Join Facebook to connect with Domenico Greci and others you may know. Join Facebook to connect with Domenico Greco and others you may know. The life of the Cretan-born artist is the subject of the film El Greco of Greek, Spanish and British production. [35] By September 1579 he had completed nine paintings for Santo Domingo, including The Trinity and The Assumption of the Virgin. It is not confirmed whether he lived with his Spanish female companion, Jerónima de Las Cuevas, whom he probably never married. The painting combines post-Byzantine and Italian Mannerist stylistic and iconographic elements, and incorporates stylistic elements of the Cretan School. [36] Indeed, he did manage to secure two important commissions from the monarch: Allegory of the Holy League and Martyrdom of St. Maurice. However, the king did not like these works and placed the St Maurice altarpiece in the chapter-house rather than the intended chapel. [34], i. He arrived in Toledo by July 1577, and signed contracts for a group of paintings that was to adorn the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo and for the renowned El Espolio. [80], According to Efi Foundoulaki, "painters and theoreticians from the beginning of the 20th century 'discovered' a new El Greco but in process they also discovered and revealed their own selves". As his own commentaries indicate, El Greco viewed Titian, Michelangelo and Raphael as models to emulate. [105], In 1998, the Greek electronic composer and artist Vangelis published El Greco, a symphonic album inspired by the artist. He gave no further commissions to El Greco. She was the mother of his only son, Jorge Manuel, born in 1578, who also became a painter, assisted his father, and continued to repeat his compositions for many years after he inherited the studio. [129] Whether or not El Greco had progressive astigmatism is still open to debate. [8], El Greco received his initial training as an icon painter of the Cretan school, a leading center of post-Byzantine art. Late 17th- and early 18th-century Spanish commentators praised his skill but criticized his antinaturalistic style and his complex iconography. Fry described El Greco as "an old master who is not merely modern, but actually appears a good many steps ahead of us, turning back to show us the way". [66], b. [4] Though the exact year is not clear, most scholars agree that El Greco went to Venice around 1567. His elongations were an artistic expression, not a visual symptom. El Greco was disdained by the immediate generations after his death because his work was opposed in many respects to the principles of the early baroque style which came to the fore near the beginning of the 17th century and soon supplanted the last surviving traits of the 16th-century Mannerism. [91] The first painter who appears to have noticed the structural code in the morphology of the mature El Greco was Paul Cézanne, one of the forerunners of Cubism. [117] Nonetheless, according to Achileus A. Kyrou, a prominent Greek journalist of the 20th century, El Greco was born in Fodele and the ruins of his family's house are still extant in the place where old Fodele was (the village later changed location because of pirate raids). Architect and writer Pirro Ligorio called him a "foolish foreigner", and newly discovered archival material reveals a skirmish with Farnese, who obliged the young artist to leave his palace. [104] Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, who felt a great spiritual affinity for El Greco, called his autobiography Report to Greco and wrote a tribute to the Cretan-born artist. This doubtful attribution is based on the testimony of Pacheco (he saw in El Greco's studio a series of figurines, but these may have been merely models). For other uses, see, Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance (1541–1614), "I hold the imitation of color to be the greatest difficulty of art. [72], El Greco was highly esteemed as an architect and sculptor during his lifetime. We must look for the Spanish influence in Cézanne. To the English artist and critic Roger Fry in 1920, El Greco was the archetypal genius who did as he thought best "with complete indifference to what effect the right expression might have on the public". [70], The English art historian David Davies seeks the roots of El Greco's style in the intellectual sources of his Greek-Christian education and in the world of his recollections from the liturgical and ceremonial aspect of the Orthodox Church. [74] For El Espolio the master designed the original altar of gilded wood which has been destroyed, but his small sculptured group of the Miracle of St. Ildefonso still survives on the lower center of the frame. He lived in considerable style, sometimes employing musicians to play whilst he dined. Whereas art historian José Camón Aznar had attributed between 787 and 829 paintings to the Cretan master, Wethey reduced the number to 285 authentic works and Halldor Sœhner, a German researcher of Spanish art, recognized only 137. ^ Theotokópoulos acquired the name "El Greco" in Italy, where the custom of identifying a man by designating a country or city of origin was a common practice. El Greco was born in the Kingdom of Candia (modern Crete), which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. The ophthalmologists August Goldschmidt and Germán Beritens argued that El Greco painted such elongated human figures because he had vision problems (possibly progressive astigmatism or strabismus) that made him see bodies longer than they were, and at an angle to the perpendicular;[86][l] the physician Arturo Perera, however, attributed this style to the use of marijuana. Two Greeks, friends