A portrait of a man in black with a white ruff, offered in Christie’s New York Old Masters sale on 2 June 2026, demonstrates how a single painting can produce opposing conclusions even after technical study. The auction house catalogued the 53 by 43.2 centimetre canvas as ‘attributed to El Greco’. Offered with a revised estimate of $500,000–$700,000, it sold at a $500,000 hammer price, roughly $635,000 with buyer’s premium.nnThe composition closely follows the male portrait type El Greco developed after settling in Toledo in 1577: a deep neutral background, sober black clothing, a white collar framing the face and an alert gaze directed toward the viewer.
Supporters of the attribution point to the face built in fine, dry touches over a reddish-brown ground and to the individually flickering hairs of the beard. Infrared reflectography also reveals a pentiment at the ear and assured original handling around the eyes, nose and mouth.nnThe painting’s history complicates that reading. When it belonged to the restorer John Brealey, a photograph sent in 1970 to Prado director Xavier de Salas showed a chain and pendant later determined to be additions.
Judging from the photograph alone, Salas concluded that the work was not by El Greco and might be heavily restored or forged; José Álvarez Lopera also filed the photograph among rejected works. The chain was removed in a subsequent treatment, although losses and reconstruction remain visible around the lips and ear.nnCurrent opinion remains divided. Prado specialist Leticia Ruiz Gómez examined the painting alongside its X-ray and infrared images and still rejects the attribution, intending to include it among rejected works in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné.
Keith Christiansen and Guillaume Kientz, however, inspected the same evidence and consider it autograph, proposing dates between the late 1570s and the 1580s. The sale therefore does not settle authorship; it marks another stage in a case shaped by documentation, surface history, imaging and expert judgement.
