El Greco was born in Crete as Domenic Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) and painted his most famous paintings. El Greco’s dramatic and expressionist style was met with bewilderment by his contemporaries but found recognition in the 20th century. El Greco moved to Venice in 1567 to explore a new artistic approach to the development of the Venetian Renaissance paintings through the prism of artists such as Titian and Tintoretto.
El Greco’s works painted during his stay in Venice show both his embrace and his attempts to fully adapt to this method of painting. El Greco distinguished himself from other Cretan artists by developing his style and inventing new and rare interpretations of traditional religious themes. His work from this period shows the Venetian Renaissance style with elongated figures, chromatic paintings and sometimes multi-figure compositions in vivid landscapes, drawing inspiration from artists such as Titian and Tintoretto.
El Greco was born in Crete in 1570, which at that time was part of the Venetian Republic and the center of post-Byzantine art. El Greco later moved to Rome where he completed a series of works marked by his Venetian apprenticeship, which would later include seven paintings by the artist (Veduta del Monte Intorno at the age of 20 somewhere between 1560 and 1565, El Greco (
After working as an icon painter in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, in 1568 he left Crete to study Western-style painting in Venice influenced by Venetian painters Titian and Tintoretto who used their rich colors and free and sketchy painting style. In 1566 he is listed as a chief artist in Cretan documents; shortly after he went to Venice (Crete was then a Venetian possession), then in 1570 he moved to Rome.
When he was in his early 20s, he traveled to Venice and studied Titian, the most famous artist of his time — Painter, sculptor and architect of Cretan descent who settled in Spain and is considered the first great genius of the Spanish school — his real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos, and that is how he signed his paintings throughout his life, always in Greek letters and sometimes in Cres (Cretan). Little is known about his youth and only a few
Domenic Theotokopoulos known as El Greco ( Greek ) was born on the island of Crete, then the Venetian region, where he was educated as an icon painter, went to Rome in 1570, where he painted small portraits and religious works.
El Greco was a Greek painter whose emotional style vividly expressed the passion of the Spanish counter-reformation. El Greco is probably one of the most famous painters of his time to this day, more than 500 years after his death. Like Johannes Vermeer, Caravaggio and Sandro Botticelli he was rescued from obscurity by a group of avid collectors, critics and artists of the 19th century. He became one of the elected members of the modern age.
Three altars for the chapel of San José in Toledo (1597-1599), three paintings (1596-1600) for the College of Don Maria de Aragon, the Augustinian monastery in Madrid and the main altar, four side altars and a painting by S. Ildefonso for the Mayor of Capilla, Hospital de la Caridad (Hospital of the City of Capilla) are among his main orders from this period.
The two do not show any influence of his Byzantine heritage, except for the faces of the elderly – for example, in Christ healing the blind – the placement of figures in deep space and the emphasis on the architectural setting in Renaissance style are especially important in his early paintings such as Christ Cleansing the Temple. The first evidence of El Greco’s extraordinary gift as a portrait painter appears in Italy in the portrait of Giulio Clovio and Vincenzio Anastaggi.
This large painting, three and a half meters wide and almost five meters high, is widely regarded as the greatest masterpiece and most famous work by El Greco and is considered a fine example of Manner.
This Spanish artist of Greek descent was born in the capital Crete, then part of the Venetian Republic, whose family was Greek but likely Catholic, not Orthodox, and their members collaborated with the colonial powers. He was educated in late Byzantine tradition as a icon painter, but his contact with Italian engravings allowed him to absorb and partially use some of the country’s Renaissance formulas.