of the painter, witnessed this last will and testament (El Greco never lost touch with his Greek origins). [16] It is unknown how long he remained in Rome, though he may have returned to Venice (c. 1575–76) before he left for Spain. [51] Modern scholars characterize El Greco's theory as "typically Mannerist" and pinpoint its sources in the Neoplatonism of the Renaissance. [121], f. ^ According to archival research in the late 1990s, El Greco was still in Candia at the age of twenty-six. From this point of view, it is correct to say that Cubism has a Spanish origin and that I invented Cubism. [56] Fernando Marias and Agustín Bustamante García, the scholars who transcribed El Greco's handwritten notes, connect the power that the painter gives to light with the ideas underlying Christian Neo-Platonism. [87] Michael Kimmelman, a reviewer for The New York Times, stated that "to Greeks [El Greco] became the quintessential Greek painter; to the Spanish, the quintessential Spaniard". [77] To French writer Théophile Gautier, El Greco was the precursor of the European Romantic movement in all its craving for the strange and the extreme. In 1908, Spanish art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works; in this book El Greco was presented as the founder of the Spanish School. [26] Michelangelo's influence can be seen in later El Greco works such as the Allegory of the Holy League. [29], Lacking the favor of the king, El Greco was obliged to remain in Toledo, where he had been received in 1577 as a great painter. Titian was dead, and Tintoretto, Veronese and Anthonis Mor all refused to come to Spain. One set of Rilke's poems (Himmelfahrt Mariae I.II., 1913) was based directly on El Greco's Immaculate Conception. On 26 December 1566 El Greco sought permission from the Venetian authorities to sell a "panel of the Passion of Christ executed on a gold background" ("un quadro della Passione del Nostro Signor Giesu Christo, dorato") in a lottery. [47] He was buried in the Church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, aged 73. [119] Menegos is the Venetian dialect form of Doménicos, and Sgourafos (σγουράφος=ζωγράφος) is a Greek term for painter. Some of these commentators, such as Antonio Palomino and Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, described his mature work as "contemptible", "ridiculous" and "worthy of scorn". [4], k. ^ The myth of El Greco's madness came in two versions. [79] The phrase "sunk in eccentricity", often encountered in such texts, in time developed into "madness". [3] In 1570, he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. [39] In any case, Philip's dissatisfaction ended any hopes of royal patronage El Greco may have had. [44], Between 1607 and 1608 El Greco was involved in a protracted legal dispute with the authorities of the Hospital of Charity at Illescas concerning payment for his work, which included painting, sculpture and architecture;[i] this and other legal disputes contributed to the economic difficulties he experienced towards the end of his life. There he came into contact with the intellectual elite of the city, including the Roman scholar Fulvio Orsini, whose collection would later include seven paintings by the artist (View of Mt. It was natural for the young El Greco to pursue his career in Venice, Crete having been a possession of the Republic of Venice since 1211. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. [32] During the 1570s the huge monastery-palace of El Escorial was still under construction and Philip II of Spain was experiencing difficulties in finding good artists for the many large paintings required to decorate it. [22] He singled out Correggio and Parmigianino for particular praise,[23] but he did not hesitate to dismiss Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel;[g] he extended an offer to Pope Pius V to paint over the whole work in accord with the new and stricter Catholic thinking. [20] His works painted in Italy were influenced by the Venetian Renaissance style of the period, with agile, elongated figures reminiscent of Tintoretto and a chromatic framework that connects him to Titian. [30] At the time, Toledo was the religious capital of Spain and a populous city[h] with "an illustrious past, a prosperous present and an uncertain future". [113] Nevertheless, disputes over the exact number of El Greco's authentic works remain unresolved, and the status of Wethey's catalogue raisonné is at the center of these disagreements. [122], g. ^ Mancini reports that El Greco said to the Pope that if the whole work was demolished he himself would do it in a decent manner and with seemliness. The discovery of the Dormition led to the attribution of three other signed works of "Doménicos" to El Greco (Modena Triptych, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, and The Adoration of the Magi) and then to the acceptance of more works as authentic—some signed, some not (such as The Passion of Christ (Pietà with Angels) painted in 1566),[112]—which were brought into the group of early works of El Greco. Although following many conventions of the Byzantine icon, aspects of the style certainly show Venetian influence, and the composition, showing the death of Mary, combines the different doctrines of the Orthodox Dormition of the Virgin and the Catholic Assumption of the Virgin. [4], His most important architectural achievement was the church and Monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, for which he also executed sculptures and paintings. A few months later, on 18 September 1572, he paid his dues to the Guild of Saint Luke in Rome as a miniature painter. [37] The exact reasons for the king's dissatisfaction