The Vatican has announced the discovery of a newly identified painting by Mannerist painter El Greco, Artnet News reports. Titled The Redeemer and dating to the late 1500s, the piece was uncovered by restorers Alessandra Zarelli and Paolo Violini. While conserving the work, they realized that an unknown artist had overpainted the original.
A small oil painting on board, The Redeemer was donated to Pope Paul VI by Spanish official José María Sánchez de Muniaín Gil in 1967 and hung in the Pope’s apartment at the Apostolic Palace. “Since its arrival in the Vatican, the work had never undergone restoration or scientific studies,” Zarelli told Artnet News.
Once the overpainted layers had been removed, the conservation team verified the painting as a genuine El Greco. “All the data, compared with that of other paintings by the artist, confirmed that the work was entirely authentic,” Zarelli and the team’s director Fabio Morresi wrote in press materials.
As further proof of the painting’s authenticity, high-resolution imaging revealed two underlying compositions related to extant El Grecos: one to his Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Lawrence (ca. 1580), and another to Saint Dominic in Adoration of the Crucifix (ca. 1590). Together, they provide insight into the artist’s working methods.
The restored work is currently on view in the exhibition “El Greco in the Mirror: Two Paintings in Dialogue” at the Pontifical Villa of Castel Gandolfo, along with a painting of Saint Francis done by artist 20 years earlier. According to a press release for the exhibition, The Redeemer was attributed as early as 1970 to El Greco. It is now presumed to have been remade in the 1960s amid increased demand for the artist’s works, perhaps by a forger with access to a deteriorating and unfinished original.
