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| El Greco St. Ildefonso c. 1603-14 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
El Greco's St. Ildefonso (above) was an object of interest more than once in the story of the great American plundering of Spanish pictures that took place from monasteries and churches and impoverished nobility at the beginning of the 20th century. Louisine Havemeyer (1855-1929) in her art-collecting memoir Sixteen to Sixty describes seeing the St. Ildefonso in 1909 on a picture-buying trip to Spain with her daughter Electra, but failing in her attempt to buy it. She belonged to the first wave of Americans armed with potent dollars and a pioneer's determination to take home Spanish masterpieces. In the process they bought many studio copies, many misattributions and many outright fakes, but they inevitably did also buy some of those masterpieces they sought. The next wave of economic predators would include Andrew Mellon. He succeeded in obtaining the St. Ildefonso that Mrs. Havemeyer missed. In 1937 he gave it to the National Gallery in Washington DC.
The paintings below escaped appropriation and remained in Spain. They now hang together at the Prado.
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| El Greco Adoration of the Shepherds c. 1612-14 Prado |
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| El Greco Nobleman with Hand on his Chest c. 1580 Prado |
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| El Greco Portrait of a Young Man c. 1600-05 Prado |
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| El Greco Portrait of an Old Gentleman c. 1587-1600 Prado |
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| El Greco & workshop The Holy Visage on Veronica's Veil c. 1586-95 Prado |
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| El Greco St. John the Evangelist & St. John the Baptist c. 1600-10 Prado |
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| El Greco St. John the Evangelist c. 1605 Prado |
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| El Greco The Trinity 1577-79 Prado |
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| El Greco Madonna & Child with Angels, St. Martin & St. Agnes c. 1597-99 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
Encountering the tall altarpiece above in Washington DC was an important El Greco moment for me. I had first seen some of this artist's extravagant vibrating paintings as a teenager at the Art Institute in Chicago. In my memory, those paintings were preserved mostly as lightning bolts of color. More than a decade passed before I first saw the Washington picture. It was the cloak of St. Agnes at lower right that recalled my teenage self to me then, like a technicolor madeleine – crimson against magenta against orange – with pale pink highlights.
In Madrid two statues survive, each about eighteen inches tall, representing the nude figures of Epimetheus and Pandora. Curators at the Prado do not claim to know for certain why El Greco made these statues, but suggest they might either have been used in the studio as models or in the artist's house as ornaments.
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| El Greco Wooden Sculpture of Epimetheus c. 1600-1610 Prado |
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| El Greco Wooden Sculpture of Pandora c. 1600-1610 Prado |