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Purification of the Temple (c. 1600)

Purification of the Temple
El Greco - The Purification of the Temple
Artist	El Greco
Year	1600
Catalogue	1909.1.66
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	(20 5/8 in × 16 1/2 in)
Owner	The Frick Collection

During a period of major commissions and constant activity in Toledo, El Greco created a revised version of the Purification of the Temple dated to around 1600, now belonging to the Frick Collection in New York. Venturing away from his initial Italian version dated to around 1571-1576 by tightening the frame, eliminating contemporary referential portraits, incorporating a more noticeably mannerist quality and implementing a challenging palette, El Greco delivers the same message of Counter-Reformation Europe while centralizing the focus on the intensity of the scene in The Purification of the Temple.

Jonathan Brown, an El Greco scholar, writes that during the beginning of El Greco's time in Spain, he approached the Toldean market with copies of various devotional paintings such as the Purification. "...El Greco industrialized production by keeping on hand small-scale replicas of many to his compositions. Prospective clients could choose one of their liking and order a copy, executed by either the master or an assistant, depending on the price they were willing to pay." This practice of producing copies for a market explains the numerous versions in a varying style to fit the El Greco's audience's preferences and tastes.

In the Frick version of the Purification, El Greco eliminates the foreground of the temple, almost filling the entirety of the Tintoretto-inspired tiled floor with representations of the faithful to Christ's left and sinners to his right. The painting incorporates the artist's learned abilities from both Italy and Spain such as the diagonal perspective of the space and peculiar range in the color palette. El Greco incorporates two bas-reliefs that depict the themes of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise and the Sacrifice of Isaac, both Old Testament antecedents of the Purification. Rudolf Wittkower, a German-American art historian, suggests that El Greco may have regarded the Purification subjects as direct links to the Counter-Reformation: "as Christ drove the sinners from the temple, so Christ's church was purging itself of heresy." Through the use of an experimental color palette, elongated, neo-mannerist figures, and direct spiritual reference, El Greco illustrates the theme of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in a concentrated, energetic fashion with strictly Biblical ties.

It is alluded to that El Greco's elongated figures were inspired by and representative of Toledo's attraction to contemporary spiritual reform and mystical writings. Sixteenth and seventeenth century citizens of Toledo were particularly interested in seeking out spiritual life and direct connection with God. Eramus, a Dutch Renaissance priest, was a major player in the advocacy of this lifestyle, endorsing prayer and knowledge as a way towards mystical union with God. There are records of the contents of El Greco's personal library that lead back to Eramus' teachings via the writings of mystical figures, martyrs, and saints such as the early Fathers Chrysostom, Basil, and Justin Martyr. This interest and possible connection with mysticism possibly provides an explanation for El Greco's sudden adaptation of ethereal figures and use of color during his time in Spain. El Greco's religious narrative pieces, particularly the various versions of The Purification of the Temple, act as a means of response to these texts and their moralizing content in which he “expresses sympathy in the iconography,” reflection and thoughtful consideration. David Davies, an English art historian that leads the field in this theory of El Greco's mystic associations, connects the artist's inclusion of half naked women to The Virgin's Profession by Saint Jerome, a Catholic mystic: "Jesus entered into the temple and cast out those things which were not of the temple. For God is jealous, and He does not allow His Father's house to be made a den of robbers. Where money is counted, where there are pens of doves for sale, where simplicity is slain, where a virgin's breast is disturbed by thoughts of worldly business...

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (c. 1600) National Gallery, London

Purification of the Temple (c. 1612-1614) Madrid, San Gines.

The Frick Collection's version of the Purification of the Temple exists as one of the numerous copies of this theme attributed to El Greco. One of the versions most closely related to the Frick Collection's Purification is Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple now in the National Gallery in London. Through subtle reworking of setting, slight shift in color palette, and resizing of the canvas, El Greco uses nearly identical forms to direct attention to the importance of the dynamic narrative. In the National Gallery's version of the Purification theme, a stark white highlight across Christ's deep, wine-colored mantle fills up half of Christ's body next to dark, depression in the cloth with a nearly-white face, hands and feet peeking out. Energetic bodies highly contrast against a flat, brown-colored representation of a tiled floor Departing further from these two paintings is the last known copy of the Purification theme, El Greco's Purification of the Temple from around 1612-1614, now in Madrid. In this variation, the setting changes completely, looking closer to the inside of a contemporaneous cathedral. The figures in this work are far more elongated and the palette is even more bleached out than the other two, illustrating the artist's further developed style.