El Greco

Personal

Born Doménikos Theotokópoulos, 1541, in Candia (now Iraklion) Crete; immigrated to Spain, 1577; died April 7, 1614, in Toledo, Spain; son of Jorghi Theotokópoulos; partner of Doña Jerónima de las Cuevas; children: Jorge Manuel. Education: Studied in Venice, Italy, with Titian, 1568.

Career

Established as painter, Crete, 1566; painter in Venice, Italy, 1578-71; painter in Rome, Italy, 1571-77; painter in Toledo, Spain, 1577-1614. Major works include: El Espolio, 1577; Assumption of the Virgin, 1579; Martyrdom of St. Maurice, 1582; The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1588; View of Toledo, 1600; Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino, 1605; The Opening of the Fifth Seal, 1612. Exhibitions: Major contemporary exhibitions at National Gallery of Art, Dallas, TX, 1982; Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain, 1999; and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 2003-04. Work included in permanent collections at Museo de El Greco, Toledo, Spain; Museo del Prado; Sacristy, Cathedral of Toledo, Toledo, Spain; Escorial, Madrid; Louvre, Paris, France; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Uffizi, Florence, Italy; and Art Institute of Chicago, IL.

Member

Roman Academy of St. Luke.

Writings

Wrote widely and passionately on art theory, though none of his writings have survived.

Sidelights

El Greco "was one of the most original artists of his age," according to a critic for USA Today, reviewing a major retrospective of the artist's works staged both in New York and London between 2003 and 2004. That exhibition occasioned a critical reappraisal of the work of one of the major painters since the time of the Renaissance. The USA Today critic went on to note that El Greco was "celebrated for his highly expressive and visionary religious paintings and psychologically compelling portraits." Creating much of his work in the late sixteenth century, the painter seems, by modern standards, to be far ahead of his time. He was, according to Lucy Fisher of Time International, "the undisputed giant of 16th century Spanish art." Susan Osmond, writing in World and I, described the characteristic El Greco style: "those elongated, sinuous figures draped in stiff robes that fold like crumpled metal; skies with clouds like shredded veils lit from behind and wondrously contorted." El Greco's art was an amazing amalgam of late medieval Byzantine traditions and Italian Renaissance art which, as the USA Today reviewer further noted, was an attempt to "create an innovative and spiritually more intense relationship between viewer and image."

For art critic Peter Schjeldahl, writing in the New Yorker, "the glory and the problem of El Greco are the same: spirituality." According to Schjeldahl, "No other great artist takes this fundamental, usually ineffable aspect of experience so literally, as an open secret." Similarly, Richard Lacayo, writing in Time magazine, observed, "If it weren't for Van Gogh, who but El Greco would be our best symbol for the individual genius, the artist working in a style unlike any other of his time? All that lashing brushwork; the torqued, lunging figures; the saints stretched as tight as thunderbolts by their passion for God—if ever there was an artist whose work seems edged all around by fire, it's El Greco."

It was not just in his own time that El Greco held great influence. No less an artist than Pablo Picasso noted that the Greek-born immigrant to Spain was "really a painter," as Lacayo noted. Languishing in obscurity for centuries after his death in 1614, El Greco was rediscovered in the nineteenth century, and his works have influenced new generations of painters, from the French Impressionists to New York's Abstract Expressionists. Lacayo further observed that the works of this four-hundred-year old artist remain a "jolt to the senses." Fisher also commented on the timeless quality of El Greco's art: "Ever since they were rediscovered in the 19th century, his dramatic religious set pieces and dark, melancholy portraits have been regarded as groundbreaking, and 20th century modernists claimed him as a brother." Yet there was little in El Greco's early life to foretell such a groundbreaking path. Richard Cork, writing in the New Statesman, commented: "Does any other artist's career follow a trajectory as dramatic and unexpected as El Greco's? No one could have guessed, from the backward-looking icons he painted at the outset, that this obedient provincial youth would transform himself into such an original talent."

Cretan Origins

Born Doménikos Theotokópoulos in Candia, Crete, in 1541, El Greco learned the basics of painting as a youth, though little is known of these early years. Neither is much known of his family, although his father's name was Jorghi and he had a brother, Manoussos. It is safe to assume his family was not poor, for El Greco's skill with languages and his wide reading all suggest an early education. Such an assumption is buttressed by the fact that later in life, when he was a successful painter and could afford a library, he filled it with books of philosophy annotated with his own curious and searching questions and comments.

Crete at the time of El Greco's birth was a center of Byzantine culture and of the Greek Orthodox religion. What art existed was largely religious, depictions of saints or of scenes from the Bible, all done in the iconic style of Byzantine art. Such art was intended to instill devotion in the viewer, and thus the figures were rather stereotypical. It was in this tradition that the young El Greco was trained. One notary document from Crete shows that at an early age El Greco was describing himself as "Master Doménikos Theotokópoulos, painter."

