Word: grecos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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With this purchase Niarchos, one of the richest men in the world, is well on his way toward becoming one of the world's great collectors. (His prize painting is El Greco's Pietà, for which he paid $400,000.) With town houses in Paris and Athens, a penthouse duplex in Manhattan, a mansion on Long Island, a London penthouse at Claridge's, a chateau on the French Riviera, a lush Bermuda beach residence and a 190-ft. yacht, the Creole, biggest privately owned sailing vessel in the world, Niarchos has acres of wall space, always...
Twentieth-century tastes in art have rescued from oblivion or minor status an imposing list of old masters, e.g., Italy's Piero della Francesca, Spain's El Greco, The Netherlands' Vermeer. Still least-known of the rediscovered old masters is France's 17th century Georges de La Tour (TIME, July 12, 1948), three of whose works have just been acquired by U.S. museums (see color page). The wonder seems less that such paintings are recognized as masterworks than that they were ever consigned to the attic...
...Greco. Toledo was an ideal city. Saint Theresa and St. John of the Cross were fellow citizens, and their visions made the miraculous an everyday occurrence. In such a time, Toledo found it easy to understand El Greco's inner vision, which triumphed over perspective and proportion to create his own soaring, flamelike dimensions of beauty and power...
Only in his declining years did luxury-loving El Greco's fortunes dwindle, and his regal apartments become threadbare and bleak. But in August 1612, El Greco, then 71, roused himself for a final great undertaking, the towering, 11½-ft. altarpiece, The Adoration of the Shepherds, painted to decorate his own tomb in the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. In it, the Christ Child becomes a glowing pearl, illuminating with otherworldly radiance the three adoring shepherds and St. Joseph in his blue tunic and yellow cloak. Presiding over the scene that soars heavenward like a mighty Gloria...
Five years after El Greco's death at 73, his body was moved from Santo Domingo to another church, and then all trace of it was lost. In time the currents of taste turned against El Greco. The Santo Domingo Adoration was allowed to become so begrimed under centuries of neglect that few art historians noted or reproduced it. Last year the church, hard up to finance repairs, sold it to Madrid's Prado for $55,000. It took the Prado's experts nine months to clean and restore it. Today, the Adoration hangs in a place...