Workshop of Doménikos Theotokopoulos, called El Greco

Following El Greco’s highly successful commission of The Disrobing of Christ, painted for the Sacristy of Toledo Cathedral in 1577, the artist enjoyed considerable demand for small-scale private devotional works. The subject of Christ Carrying the Cross was one of the most popular amongst the artist’s clientele and El Greco transformed the narrative of Christ on the Road to Calvary into a devotional one, in keeping with prevailing Counter Reformation guidelines.

In his seminal 1962 catalogue raisonné titled El Greco and his School, Harold Wethey lists ten autograph versions of the subject of Christ Carrying the Cross (some with varying degrees of workshop assistance) and a further nine workshop replicas or copies. He published the present work on the basis of an old photograph as a 17th century copy, although he subsequently revised his opinion and reclassified the work as by El Greco and his Workshop, datable to around 1590.

The best-known versions of this subject by El Greco are those in the Lehmann Collection in the Metropolitan Museum, New York and in the Museo Nacional de Arte de Catalunya, Barcelona. The design of the present work however is closest to the artist’s painting of circa 1590-95 in the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Buenos Aires.¹

The precise authorship of the present work remains the matter of some debate. The painting appears to be by an artist working in El Greco’s workshop, amongst whom the leading contender is Luis Tristán (Toledo? 1580/85 – 1624 Toledo). Recorded as an apprentice to El Greco in 1603, Tristán left Toledo for Rome (together with Ribera) in 1606 but was back in Toledo by 1613 where he would remain for the remainder of his career. The artist’s style alternated between the mannerist forms and compositional types of El Greco and the more naturalistic style of Caravaggio, the influence of which is clearly visible in many of his works following his return from Rome. There are a number of striking stylistic affinities between the present work and autograph works by Tristán, for example the artist’s painting of The Last Supper of circa 1620 today in the Museo del Prado. The distinctive treatment of Christ’s drapery, with the linear treatment of the highlights contrasting with the dark shadows of the folds, is particularly close to that of the blue robe of the Apostle seated lower right in the Prado painting, whilst the treatment of the sky is analogous to that seen through the window in the Prado painting and furthermore Tristán’s predilection for highly expressive hands (often with the two central fingers positioned together) can also be seen in The Last Supper, notably in the standing Apostle wearing red on the right of the composition.

NOTE ON PROVENANCE

As a collector, Chilean architect Carlos Alberto Cruz, founder of The Apelles Collection, has wide-ranging interests that include Colonial Silver, Twentieth-Century Photography, incunabula and manuscripts, medieval liturgical objects, and contemporary Latin American art. When, in the early 1990s, his attention was captured by Golden Age Spain in all its cultural aspects, he was one of a tiny minority of collectors looking at Spanish paintings and drawings. His activity played an important role in the increasing prominence of the Spanish Golden Age, and coincided with a growing number of international exhibitions to which he lent generously. This was a new Golden Age, one of scholarly and museological interest - outside and inside of Iberia - in the visual arts of Spain. With greater subtlety and depth than ever before, Golden Age Spanish Art occupies an increasingly prominent place in the panorama of art history and collecting. Mr Cruz recognised that in an Italo-centric art historical discourse, Spanish visual arts were somehow “other” and it was their distinctive qualities - sometimes emphatic, sometimes restrained - that merited his special interest. 

¹ See Wethey 1962, vol. II, p. 39, cat. no. 52, reproduced vol. I, fig. 176.