El Greco icon displayed

Press, 31 October 1984, Page 4

El Greco icon displayed

NZPA-AP Athens A sixteenth century icon believed to be the earliest known work by the Cretan painter, El Greco, went on public display recently at the Museum of Byzantine Art in Athens.

The oil painting on canvas, depicting the Assumption of The Virgin Mary, is the star attraction at an exhibit of 147 rare Byzantine treasures to mark the centennial of Greece’s Society for the Archaeology of Christianity.

The exhibit, which was opened by the Greek Minister of Culture, Melina Mercouri, contains icons, sacredpaintings displayed in Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries, jewellery, lamps, and sculpture dating from the early Christian era to the sixteenth Century. The work by Domenico Theotocopoulos, as the Cretan painter was known before he emigrated to Spain and became famous in Toledo as El Greco (The Greek), was identified last

year by Greek Byzantinist George Mastoropoulos, in a church on the Aegean island of Syros. It probably was painted by El Greco for a monastery at Mount Athos in northern Greece in the 1560 s when the painter was in his early 20s and still working in his native town of Heraklion on Crete. The 63cm by 53cm painting was signed, “Domenico Theotocopoulos Deixas.’ Dejxas is the ancient Greek word for a painter.