El Greco Painting Rediscovered In The Vatican Collection. Artsy

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Vatican Conservators Uncover an El Greco Beneath a Later Overpainting at Castel Gandolfo

A modest panel that spent decades in the Pope's residence has become the Vatican's latest art-historical surprise. The Vatican has announced that“The Redeemer” (ca. 1590–95), a small oil on wood in its collection, has been newly attributed to El Greco, the Greek-born painter and sculptor best known for his charged, elongated figures and unorthodox color.

The work is now on view at the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome's city center, in the exhibition“El Greco in the Mirror: Two Paintings in Dialogue,” which runs through June 30.

According to the Vatican, the attribution surfaced not through a dramatic rediscovery in storage, but during routine conservation. Restorers Alessandra Zarelli and Paolo Violini, working in the Vatican Museum's paintings and wooden materials restoration laboratory, began examining the panel after noting conservation issues during a standard check-up. Their investigation revealed that an unknown hand had painted a separate image of Christ over the original composition.

“Since its arrival in the Vatican, the work had never undergone restoration or scientific studies,” Zarelli said in comments reported by Artnet. With the decision to undertake a full restoration, the team was able to assess the panel's condition and study how it had been made.

Once the later paint layers were removed, high-resolution images brought further complexity into view: two additional unfinished compositions beneath the surface. The Vatican noted that these passages are reminiscent of El Greco's“Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Lawrence” (ca. 1580) and“Saint Dominic in Adoration of the Crucifix” (ca. 1590), suggesting a working object that carried multiple ideas across time.

Fabio Moressi, director of the cabinet of scientific research at the Vatican, described the restored panel in a press statement as a“true pictorial palimpsest,” arguing that its unfinished state is not a defect but a rare source of information.“Its incompleteness is not a flaw, but a source of valuable data that reveals the artist's creative process,” he said.

The painting's physical evidence also points to a life beyond the museum wall. Four small holes along the upper and lower edges indicate that the panel may once have served as a portable altarpiece, a devotional format designed for travel and private use. The Vatican compared the object's function to Federico Barocci's“Head of Christ” (ca. 1590), another intimate image of Christ made for close viewing.

“The Redeemer” has been part of the Vatican's holdings for decades. It hung in the Pope's residence in the Apostolic Palace from 1967 onward, after a Spanish official donated it to Pope Paul VI.

El Greco (born Doménikos Theotokópoulos) was born in Crete, trained in Italy, and built his career primarily in Toledo, Spain, where his singular blend of Byzantine inheritance and Italianate invention helped define the visual language of the Spanish Renaissance. The Vatican's newly attributed panel, now presented in dialogue at Castel Gandolfo, adds a fresh chapter to the artist's afterlife - and a reminder that conservation can still rewrite what institutions think they own.

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