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El Greco
(Dominikos Theotokopoulos)
(1541-1614)
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Details of his early life and training are sketchy, but he probably first studied painting in his native city. Although no works from his first years survive, they were probably painted in the late Byzantine style popular in Crete at the time. Reminiscences of this style are seen in his later work. He was an erudite man, whose taste for classical and contemporaneous literature seems to have developed in his youth.
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Early Work in Venice and Rome He was employed in the workshop of Titian and was also strongly influenced by Tintoretto, both masters of the High Renaissance. Such early Venetian paintings as his "Christ Healing the Blind Man", demonstrate his assimilation of Titianesque color and of Tintoretto's figural compositions and use of deep spatial recesses.
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Further Italian inspiration came during the years El Greco spent in Rome, from 1570 to 1576. The sculptural qualities of the work of Italian artist Michelangelo inspired him, as is evident in his Pietŕ, and Purification of the Temple A study of Roman architecture also reinforced the stability of his compositions, which often include views of Roman Renaissance buildings.
| Move to Spain In Rome he met several Spaniards associated with the church in Toledo, who may have persuaded him to come to Spain. In 1576 he left Italy and, after a brief sojourn in Malta, arrived in Toledo in the spring of 1577. He quickly began work on his first Spanish commission, producing for the Church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo the sumptuous Assumption of the Virgin (1577, Art Institute of Chicago), a painting that marks a turning point in his art.
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Although compositionally based on Titian's Assumption
(1516-1518) in Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice, the colors and spatial
relationships are less Italianate.
A move toward non normative colors, groupings, and figural proportions became more marked in El Greco's art with each successive phase.
El Greco was anxious to be given the commission to fresco the walls of the newly built royal monastery-palace of El Escorial near Madrid, completed in 1582. He submitted several paintings to King Philip II for approval but was denied the commission. One of these, The Triumph of the Holy League (The Dream of Philip II, 1578-1579, versions in El Escorial and in the National Gallery, London), proves his ability to combine complex political iconography with medieval motifs. |
El Greco also worked for Toledo Cathedral: The Disrobing of Christ (1577-1579) for the sacristy presents a splendid image of Christ in a rich red garment, closely surrounded by his captors. The work caused the first of several lawsuits brought by the artist against his patrons, who objected to its high price.
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Greece 1965. Disrobed Christ
Spain 1961. Idem
Greece 1965. Concert of the Angels
| Emergence As a Spanish Master In 1586 El Greco painted one of his greatest masterpieces, The Burial of Count Orgaz, for the Church of Santo Tomé in Toledo. This work, still in place, portrays a 14th-century Toledan nobleman laid in his grave (in actuality situated just below the painting) by Saints Stephen and Augustine. Above, the count's soul rises to a heaven densely populated with angels, saints, and contemporary political figures. The Burial also manifests El Greco's typical elongation of figures and a horror vacui (dread of unfilled spaces), features of his art that became more pronounced in later years.
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These characteristics may be associated with international mannerism, which is still evident in the art of El Greco sometime after it had ceased to be widely popular in European painting. El Greco's intensely personal vision was rooted in his highly cultivated spirituality. Indeed, there is present in his canvases a mystical atmosphere similar to that evoked in the writings of such contemporaneous Spanish mystics as Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross, although no evidence exists that El Greco had any personal contact with them.
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Toledo
El Greco was a prosperous man. He had a large house in Toledo, where he
received members of the nobility and the intellectual elite, such as the poets
Luis de Gongora and Fray Hortensio Felix de Paravicino,
whose portrait, painted by El Greco from 1609 to 1610, is now in the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston. El Greco also painted views of the city of Toledo itself,
such as View
of Toledo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, even
though landscape was a genre traditionally neglected by Spanish artists.
"View of Toledo" is El Greco's only surviving landscape
painting.
The city of Toledo, which is over 18 centuries old, stands on top of a granite hill surrounded on three sides by the gorge of the River Tagus. Successively, this ancient city was a Roman town, the capital of the Visigothic kingdom, a stronghold during the emirate of Cordoba and an imperial city in the times of Carlos V. Toledo is the keeper of more than two millennia of history. Its masterpieces are the product of heterogeneous civilizations in an environment where the existence of three major religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - was a major factor. This tolerant cohabitation, which lasted into the Middle Ages, was to leave a profound mark.
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The very design of Toledo is proof in itself of the selfsame plurality that came to manifest itself in the layout of streets and quarters, with its respect for Jewish and Islamic tradition, and in the architecture, Mudejar art in particular, which is a subtle synthesis of the styles, contributions and needs of the three religious communities.
While Toledo lost its title of capital in 1561, this actually made it possible for the historical heritage of so many centuries of splendour to be conserved almost intact within the city walls. In 1986, it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Do have a close look at the UN-stamp with a panoramic view of the city, and El Greco's painting. It is amazing to notice the same city, yet with some hundred years of interval between El Greco's painting and the city of our time.
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Later Paintings "Baptism of Christ" (signed in Greek, as was the artist's custom), and Adoration of the Shepherds, both in the Prado, seem to pulsate with an eerie light generated by the holy figures themselves. In addition, the Adoration figures are enveloped by a steamy haze, observable in other late works, which intensifies the mystical nature of the event. |
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Equatorial Guinea 1976. "Baptism of Christ".
Spain 1961. Idem.
The below paintings, issued by Bulgaria 1991, are all painted within the latest 25 years of El Greco's life, in the period from 1590 and until his death in 1614.
Christ Carrying the Cross |
The Holy Family |
St. John the Evangelist and |
St. Andrew and St. Francis |
Holy Family |
 Virgin Mary (detail) |
Cardinal Nino de Guevara |
Subjects of classical mythology, such as the Laocoon, attest to El Greco's humanistic learning and his brilliantly personal and novel approach to traditional themes. Laocoon, in Greek mythology, priest of Apollo, god of the sun, or of Poseidon, god of the sea.
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In the last year of the Trojan War, the Greeks prepared a giant wooden horse, which they pretended was a votive offering to the goddess Athena, but which was in reality a hiding place for Greek soldiers.
Laocoon, fearing a ruse, vainly urged the Trojan leaders to destroy the gift, warning “I fear the Greeks even when they come bearing gifts.” While the people were trying to decide if they should risk bringing the horse inside the city walls for the sake of the favorable omens supposedly connected with it, Poseidon, the divinity most bitter toward Troy, sent two fearful sea serpents swimming to the land. |
| Advancing straight to the spot where Laocoon stood with his two sons, the serpents wrapped their coils around the children.
Laocoon struggled to tear them away, but they overpowered him and strangled him and his sons. The Trojans, convinced that this was a signal from heaven to ignore Laocoon's advice, brought the horse within the city walls and thus directly contributed to their own destruction.
The most famous literary interpretation of the Laocoon legend is in Virgil's Aeneid. The most famous representation in art is a marble sculpture of the priest and his sons being crushed in the coils of the serpents; this group, known simply as Laocoon dates from the 1st century bc, and is now in the Vatican in Rome. |
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El Greco died in Toledo on April 7, 1614, and he was buried there in Santo Domingo el Antiguo, for which church he executed his first Spanish commission "The Assumption of the Virgin" (1577).
Sources and links:
Microsoft Encarta 2002.
E.H. Gombrich: "The Story of the Art" (Danish edition, ISBN 87-01-79921-5).
Museum of Metropolitan Art, New York (Toledo-painting).
About Goya (on this site).
About Velázquez (on this site).
Other Renaissance Artists on this site:
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| Revised 24-jul-2006. Ann Mette Heindorff Copyright © 1999-2007. All Rights Reserved |
