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Lot Essay
Doménikos Theotokópoulos was born at Candia, on the island of Crete in 1541. His brother, Manusso, was in the service of Venice, which still held the island. As early as 1563, Theotokópoulos was recognised as one of the most notable painters at Candia, where he is last documented on 5 November 1566. He is first securely documented in Venice on 18 August 1568. It is likely that he was the 'molto valente giovane mio discepolo' referred to in a letter of the previous December from Titian to King Philip II of Spain. In Venice, the painter familiarised himself not only with the work of Titian, but also with that of his major contemporaries, Tintoretto, Veronese and Bassano, among others, and engraved sources (for the latter, see G. Dillon, 'El Greco e l'incisione veneta', in El Greco in Crete, 1990, pp. 229-49). In November 1570 'un giovane Candiotto discepolo di Titiano' is recorded as a recent arrival in Rome, and two years later he was registered at the Accademia di San Luca. Waterhouse was the first to recognise that after this formative sojourn in Rome, the painter must have returned to Venice: by June 1576 he was established at Toledo, the adopted city he was in posterity's eye to make so much of his own, and where he would die in 1614.
This exceptional panel was first linked, albeit cautiously, with El Greco by Cossio in 1908, when the artist had not yet been the subject of serious scrutiny. Subsequent critics have been unanimous in accepting the attribution to the Cretan. Mayer (1926) proposed a dating of 1572-3. Waterhouse (1930) suggested circa 1570, while Soria (1954) believed the picture to be marginally later, of circa 1572-6, and Guidol advanced an earlier dating ante 1570. Aznar's suggestion that the picture was painted in Crete can be discounted, and Wethey's dating, circa 1565-70, is also evidently too early. Pallucchini, in the 1981 exhibition catalogue, remarks that Mayer's chronology remains 'la più accettabile', regarding the picture as of the period of El Greco's return from Rome to Venice before his final departure for Spain in 1576, and agreed with Soria's suggestion that it was the first work of the painter's second Venetian sojourn.
Wethey described this as a 'small masterpiece', commenting on the individuality of the composition and on the distinction of its colours which 'combine to produce a jewel-like work of great sensitivity' (op. cit, I, p. 21), and implies that in this, as in the Zuloaga Stigmatisation of Saint Francis and the background of the Naples Giulio Clovio, El Greco's 'enthusiasm for landscape manifested itself early'. He observed (ibid., II, p. 57) that Tintoretto's is the predominant influence in the poetic mood of the landscape, in the palm and the figural types; and senses in the 'bulkiness of the animal' a 'slightly humorous touch'. Pallucchini (1981) wrote 'la tavoletta si charatterizza per una sua vibrante espressività pittorica, sia per l'apertura paesistica...' and comments that 'le figure sembrano liberate da ogni senso di gravità'.
The iconography of the picture is, indeed, strikingly original. Saint Joseph pauses on a footbridge, straining at the leading rein to encourage the recalcitrant donkey bearing the Madonna and Child to turn across the bridge. The subject was one that had exercised Bassano - to whom the panel was wrongly attributed when in the Carpio collection - and other artists: there is indeed an instructive contrast with the background of Bordon's Rest on the Flight, lot 83 of this sale, in which Saint Joseph seems to cajole his donkey to ford the stream. But El Greco's interpretation is wholly personal. Not the least extraordinary aspect of the picture is the way that the composition defies its small dimensions: the eye runs from the footbridge to the bare landscape, punctuated by the trees that frame the Virgin and the donkey on the right, and by the two saplings that flank the setting sun. The diagonals of the bridge and of the donkey's reign with the vertical of Saint Joseph's staff are the only straight lines in what is an extraordinarily fluid design, which nonetheless is given some architectonic stability by the way the cloud above seems to echo the form of Saint Joseph.