remain unclear. In the 1890s, Spanish painters living in Paris adopted him as their guide and mentor. [d], Most scholars believe that the Theotokópoulos "family was almost certainly Greek Orthodox",[11] although some Catholic sources still claim him from birth. [6] El Greco's father, Geórgios Theotokópoulos (d. 1556), was a merchant and tax collector. [16], In 1570, El Greco moved to Rome, where he executed a series of works strongly marked by his Venetian apprenticeship. While Picasso was working on his Proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, he visited his friend Ignacio Zuloaga in his studio in Paris and studied El Greco's Opening of the Fifth Seal (owned by Zuloaga since 1897). [5], Born in 1541, in either the village of Fodele or Candia (the Venetian name of Chandax, present day Heraklion) on Crete,[c] El Greco was descended from a prosperous urban family, which had probably been driven out of Chania to Candia after an uprising against the Catholic Venetians between 1526 and 1528. [23], During the same period, other researchers developed alternative, more radical theories. [123] In one of his last articles, Wethey reassessed his previous estimations and accepted that El Greco left Crete in 1567. [96], The early Cubist explorations of Picasso were to uncover other aspects in the work of El Greco: structural analysis of his compositions, multi-faced refraction of form, interweaving of form and space, and special effects of highlights. These ideas were, however, far too extreme for the architectural circles of his era and had no immediate resonance.[76]. ^ According to a contemporary, El Greco acquired his name, not only for his place of origin, but also for the sublimity of his art: "Out of the great esteem he was held in he was called the Greek (il Greco)" (comment of Giulio Cesare Mancini about El Greco in his Chronicles, which were written a few years after El Greco's death). According to Picasso, El Greco's structure is Cubist. [17] In Rome, on the recommendation of Giulio Clovio,[18] El Greco was received as a guest at the Palazzo Farnese, which Cardinal Alessandro Farnese had made a center of the artistic and intellectual life of the city. [46] Candia's claim to him is based on two documents from a trial in 1606, when the painter was 65. According to Franz Marc, one of the principal painters of the German expressionist movement, "we refer with pleasure and with steadfastness to the case of El Greco, because the glory of this painter is closely tied to the evolution of our new perceptions on art". [84] These are the words Meier-Graefe used to describe El Greco's impact on the artistic movements of his time: He [El Greco] has discovered a realm of new possibilities. El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation by the 20th century. The curious form of the article (El) may be from the Venetian dialect or more likely from the Spanish, though in Spanish his name would be "El Griego". This interweaving would re-emerge three centuries later in the works of Cézanne and Picasso. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. [113] According to other archival material—drawings El Greco sent to a Cretan cartographer—he was in Venice by 1568. It was a great moment. [24] In his 17th century Chronicles, Giulio Mancini included El Greco among the painters who had initiated, in various ways, a re-evaluation of Michelangelo's teachings. [60] He painted with the usual pigments of his period such as azurite, lead-tin-yellow, vermilion, madder lake, ochres and red lead, but he seldom used the expensive natural ultramarine. It was there where his works, created in the spirit of the post-Byzantine painters of the Cretan School, were greatly esteemed. [28], In 1577, El Greco migrated to Madrid, then to Toledo, where he produced his mature works. "[41] In 1585, he appears to have hired an assistant, Italian painter Francisco Preboste, and to have established a workshop capable of producing altar frames and statues as well as paintings. Things themselves necessitate it, the influence of El Greco, a Venetian painter, on him. [e] Like many Orthodox emigrants to Catholic areas of Europe, some assert that he may have transferred to Catholicism after his arrival, and possibly practiced as a Catholic in Spain, where he described himself as a "devout Catholic" in his will. [95] The relation between Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the Opening of the Fifth Seal was pinpointed in the early 1980s, when the stylistic similarities and the relationship between the motifs of both works were analysed. Most researchers and scholars give Candia as his birthplace. [93] Fry observed that Cézanne drew from "his great discovery of the permeation of every part of the design with a uniform and continuous plastic theme". [29], El Greco made Toledo his home. All the generations that follow after him live in his realm. [14] In 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was already an enrolled master of the local guild, presumably in charge of his own workshop. [49], — El Greco, from notes of the painter in one of his commentaries. There he decorated the chapel of the hospital, but the wooden altar and the sculptures he created have in all probability perished. [66], e. ^ The arguments of these Catholic sources are based on the lack of Orthodox archival baptismal records on Crete and on a relaxed interchange between Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic rites during El Greco's youth. [43], The decade 1597 to 1607 was a period of intense activity for El Greco. [63], — El Greco, from marginalia the painter inscribed in his copy of Daniele Barbaro's translation of Vitruvius' De