During El Greco's lifetime his homeland was under Venetian rule, and there was a sizeable Greek colony in Venice. Thus it was natural for a young painter desiring to broaden his horizons to travel to Venice, as El Greco did in about 1567, or perhaps even earlier. He spent three or four years in Venice, studying, it is thought, with the great Renaissance painter Titian, although there is no direct evidence that he worked in that master's studio. It is clear, however, that he adapted the Renaissance sense of color from sixteenth-century Venetian painting, influenced not only by the works of Titian, but also by Tintoretto, Veronese, and Jacopo Bassano. During his Venetian period, El Greco's art was transformed, as can be seen in Purification of the Temple with its rich use of color. As Cork noted, "El Greco's Venetian work may be clumsy and uneven, but the sense of liberation is overwhelming." It was during this Venetian period also that he began a personal transformation, becoming known as "Il Greco," the Greek, later to be El Greco when he moved to Spain.

From Italy to Spain

A sojourn in Rome followed. El Greco apparently remained in that cultural center from 1570 to 1577. During this time he was known as a painter of miniatures, working on commissions for the wealthy Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, secured for him by a painter friend, Giulio Clovio. In 1572 he was admitted to the Roman Academy of St. Luke, a painter's guild. While in Rome he came under the influence of Raphael and Michelangelo, and of the mannerist school of painting with its elongated forms. Here, for the first time, El Greco was confronted with a style of painting in which the realistic portrayal of nature was shunned in favor of a more subjective vision. His religious work of the time, such as the Annunciation, does not show anything very unique yet, but his portraiture, such as Giulio Clovio and Portrait of a Man, give hints to his greatness. In fact, during his Roman sojourn, he was known as a portraitist.

It is said that El Greco did not prosper while in Rome because he had unkind words for Michelangelo's work, proposing that the painter should re-do part of the Sistine Chapel. Apocryphal or not, the tale is indicative of El Greco's abrasive manner, a fact attested to by numerous subsequent litigations over unpaid fees. Failing to win major commissions in Italy, El Greco left for Spain in 1577. In Spain, El Greco had high hopes of working for King Phillip II, who was building a new palace and monastic retreat, the Escorial. However, Phillip did not care much for a fantastical work the painter submitted, The Adoration of the Name of Jesus. El Greco had far better luck with religious institutions, for Spain was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation, a movement attempting to re-establish Catholic supremacy. He won a commission for three altars in the Toledo cathedral. One of these, El Espolio, or The Disrobing of Christ, destined for the sacristy of the cathedral, was his largest work thus far and demonstrates the twin influences of Byzantine and Italian art. Here for the first time is seen El Greco's characteristic elongated figures, compressed space, and restless light. For this he was paid 350 ducats; the fee for the picture frame was 570 ducats. From this fact one can, as Schjeldahl noted, "gauge the status of painting in Spain at the time." It also took several years of litigation for El Greco to receive his fee.

Other work from the painter's early years in Spain are the Assumption of the Virgin and the Trinity for the altarpiece of the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. Even in these religious paintings, however, El Greco's spiritual message is sometimes blurred by the play of light or background details. In 1578, El Greco's son, Jorge Manuel, was born. He later trained him as an artist and collaborator. El Greco's star rose in Spain; he was able to rent a suite of twenty-four rooms in the Villena Palace and live a rather lavish lifestyle. In 1580 the king finally sought El Greco out for a commission for the Escorial. The result of two years of labor was the Martyrdom of Saint Maurice and the Theban Legions. Because he placed the martyrdom in the background of the action, the devout King Phillip was not pleased and had the painting banished to the cellars of the Escorial. (It has since been returned to its place of honor and forms a centerpiece of the artwork in the palace.) In 1587 he received the commission for one of his most famous paintings, the Burial of the Count of Orgaz, which was intended for another Toledo religious institution.

The Final Years and Legacy

Meanwhile, El Greco was also making a name for himself as a portraitist, and two of his most famous portraits are Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino and A Cardinal. The latter work is believed to be of Cardinal Don Fernando Nino de Guevara, head of the Spanish Inquisition. According to Schjeldahl, this portrait is "a landmark in the history of European art." The critic further explained: "It is considered so because the artist here redefined portraiture, going beyond mere description to make a probing psychological exploration of the sitter." The portrait of Fray Hortensio displays this same subjective quality. According to Schjeldahl, "the darting brushwork . . . conveys a fleet mind and a passionate, artistic temperament."

El Greco rarely ventured into the landscape genre, though background landscapes tend to be important in much of his work. However with the 1599 work View of Toledo he presents an almost surreal view of the city he adopted as his own for the last decades of his life. According to a critic for USA Today, this picture is "sometimes considered the first expressionist landscape in Western art." Other significant work done during El Greco's later period are the canvasses painted for the Hospital of Charity church at Illescas, a town between Madrid and Toledo, and Laocoon from 1610.