The 7th Marqués del Carpio, who was Viceroy of Naples in 1682-7, owned an exceptional collection of pictures and other works of art. Much of this was inherited from his father, the 6th Marqués del Carpio, nephew of the Conde-Duque de Olivares, who acquired works by Correggio, the great Venetians and other celebrated artists: but the 7th Marqués acquired such masterpieces as Velasquez' Rokeby Venus (London, National Gallery). The 1687 inventory includes other outstanding works, many of which, including the Raphael tondo now at Washington, were like this panel to pass to the Alba family.
Aznar published (1970, I, p. 76, fig. 43) a reversed replica on canvas in a Madrid private collection which he considered to be autograph, but which has not been accepted by subsequent scholars.
This exceptional panel was first linked, albeit cautiously, with El Greco by Cossio in 1908, when the artist had not yet been the subject of serious scrutiny. Subsequent critics have been unanimous in accepting the attribution to the Cretan. Mayer (1926) proposed a dating of 1572-3. Waterhouse (1930) suggested circa 1570, while Soria (1954) believed the picture to be marginally later, of circa 1572-6, and Guidol advanced an earlier dating ante 1570. Aznar's suggestion that the picture was painted in Crete can be discounted, and Wethey's dating, circa 1565-70, is also evidently too early. Pallucchini, in the 1981 exhibition catalogue, remarks that Mayer's chronology remains 'la più accettabile', regarding the picture as of the period of El Greco's return from Rome to Venice before his final departure for Spain in 1576, and agreed with Soria's suggestion that it was the first work of the painter's second Venetian sojourn.
Wethey described this as a 'small masterpiece', commenting on the individuality of the composition and on the distinction of its colours which 'combine to produce a jewel-like work of great sensitivity' (op. cit, I, p. 21), and implies that in this, as in the Zuloaga Stigmatisation of Saint Francis and the background of the Naples Giulio Clovio, El Greco's 'enthusiasm for landscape manifested itself early'. He observed (ibid., II, p. 57) that Tintoretto's is the predominant influence in the poetic mood of the landscape, in the palm and the figural types; and senses in the 'bulkiness of the animal' a 'slightly humorous touch'. Pallucchini (1981) wrote 'la tavoletta si charatterizza per una sua vibrante espressività pittorica, sia per l'apertura paesistica...' and comments that 'le figure sembrano liberate da ogni senso di gravità'.
The iconography of the picture is, indeed, strikingly original. Saint Joseph pauses on a footbridge, straining at the leading rein to encourage the recalcitrant donkey bearing the Madonna and Child to turn across the bridge. The subject was one that had exercised Bassano - to whom the panel was wrongly attributed when in the Carpio collection - and other artists: there is indeed an instructive contrast with the background of Bordon's Rest on the Flight, lot 83 of this sale, in which Saint Joseph seems to cajole his donkey to ford the stream. But El Greco's interpretation is wholly personal. Not the least extraordinary aspect of the picture is the way that the composition defies its small dimensions: the eye runs from the footbridge to the bare landscape, punctuated by the trees that frame the Virgin and the donkey on the right, and by the two saplings that flank the setting sun. The diagonals of the bridge and of the donkey's reign with the vertical of Saint Joseph's staff are the only straight lines in what is an extraordinarily fluid design, which nonetheless is given some architectonic stability by the way the cloud above seems to echo the form of Saint Joseph.
The 7th Marqués del Carpio, who was Viceroy of Naples in 1682-7, owned an exceptional collection of pictures and other works of art. Much of this was inherited from his father, the 6th Marqués del Carpio, nephew of the Conde-Duque de Olivares, who acquired works by Correggio, the great Venetians and other celebrated artists: but the 7th Marqués acquired such masterpieces as Velasquez' Rokeby Venus (London, National Gallery). The 1687 inventory includes other outstanding works, many of which, including the Raphael tondo now at Washington, were like this panel to pass to the Alba family.
Aznar published (1970, I, p. 76, fig. 43) a reversed replica on canvas in a Madrid private collection which he considered to be autograph, but which has not been accepted by subsequent scholars.