el greco - the greek painter in spain
TRANSCRIPT
His World
His Life
El Greco His Style
His Paintings
His Influence
Born on the island of Crete in 1541, Domenikos
Theotokopoulos acquired the name
El Greco - the Greek -
in Italy and Spain.
The painter announced his Cretan origin by his signature in Greek letters on his most
important pictures.
El Greco was trained as an icon painter but he transformed himself into a disciple of Titian and an avid student of Tintoretto, Veronese, and Jacopo Bassano.
He moved to Venice in 1567 where he mastered the elements of Renaissance painting.
From Venice, El Greco moved to Rome, where he worked from 1570 to 1576. He joined the painter's academy and he set up shop, taking on at least one assistant, and possibly two. His intention must have been to pursue a Roman career, but after six years he had not received a single commission for an altarpiece.
VS
Yes, El Greco had ill-advisedly criticized Michelangelo's abilities as a painter, an opinion that generated little confidence in his abilities.
It led to him being ostracized by the Roman art establishment.
El Greco moved to Spain in 1576, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.
In Madrid, El Greco tried to secure royal patronage from King Philip II, but to no avail. Not until he settled in Toledo did El Greco meet with the success an artist of his caliber might have expected.
There he found a sympathetic circle of intellectual friends and patrons and forged a highly profitable career.
At that time Toledo had been an important Medieval city and the cradle of Spanish humanism thanks to its secular multiculturalism.
The city's cosmopolitan character, the existence of a strong civil society and a rich cultural life, together with the international vocation of the governing classes and the commencement of grand building projects designed to modernize the city, no doubt played a part in determining the artist's choice to live there.
Years later after El Greco arrival the definitive exit of the Royal Court marked the beginning of Toledo's gradual decline and its ultimate decadence. Toledo's leaders reacted by promoting the civic pride of the city's inhabitants, an initiative in which the artist played an active part. Thanks to this, Toledo became the imperial city that enjoyed the monarchy's favor, the city of God blessed with the protection of the saints, as depicted by El Greco in his paintings.
A consequence of these changes was the gradual decline of the city's leading cultural role, something that was already evident upon the death of genial artist.
View and Plan of Toledo With this and other pictures of Toledo El Greco created the Spanish landscape, a new branch of art. The map partially corrects the view of the city to improve the composition. In the upper part of the picture there is a scene in which the
Virgin presents a vestment to St Ildefonso. The landscape is painted in brownish-green and blue tints, and the mythological and religious elements are minimal.
View of Toledo The city is presented both full-face and in
profile. The threatening dark
wrath of the sky points to the stormy
embodiment of the joint powers of the city:
the power of the Church and the power
of the State. Did El Greco tell us
here his own myth and his own judgment of
the nearest-to-heaven powers of earth?
religious passion
interest in the
unworldly
darker colours
fused with rich reds
new perception
of the human form
What does make El Greco style
more individual?
St. Peter and St. Paul
El Greco painted two apostles several times. Peter is always shown with
white hair and beard, and he often wears his yellow cloak over a blue
tunic. Paul is always shown slightly balding, with dark hair and beard,
wearing a red mantle thrown over a blue or green tunic, which is here just
visible at the neck. El Greco was one of the first painters in Spain to depict the two Christian apostles together. This enabled the
artist both to reflect on religious concerns and to contrast their
different personalities: St Paul is devout and passionate, St Peter gentle and meek. The poses and gestures, the
colours and expression, the superb technique, all these emphasize the
contrast between the two.
From the paired legs of the legendary man and the legendary horse to the paired eyes of the two youths and thence to the paired beauties of sky and heads, we rapidly descend to the very center of Greco's passion: the emerald green of a lowered landscape into whose flesh the white flesh of the lifted foreleg plunges.
In this scene the significant contrast between St. Martin's complete attire and the beggar's complete nudity is like a ritual sacrifice to another, greater nudity: the enhanced nudity of the beggar, the nudity of the white steed in its hallucinating nearness and humanness, the nudity of the radiant, immense sky. And love is its subject.
St Martin and the Beggar
The Opening of the Fifth Seal
The painting was unfinished at El Greco's death and listed in a postmortem inventory.
In the foreground is the incredibly elongated, ecstatic figure of Saint John. It was Cossio who, in 1908, first proposed that the painting suggested a visualization of the Book of Revelation, when Saint John the Evangelist witnesses the breaking of the Fifth Seal by the Lamb of God.
... I saw under the altar the souls of them who were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, does thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" And white robes were given to every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
El Greco, 1608 Pablo Picasso, 1907
Fifth Seal in particular went on to spark great debate, as it has been suggested that it was an influence on Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, often considered the first cubist painting
During the crucial period Pablo Picasso was working on that keystone of modern painting, 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, which left an indelible impression. For Picasso, too, El Greco was both the quintessential Spaniard and a precursor of Cezanne and Cubism.
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz The Count was said to be a pious man, a philanthropist, and a knight. After the Count died in 1312, he was interred by the Cardinal and a host of clerics. The story goes that during this ceremony, the heavens erupted spontaneously and friends and mourners witnessed a sky filled with images of Jesus, the Virgin, St. John, and several other saints and angels. Legend explains that Saint Augustine and Saint Stephen appeared to reward the Count for his generosity to the church by burying him with their own hands and dazzling all those present.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
As was usual with El Greco's final works, the bodies of the shepherds are considerably distorted from their natural forms, contrasting with the more classical appearance of the angels who fly above the scene. This, combined with the unusual angles and poses of the characters, was intended to give an impression of ecstatic wonder.
This popular legend towards the latter part of his career has no foundation in fact, but his painting became more and more eccentric as his life went on, and his natural perversity and love of strange, cold coloring, increased towards the end of his life.
For more than a generation his work was hardly known. El Greco was rescued from obscurity by an avid group of nineteenth-century collectors, critics, and artists and became one of the select members of the modern pantheon of great painters.
Now he is gaining rapidly in importance, and its true position is more and more recognized.
El Greco. Biography http://www.biography.com/people/el-greco-9319123 El Greco: Paintings, Biography, Quotes http://www.elgreco.net/index.jsp National Gallery of Art https://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg29/gg29-main1.html The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grec/hd_grec.htm#slideshow2 Web Oficial del IV Centenario del Greco http://www.elgreco2014.com/#!greco-venues/cj3n