EL GRECO From Italy to Toledo

X-RAY IMAGE

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The artist divided the composition into two parts: an upper and a lower register, clearly differentiating between the human and divine realms. Although both are very illuminating, we will focus on the upper register as it contains the most important figures in the composition and the X-ray of this part revealed a greater number of remarkable details.
The technical quality of this work is magnificent, the culmination of a lifetime of work that could only have been produced by a true master of painting. The figures are drawn with tremendous freedom and all the elements were composed with loose brushstrokes, but always after outlining the figures to avoid straying from the original layout. The marked contrasts we see in the X-ray image are a product of the artist’s bold, generous use of paint. Shadows and highlights are sharply defined, and the midtones give way to an intense battle between dark and light colours, using copious amounts of X-ray absorbent materials like white lead.
The X-rays reveal that the painting’s condition is stable, although there are isolated paint losses in different parts of the picture, particularly along the edges.