• A newly identified El Greco painting surfaced in the Vatican after restorers removed a later forgery.
• Scientific analysis confirmed The Redeemer dates to the 1590s, revealing El Greco’s original composition beneath overpainting.
• The rediscovered work now appears alongside another El Greco in a Vatican exhibition at Castel Gandolfo.

This weekend, the Vatican revealed a newly discovered painting by master Mannerist El Greco, long hidden underneath a forgery. This small work of oil on board, titled The Redeemer (c. 1590–95), turned up in the Pope’s home. The newfound relic features in a two-artwork exhibition titled “El Greco in the Mirror: Two Paintings in Dialogue,” now open at the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, 17 miles southeast of the Catholic city-state.

The Redeemer ended up with the Holy See courtesy of José María Sánchez de Muniaín Gil, a Spanish official, aesthetics professor, and author who donated the work to Pope Paul VI in 1967. For decades, it hung in the Hall of Ambassadors, amid the Pope’s apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace.

“Since its arrival in the Vatican, the work had never undergone restoration or scientific studies,” restorer Alessandra Zarelli told me in a statement provided via email. “Having therefore noted some conservation problems during a routine check-up, it was decided to carry out a complete restoration to verify its general state of preservation and study its execution technique.”

Upon closer inspection, Zarelli and her colleague Paolo Violini realized that an unknown forger had obscured the painting’s original Christ figure with their own rendition.

The Redeemer before restoration. Photo courtesy of Musei Vaticani

Once the overpainting was removed, the restoration crew was able to recover El Greco’s original layers. “All the data, compared with that of other paintings by the artist, confirmed that the work was entirely authentic,” Zarelli and the team’s director Fabio Morresi wrote in press materials. Vatican curator Fabrizio Biferali, who organized “El Greco in the Mirror,” emphasized that “The Vatican Redeemer should be considered in relation to three other versions of the subject conceived by El Greco at the end of the 16th century.” These include examples at Národní Galerie in Prague, the McNay Art Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and the Museo San Telmo in San Sebastián, Spain.

Using high-resolution imaging, experts also found two more discarded compositions beneath The Redeemer—one echoing Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Lawrence (c. 1580), and another evoking Saint Dominic in Adoration of the Crucifix (c. 1590).

Like this, The Redeemer offers a window into El Greco’s working process. Four small holes along the work’s top and bottom edges suggest it served as “a sort of portable altarpiece,” Biferali noted. All things considered, the crew reckons El Greco painted The Redeemer between 1590 and 1595, more than a decade after leaving Italy for Spain.

El Greco, Saint Francis (c. 1570) Photo courtesy of the A. and M.A. Pagliara Foundation of the Suor Orsola Benincasa University

Now, the newly surfaced and restored El Greco is facing off with a tempera painting of St. Francis of Assisi that the master icon-maker created some 20 years prior, shortly after arriving in Rome. Together, they honor both Pope Leo XIV and Saint Francis—on the 800th anniversary of his death—while demonstrating El Greco’s stylistic evolution, which paved the way for modern painting.