Diego Velázquez, "Virgin of the Immaculate Conception". Courtesy of the National Gallery, London.

The Nasher Museum is proud to announce an old master exhibition that is perhaps the most important of its kind ever shown in the Southeast, if not the entire United States. "El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III," organized in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will be on view August 21, 2008, through November 9, 2008.

The show will position the works of two of the world's greatest painters - El Greco and Velázquez - within the context of the art of their time, the dawn of the Golden Age in Spain. The American public will encounter for the first time exceptional works by lesser known but accomplished artists who knew them and worked alongside them, including Juan Bautista Maino, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Luis Tristán and Gregorio Fernández. More than 100 paintings, sculptures and decorative arts will be on view, including seven works by El Greco, three by Velázquez, two by Jusepe de Ribera and one large work by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, painted during his 1603 diplomatic mission to Spain. Important loans will come from museums in Spain and five other countries; some works are traveling for the first time.

"El Greco to Velázquez" will gather the best examples of art made during the 23-year reign of King Philip III of Spain (1598-1621). The exhibition is the culmination of 20 years of research by Sarah Schroth, the Nasher Museum's senior curator, and will bring about a complete reevaluation of this chapter in art history. The show will highlight the splendid masterpieces by Spanish artists who created a new visual language that addressed and expressed the political, social and religious demands of their time and echoed the innovations of their literary counterparts, Miguel Cervantes, Luis de Góngora y Argote and others.

Under the young King Philip III, this was the era of the birth of naturalism in Spanish art. The earliest still lives were created, polychrome sculpture became more realistic and new, more naturalistic light effects were used. In sharp contrast to the austere style of art favored by his father, Philip II, portraiture during the reign of Philip III became more ostentatious. Concurrently, representations of sacred figures were humanized and brought down to earth.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 250-page catalogue that will be published and distributed by MFA Publications, a division of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and available at the Nasher Museum Store.

This exhibition is co-curated by Ronni Baer, the Mrs. Russell W. Baker Senior Curator of European Paintings at the MFA, Boston, and Sarah Schroth, the Nancy Hanks Senior Curator at the Nasher Museum. It will be on view at the MFA, Boston, from April 20 through July 27, 2008.

Tickets will go on sale June 1.

El Greco, St. James (Santiago el Mayor), about 1610-14. Oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 31 5/8 inches. Museo de El Greco, Toledo.