Overview
- A team of Peruvian specialists has presented a multidisciplinary investigation that attributes the painting titled 'Meditación y estigmatización de San Francisco de Asís' to El Greco and will show the research at the Museo Convento San Francisco in Lima.
- Researchers used reflectography, ultraviolet fluorescence and chemical and biological analysis to show the work was painted directly on the support without a preparatory drawing and that brushwork matches an 'en prima' approach associated with El Greco.
- The painting combines two scenes of St Francis—meditation in the foreground and the saint receiving the stigmata in the background—a compositional detail that drew attention when the work was first shown in Lima in September 2024.
- Investigators reported a tiny inscription on the edge of a painted Bible that they say ties the image to the artist; one account reads the letters as 'Doménicos' while a separate philological reading identified an Arabic-derived sequence in the same micro-inscription.
- The team says the work will undergo further conservation and scholarly review, and the claim is likely to prompt wider provenance research and comparison with El Greco material in European collections.