El Greco

Domenico Theotocopuli, commonly known as 'El Greco', was born on Crete in 1541. Little is known of his earliest years, except through speculation. His birthplace was the seaside village of Phodele, near Candia, the capital.

Crete was a territory of Venice in El Greco's lifetime, and accordingly, at about the age of 25, he moved to Venice and began his studies under the Italian master Titian. He studied and was influenced by such masters as Tintoretto, Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, and the famous miniaturist Giulio Clovio. Yet his work remained too different, too striking, to gain any real critical approval. He was inspired by the Italians but his artistic mind seemed formed by the Byzantine. Titian's touch resonates through his work, yet there is a touch of originality in El Greco that no influence of the day seems to be responsible for.

Around 1576 he left Italy, perhaps drawn by the hope of employment in Philip the Second's new great monastery, the Escorial. Yet although he stopped in Madrid, it was Toledo he settled in. By July 1577 he was at work on his largest commission yet for the Toledo Cathedral, El Espolio or the Disrobing of Christ. El Greco was here to stay.

It seems that in the course of the 37 years he lived there, El Greco personally decorated every corner of the city. Rare is the church or museum without its token austere, angular, and invariably religious canvas. For he was a religious artist above all else. Greek Orthodox he may have been, but few have captured so well the harshness and intensity of Spanish Catholicism.

He entered into a relationship with a local woman, Jeronima de las Cuevas, with whom he had a son, Jorge Manuel, who later followed in his father's painting footsteps. Notice the boy page in 'The Burial of Count Orgaz', his masterpiece: this is said to be a portrait of Jorge Manuel. El Greco himself appears right above, the one face staring directly out at his audience instead of watching the miracle taking place around him.

He died in April of 1614, a long-lived 73 years old. Yet his work remains, from the halls of the Escorial to the walls of Toledo. His highly personal Manneristic style sparked new debate and comment with the rise of modernists like Picasso. He seemed to unconsciously foreshadow the break with pictorial tradition that would not come for three more centuries.

Domenico Theotocopuli, El Greco, was if nothing else unique. His unusually pre-modernist works jump out of the Renaissance halls they are hung in and point toward the future of art. Once having seen one El Greco, you will rarely mistake another. Toledo's atmosphere breathes through his work. Although born Greek, El Greco is without question among the ranks of the greatest Spanish painters of all time.