El Greco: Art and Life

Introduction

El Greco was a Greek painter , sculptor and architect , active in Italy and Spain . One of the most original and interesting painters of 16th-century Europe , he was renowned in his lifetime for his originality and extravagance . Being brought up as an artist of Byzantine tradition El Greco , on arriving to Italy and later to Spain , fused the Byzantine influences with styles of Western world , like mannerism and Venetian Renaissance

Slide 1 Title Page

Born Domenikos Theotokopoulos in Candia , Crete , El Greco may be regarded as one of Spain 's

foremost painters . He reached artistic maturity in Toledo , and his career and style are bound to the patronage and spiritual environment he found in the Spanish city . He usually signed his paintings in Greek Letters with his full name , Domynicos Theotokupoulos , underscoring his Greek descent

Slide 2

El Greco appears to have belonged to a Catholic Greek family of officials who worked for the Venetian colonial service El Greco was formed in the tradition of Byzantine art current in Crete , where he was a master painter in 1566 . His presence in Crete is documented until December 1566

By 1568 he is recorded in Venice , where he underwent a second artistic education that transformed him into a painter of the Venetian School The pictures of this period , small tempera paintings , show his progressive assimilation of contemporary Venetian painting . He remained in Venice until late 1570 , perhaps studying and working in Titian 's studio or perhaps only visiting it

In 1570 El Greco went to Rome , and the few paintings done there incorporate artistic models from central Italian 16th-century painting By the end of the 1572 he had opened a workshop . Information on this period is limited , but there is evidence of enmity between El Greco and Giorgio Vasari , and of his criticizing Michelangelo 's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel , which probably caused his later departure for Spain On the other hand , his stay in Rome aroused his interest in humanist and philosophical questions . It was in this context that El Greco formed his artistic creed as a colorist in the Venetian tradition . El Greco considered the color and light of the Venetians as the only possible means of imitating nature , thereby reinforcing the beauty of reality through art . Dissatisfied with his career in Rome , El Greco went to Spain in 1576

He is first documented in Toledo in 1577 , at work on the Disrobing of Christ . The project that had taken him to Toledo was a commission for three altarpieces for Santo Domingo el Antiguo (1577-9 . Having completed one commission for Philip II , the Glory of Philip II he was to embark on a second , the Martyrdom of St Maurice (1580-83 , the work did not Philip , however , and it was removed (though it remained in the King 's collection . At this point , in his forties , the artist decided to settle in Toledo and dedicate himself to a largely local clientele . In the 1580s he tended to give his paintings...