The German art historian Carl Justi was one of the first to locate Maíno within Caravaggio’s orbit (“It is likely that no one came as close to Caravaggio as this Spanish Dominican monk”, he wrote in 1888). The exhibition therefore includes works by Italian artists who can be related to Maíno’s years of training in Rome and his Italian roots. In addition to paintings by Caravaggio, the exhibition includes examples by Gentileschi, Reni, Saraceni, Cavarozzi, Elsheimer and Cecco de Caravaggio. Particularly notable is Caravaggio’s Ecstasy of Saint Francis, loaned by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and exhibited for the first time in Spain.

To help provide a context for Maíno’s work and in addition to the above-mentioned comparison with contemporary Italian painters, the exhibition also includes works by other contemporary Spanish painters that relate to his years in Toledo and Madrid. They include examples by El Greco, Velázquez, Tristán, Orrente, Bartolomé González, Núñez del Valle and Lanchares. Together they present a broader perspective of the significance of Maíno’s compositions within Spanish painting of the day.

The exhibition is arranged chronologically and allows for an appreciation of Maíno’s pictorial evolution through its eight thematic sections, starting with his earliest compositions for the Pastrana Altarpiece in Guadalajara. This section is followed by others on the small-format works; landscapes; the two Adorations, the Resurrection and the Pentecost for the Saint Peter Martyr Altarpiece; portraits; large-format works; saints; and finally a section on The Recapture of Bahía.