 60,000 pieces are on permanent display, there was no problem in hanging something in their place.)  Well, El Greco has returned, and Juan van der Hamen is probably in storage again.  Here are the two El Greco paintings back in their usual spot.

 "Christ on the Cross", painted between 1600 and 1610

"The Holy Family with Mary Magdalene" from between 1590 and 1595

El Greco's style is very individualistic and cannot be pigeonholed in any particular school of art.  Although he was capable of very realistic paintings, most of his work is about conveying a sense of spirituality rather than reality.  His art mystified viewers of the era, and was met with contempt by many critics.  It was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that El Greco came to be regarded as a great artist.

The two paintings in the museum are good examples of his style.  The dramatic, swirling skies, the elongated figures, and the acidic colors are all traits of his work.

As we move out of the pandemic, and schools are once again able to take field trips to the museum, the two El Grecos will be there for students to view.