Madrid’s Prado Museum is hosting an unusual exhibition with only one picture in the show, Ecce Homo by Caravaggio, a masterpiece only recently accepted to be his work. It will be on display until October 13th.
The painting is on loan from its anonymous donor, believed to be a British national who lives in Spain. The painting was almost sold for €1500 at a Madrid auction in 2021, attributed to a student of a minor painter of the time. The Culture Ministry blocked the sale after hearing from Prado experts that they believed it was Caravaggio’s work, one of only about sixty known works.
The new owner, who paid €36 million for the work, has had it restored under careful control by experts using high-tech equipment to determine what its original appearance was. Painted around 1605, it was once owned by Spanish king Philip IV.
Jorge Coll, the lead of London art gallery Colnaghi which handled the sale, told the Spanish newspaper El País that the painting “is not going to end up in the home of its buyer” who wants it to join “public collections, for the moment, on loan.”
