Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago, established in 1879 in the heart of downtown Chicago's Grant Park, is one of the oldest and most renowned cultural institutions in the Americas. Welcoming millions of visitors annually, the museum is celebrated for its encyclopedic curatorial excellence, monumental public galleries, and distinguished research library, serving as a beacon of artistic heritage and scholarly preservation.

The museum houses an exceptional collection of European religious art, particularly rich in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque sacred masterpieces that trace the spiritual and theological vision of Western Christendom. Among its crowning Catholic treasures is El Greco's majestic altarpiece, The Assumption of the Virgin (1577–1579), painted for the high altar of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo—a towering tour de force of Counter-Reformation spirituality. The collection also preserves Francisco de Zurbarán's haunting and meditative The Crucifixion (1627), Lucas Cranach the Elder's dramatic Passion scenes, and intimate devotional panels of the Madonna and Child by Netherlandish, Italian, and Spanish masters.

Under its open-access policy, the Art Institute of Chicago freely provides digital reproductions of its public-domain treasures, making these transcendent works of sacred Catholic painting accessible to the faithful and art lovers across the globe.