[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/vatican-el-greco-restored-scaled_720.jpg?w=720″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Vatican has announced the discovery of a newly identified painting by Mannerist painter El Greco, Artnet News<\/em> reports. Titled The Redeemer<\/em> and dating to the late 1500s, the piece was uncovered by restorers Alessandra Zarelli\u00a0and Paolo Violini. While conserving the work, they realized that an unknown artist had overpainted the original.<\/p>\n \n\tA small oil painting on board, The Redeemer<\/em> was donated to Pope Paul VI by Spanish official Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda S\u00e1nchez de Munia\u00edn Gil in 1967 and hung in the Pope\u2019s apartment at the Apostolic Palace. \u201cSince its arrival in the Vatican, the work had never undergone restoration or scientific studies,\u201d Zarelli\u00a0told Artnet News<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tOnce the overpainted layers had been removed, the conservation team verified the painting as a genuine El Greco. \u201cAll the data, compared with that of other paintings by the artist, confirmed that the work was entirely authentic,\u201d Zarelli and the team\u2019s director\u00a0Fabio Morresi\u00a0wrote in press materials.<\/p>\n \n\tAs further proof of the painting\u2019s authenticity, high-resolution imaging revealed two underlying compositions related to extant El Grecos: one to his Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Lawrence<\/em>\u00a0(ca. 1580), and another to Saint Dominic in Adoration of the Crucifix<\/em>\u00a0(ca. 1590). Together, they provide insight into the artist\u2019s working methods. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe restored work is currently on view in the exhibition \u201cEl Greco in the Mirror: Two Paintings in Dialogue\u201d at the Pontifical Villa of Castel Gandolfo, along with a painting of Saint Francis done by artist 20 years earlier. According to a press release for the exhibition, The Redeemer<\/em> was attributed as early as 1970 to El Greco. It is now presumed to have been remade in the 1960s amid increased demand for the artist\u2019s works, perhaps by a forger with access to a deteriorating and unfinished original. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/el-greco-painting-newly-identified-vatican-1234777674\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/vatican-el-greco-restored-scaled_720.jpg?w=720″] The Vatican has announced the discovery of a newly identified painting by Mannerist painter El Greco, Artnet News reports. Titled The Redeemer and dating to the late 1500s, the piece was uncovered by restorers Alessandra Zarelli\u00a0and Paolo Violini. While conserving the work, they realized that an unknown artist had overpainted the original. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1830893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1830893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1830893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1830893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1830893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}