architectura. By 1943, Pollock had completed sixty drawing compositions after El Greco and owned three books on the Cretan master. [118], d. ^ This document comes from the notarial archives of Candia and was published in 1962. [132], This article is about the artist of the Spanish Renaissance. [79], l. ^ This theory enjoyed surprising popularity during the early years of the twentieth century and was opposed by the German psychologist David Kuntz. Wethey says that "by such simple means, the artist created a memorable characterization that places him in the highest rank as a portraitist, along with Titian and Rembrandt". Fodele natives argue that El Greco probably told everyone in Spain he was from Heraklion because it was the closest known city next to tiny Fodele. [80] However, in the popular English-speaking imagination he remained the man who "painted horrors in the Escorial" in the words of Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia in 1899.[81]. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. [19], Unlike other Cretan artists who had moved to Venice, El Greco substantially altered his style and sought to distinguish himself by inventing new and unusual interpretations of traditional religious subject matter. [92] According to Brown, "Cézanne and El Greco are spiritual brothers despite the centuries which separate them". [40] According to Hortensio Félix Paravicino, a 17th-century Spanish preacher and poet, "Crete gave him life and the painter's craft, Toledo a better homeland, where through Death he began to achieve eternal life. [101] Jackson Pollock, a major force in the abstract expressionist movement, was also influenced by El Greco. Afficher les profils des personnes qui s’appellent Greco Domenico. [97] On 22 February 1950, Picasso began his series of "paraphrases" of other painters' works with The Portrait of a Painter after El Greco. [61], Since the beginning of the 20th century, scholars have debated whether El Greco's style had Byzantine origins. [29] At the end of that year, El Greco opened his own workshop and hired as assistants the painters Lattanzio Bonastri de Lucignano and Francisco Preboste. [24] When he was later asked what he thought about Michelangelo, El Greco replied that "he was a good man, but he did not know how to paint". Sinai and a portrait of Clovio are among them). [80] Gautier regarded El Greco as the ideal romantic hero (the "gifted", the "misunderstood", the "mad"),[k] and was the first who explicitly expressed his admiration for El Greco's later technique. El Greco is now seen as an artist with a formative training on Crete; a series of works illuminate his early style, some painted while he was still on Crete, some from his period in Venice, and some from his subsequent stay in Rome. [68] In making this judgement, Lambraki-Plaka disagrees with Oxford University professors Cyril Mango and Elizabeth Jeffreys, who assert that "despite claims to the contrary, the only Byzantine element of his famous paintings was his signature in Greek lettering". [45], During the course of the execution of a commission for the Hospital de Tavera, El Greco fell seriously ill, and a month later, on 7 April 1614, he died. Pallucchini attributed to El Greco a small triptych in the Galleria Estense at Modena on the basis of a signature on the painting on the back of the central panel on the Modena triptych ("Χείρ Δομήνιχου", Created by the hand of Doménikos). [82] The same year Julius Meier-Graefe, a scholar of French Impressionism, traveled in Spain, expecting to study Velásquez, but instead becoming fascinated by El Greco; he recorded his experiences in Spanische Reise (Spanish Journey, published in English in 1926), the book which widely established El Greco as a great painter of the past "outside a somewhat narrow circle". [100], The expressionists focused on the expressive distortions of El Greco. El Greco was sitting in a darkened room, because he found the darkness more conducive to thought than the light of the day, which disturbed his "inner light". He also agreed to allow the brotherhood to select the appraisers. A significant innovation of El Greco's mature works is the interweaving between form and space; a reciprocal relationship is developed between the two which completely unifies the painting surface. The extensive archival research conducted since the early 1960s by scholars, such as Nikolaos Panayotakis, Pandelis Prevelakis and Maria Constantoudaki, indicates strongly that El Greco's family and ancestors were Greek Orthodox. This album is an expansion of an earlier album by Vangelis, Foros Timis Ston Greco (A Tribute to El Greco, Φόρος Τιμής Στον Γκρέκο). He also saw Vitruvius' manner of distorting proportions in order to compensate for distance from the eye as responsible for creating monstrous forms. The works he produced in Italy belong to the history of the Italian art, and those he produced in Spain to the history of Spanish art". [102], Kysa Johnson used El Greco's paintings of the Immaculate Conception as the compositional framework for some of her works, and the master's anatomical distortions are somewhat reflected in Fritz Chesnut's portraits. Clovio characterized El Greco as "a rare talent in painting". [76] He is also credited with the architectural frames to his own paintings in Toledo. [50], Art historian Max Dvořák was the first scholar to connect El Greco's art with Mannerism and Antinaturalism. [33], Through Clovio and Orsini, El Greco met Benito Arias Montano, a Spanish humanist and agent of Philip; Pedro Chacón, a clergyman; and Luis de Castilla, son of Diego de Castilla, the dean of the Cathedral of Toledo.
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