El Greco y el punto de vista: la capilla Ovalle de Toledo

Abstract

The Chapel of Isabel de Ovalle, in St Vincent Martyr's parish of Toledo is one of the last works of El Greco in which he had to make the project of the altar-piece and paint the canvases and the decoration according to the architectural structure of the parochial chapel. New documents -identifying the subject matter of the main-canvas as an Inmaculate Conception instead an "Assumption" as thought earlier- and the architectural plans of the church and chapel allowed us to make a new approach to such work; a work in which reappears the problem of the altar-piece's location in relation with the peculiar conception of the painter about "the point of view (or viewing)" of a work of art. The analysis of all this material allowed us to study it and discuss about this central problem of the theory and practice of art in Europe in the XVI century; a central problem connected with such a subject as perspective, architecture, and optimal perception of a work of art.