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On this day in
1830 Albert Bierstadt, American painter of grandiose scenes of the American West, was born.
1899 Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc Paris, composer and pianist, was born
1986 died Juan Rulfo, Mexican novelist, short story writer, and photographer
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Exhibition in Boston: El Greco to Velázquez
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| Tuesday, May 20, 2008 |
The vibrant age that served as a backdrop both for the end of El Greco’s brilliant career and the beginning of Velázquez’s is the focal point of the groundbreaking exhibition, El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III, which debuted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) on April 20 and runs through July 27. The exhibition will shed new light on this little known period of 23 years (1598–1621) during which Philip III ruled Spain.
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Annunciation, El Greco, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid |
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Featured are more than 60 paintings, among them 11 works by El Greco and seven by Velázquez, including two masterpieces from the MFA’s own collection, El Greco’s Portrait of Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino (1609) and Velázquez’s Luis de Góngora y Argote (1622).
El Greco to Velázquez is curated by the MFA’s Ronni Baer (William and Ann Elfers Senior Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe) and the Nasher’s Sarah Schroth (Nancy Hanks Senior Curator) and offers an in-depth study of Spain’s art in the context of the political, religious, and social history in a period bookended by the strikingly original late style of El Greco and the emergent naturalism in the work of the young Velázquez. It focuses not only on the achievements of Spain’s greatest painters, but also introduces to the American public outstanding works by lesser-known yet highly accomplished artists, among them: Juan Bautista Maino, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Luis Tristán, and Gregorio Fernández.
El Greco to Velázquez offers a re-evaluation of the importance of the reign of Philip III to the history of art. To achieve this, the exhibition is divided into thematic sections: Late El Greco, Portraiture, Religion and the Court, Still Life and the Bodegón, and the Duke of Lerma’s camarín.
The Immaculate Conception, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, The National Gallery, London |
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Highlights:
El Greco (“The Greek”) was the Cretan-born artist Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541–1614) who, after working for many years in Italy, moved in 1577 to Toledo, Spain. In the last 16 years of his life, El Greco’s works became more intensely spiritual, even mystical, with strange shapes and acid colors filling his monumental canvases, as in View of Toledo (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Laocoön (around 1610–14, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
Further Information
El Greco to Velázquez |
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