For the first time in Milan, a large and unprecedented exhibition project dedicated to the great painter known as El Greco: from Wednesday 11 October 2023 to Sunday 11 February 2024 the spaces on the First Floor of Palazzo Reale will host the unprecedented exhibition project El Greco curated by Juan Antonio García Castro, Palma Martínez - Burgos García and Thomas Clement Salomon.

The exhibition, which boasts prestigious international loans, is an opportunity to present the work of the Cretan artist in the light of the latest research on his work: El Greco in fact proposes a profound and innovative historical-critical reflection, whose strong points are constituted from the careful reconsideration of the impact of Italian models in the artist's training and from the proposal of an interpretation of the results of the last Toledo period of El Greco's activity in terms of the conscious recovery of a broadly Byzantine compositional approach.

The exhibition itinerary is divided into sections designed to constantly keep in focus the artist's relationship with the places in which he lived to offer visitors a precise historical-biographical reconstruction with great clarity and immediacy of impact, while at the same time establishing a series of stringent comparisons with the great Roman and Venetian painting, bringing out the powerful theme of the labyrinth to underline how El Greco's life was a sort of immense Bildungsroman that took place among the cultural capitals of the Mediterranean.

For the realization of this exhibition project, major museums have loaned authentic masterpieces for this exhibition, including the famous Saint Martin and the Beggar and the Laocoön from the National Gallery in Washington, the Portrait of Jeronimo De Cevallos from the Prado Museum, the two Annunciations from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Saint John and Saint Francis from the Uffizi Galleries. Furthermore, the exhibition boasts the presence of extraordinary works from ecclesiastical institutions that arrive in Italy for the first time, such as the Martyrdom of San Sebastian in the Cathedral of Palencia, the Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple of the Church of San Ginés in Madrid and the Coronation of the Virgin of Illescas.