El Greco died in 1614, hard at work on new commissions. He left behind a body of some three hundred paintings that have been firmly attributed to him, though some historians believe that his output was closer to 850. One of his paintings discovered in the first years of the twenty-first century, The Baptism of Christ, fetched over $1 million at auction in 2004, purchased by the painter's birthplace in Crete in honor of its most famous native son. Such fame took a while coming. After El Greco's death his studio continued to turn out paintings in his style, but soon he fell out of fashion. It was not until the late nineteenth century that El Greco was rediscovered by the French, and then his star rose once again. Since then he has been recognized as one of a handful of great portrait painters and Spain's finest religious artist. Osmond noted that the painter is much more than the sum of his influences. "Although El Greco assimilated much from the art of his day," Osmond wrote, "in the end he transcended it all and forged his own utterly unique vision. He leaps beyond his time into the ages—and into eternity."

If you enjoy the works of El Greco

If you enjoy the works of El Greco, you may also want to check out the following:

The art of Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Tintoretto (1518-1594), who influenced El Greco, and the works of two other great Spanish painters, Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).

For art critic Jed Perl, writing in the New Republic, it is the "impossible" nature of his art that makes El Greco great. "El Greco's colors—those shivering whites and clangorous yellows and feverish blues—ought to be impossible," Perl commented. "His figures—their bodies so wildly elongated, their faces and hands so hopelessly twisted—ought to be grotesque. And yet this arch-expressionist, who pulls his grand designs out of a sense of form that can strikes us as quite nearly deranged, gives pictorial vehemence a limpidity, almost a quietism." For Perl, the measure of El Greco's greatness is found standing in front of any of his great paintings: Fray Hortensio, View of Toledo, The Virgin, The Immaculate Conception, Adoration of the Shepherds, or Purification of the Temple. It is then, Perl commented, that you find yourself "in a fire-and-ice world, and you sweat and shiver all at once, and you are happy to feel this way."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Bronstein, Leo, El Greco, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1990.

Davies, David, El Greco, Dutton, (New York, NY), 1976.

El Greco of Toledo (exhibition catalogue), Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1982.

Finaldi, Gabriele, and others, editors, El Greco (exhibition catalogue), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), 2004.

Goldscheider, Ludwig, El Greco: Paintings Drawings, and Sculptures, Phaidon Press (London, England), 1954.

Gudiol, José, Doménikos Theotokópoulos, El Greco, 1541-1614, Viking (New York, NY), 1973.

Gudiol, José, The Complete Paintings of El Greco, 1541-1614, translated by Kenneth Lyons, Greenwich House (New York, NY), 1983.

International Dictionary of Art and Artists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Lassaigne, Jacques, El Greco, translated by Jane Brenton, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1973.

Lopera, Jose Alvarez, and others, editors, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, Skira-Berenice, 1999.

Mann, Richard G. El Greco and His Patrons: Three Major Projects, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1986.

Serraller, F. Calvo El Greco: The Burial of Count Orgaz, Thames and Hudson (London, England), 1995.

PERIODICALS

American Artist, January, 2004, Susan Lyons, "The Mastery of El Greco," p. 7.

Commentary, December, 2003, Steven C. Munson, "El Greco and His Critics," p. 53.

Contemporary Review, May, 2004, Donald Bruce, "El Greco at the National Gallery," p. 295.

Europe Intelligence Wire, September 29, 2003, "El Greco Retrospective Shows Influence on Modern Artists."

National Catholic Reporter, Kevin Culligan, "St. John of the Cross," p. 12.

New Criterion, Karen Wilkin, "The Modernism of El Greco," p. 43.

New Republic, November 24, 2003, Jed Perl, "On Art—Old Modern Spain," p. 25.

New Statesman, March 1, 2004, Richard Cork, "Hot Flashes," p. 42.

New Yorker, October 20, 2003, Peter Schjeldahl, "Holy Toledo," p. 198.

Time, October 6, 2003, Richard Lacayo, "Thunderbolts of Ecstasy," p. 64.

Time International, February 16, 3004, Lucy Fisher, "Becoming El Greco," p. 66.

Town & Country, November, 2003, Abigail R. Esman, "El Greco in New York," p. 136.

USA Today, November, 2003, "'The Greek' Invades Italy and Spain," p. 34.

World and I, Susan Osmond, "El Greco: The Earthly Transfigured," p. 92.

ONLINE

BBC News Online,http://news.bbc.co.uk/ (January 30, 2004), Penny Papadapoulou, "El Greco"; (December 8, 2004), "El Greco Picture Exceeds Estimate."

Catholic Encyclopedia Online,http://www.newadvent.org/ (December 29, 2004), George Charles Williamson, "Domenico Theotocopuli (El Greco)."

Herald Tribune Online,http://www.iht.com/ (July 17, 1999), Roderick Conway Morris, "El Greco: The Master and the Myth."

Metropolitan Museum of Art Web site,http://www.metmuseum.org/ (December 29, 2004), "El Greco."

Museo de El Greco Web site,http://www.geocities.com/ (December 29, 2004).

National Gallery Web site,http://www.nga.gov/ (December 29, 2004), "El Greco."

New York Observer Online,http://www.observer.com/ (May 28, 2001), Hilton Kramer, "El Greco, Modern Augurer, Stirred Mobs to Battle."

Telegraph Online (London, England), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (June 23, 2001), "Artists on Art."*