Forgotten El Greco masterpiece at Warsaw’s Royal Castle
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
16.09.2014 11:31
‘The Ecstasy of St Francis’, painted around 1580 by the Renaissance master El Greco has been put on display at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Siedlce El Greco (detail). Image:wikipedia
The painting is on loan from the Diocesan Museum of Siedlce, a town 90 kilometres to the east of Warsaw, where it is the gem of the museum’s collection.
The work by the Greek-born Spanish artist was discovered in 1964 by two Polish art historians, Izabela Galicka and Hanna Sygietyńska, in the rural parish of Kosow Lacki, not far from Siedlce and was hanging on a wall over a sofa in a priest’s flat.
Researchers established that it had been purchased in a Warsaw antique shop in 1927, as a gift for the priest from his parishioners.
“The painting was pierced through in its left, upper corner, re-painted in several places and its original signature was covered with a new one, attributing the work to A. van Dyck,” Father Robert Mirończuk, the director of the Diocesan Museum of Siedlce, said at the launch of the exhibition.
“It was thanks to the two women’s expert eye and intuition that it was identified as the work of El Greco,” he said.
The display of what is Poland’s only El Greco canvas begins a series of events within the ‘Single Painting Gallery’ series at the Royal Castle.
Royal Castle director, Andrzej Rottermund, has said that he would like Hans Memling’s ‘The Last Judgement’ from the collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk to be next in line.
El Greco’s ‘The Ecstasy of St Francis’ will be on display till the end of October. (mk/pg)