Domenicus Theotokopoulos was born in Candia, Crete in 1541 and died in 1641 when he was 73. He was known in Spain as El Greco (The Greek) because the Spanish could not pronounce his name he was also known as the most outstanding painter of spanish school in 16th century. There is very little information regarding his childhood, but he probably was apprenticed as a religious painter in Greco-Byzantine tradition. Because Crete was a dependency of Venice, he imigrated to Venice for more study at about 1566.

El Greco moved to Rome in 1570 and was introduced as a pupil of the venitian painter Titian. He entered the Roman Painter's Guild in September, 1572. In Rome El Greco met several Spaiards associated with the Church of Toledo who may have persuaded him to move. During the pontificate of Pius V - 1566 to 1572 - El Greco offered to repaint Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, which made him very unpopular and was obliged to move to Spain. Italy was not overall a bad experience for El Greco in the long run, he was influenced by several Italian masters:

- The sensuous colorism of Titian.

- The realism of Jacopo Bassano.

- The spiritualized figural style of Michelangelo.

- The dramatic energy and compositional complexity of Tintoretto.

El Greco arrived in Toledo in 1577 after a short visit to Malta and began work for Santo Domingo El Antiguo and created Assumption of the Virgin within a year, this painting marks a turning point in El Greco's Art. Sometime between 1577 and 1579 The Disrobing of Christ was painted for the Toledo Cathedral.

El Greco tried to get people in Escorial to like him but several paintings he made for Philip II's Palace-Monastary (Escorial) - including The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice, 1580 to 1582 - failed to please the king, further encouraging El Greco to remain in Toledo.

In Toledo El Greco gradually moved away from a relitavely naturalistic style derived from the Venitian Renaissance to one involving antinaturalistic elongation of figures, flickering of light, and intense colors as seen in The Burial of Count Orgaz - 1586 Santo Tome, Toledo.

This style lead to visionary expressionism and extreme abstraction of forms, such as in The Agony in the Garden - 1597 to 1603, now in The Toldedo Museum, Ohio.

Some of El Greco's finest pictures of saints have intense portraitlike quality, realism and stylization such as:

- Saint Louis - 1587-97, now in Louvre, Paris

- The Knight with His Hand on His Breast

- Portrait of a cardinal

- Saint Paul

El Greco's intense emotionalism and sprituality makes him one of the last and greatest painters of the mannerist style. His art was neglected for three centuries until the artists of the ninteenth and early twentieth centuries restored his reputation as one of Spain's leading masters. El Greco was a prosperous man with a large house in Toledo. He had many visiors in his house, including many members of nobility and the inellectual elite social classes. Most of these visitors had their portrait done and an example of this is Fray Hortensio Felix de Paravicino, his portrait was done sometime between 1609 and 1610 by El Greco and is now in the Museum of fine arts in Boston.

And now, in conclusion I'll leave you with a painting that was very rare for a Spanish painter to make because it is of the landscape genre, View of Toldedo:

Click here for a better picture of "View of Toledo", I had to shrink this one down to fit on the page.

Bibliographies

This website was made entirely by James Barnes on Fortunecity webserver. I would like to thank, and give credit to, several information sources. I would like to thank the following websites for the pictures I used on this site:

(Links won't work unless your connected to the net) 1: CGFA- El Greco. http://metalab.unc.edu/cjackson/elgreco

2: Mike Harden's Artchive - "El Greco". http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftpoc/el_greco_ext.html

3: Edificio Villanueva - Vista Rapida - El Greco. http://www.msu.es./prado/greco.htm

I would also like to thank the following Encyclopedias:

1: Copyright � 1993, Groiler Electronic Publishing, INC. All rights reserved.

2: "Greco, El," Microsort (R) Encarta (R) 97 Encyclopedia.� 1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

3: Copyright � 1994-1998 Encyclopedia Britanica.