El Greco: The Complete Story
El Greco, who lived from 1541 to 1614, was the Greek icon painter who became one of Spain's greatest artists. His stretched, flame like figures and acid colors looked so strange in his own time that he was nearly forgotten for centuries, then hailed as a father of modern art.
Five fast facts about El Greco
Born in Crete in 1541, his real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos.
Trained first as a Byzantine icon painter.
Studied in Venice and Rome before moving to Spain.
Settled in Toledo, where he did his greatest work.
Forgotten for 250 years, then rediscovered around 1900.
The Greek who learned to paint icons
He was born on the island of Crete, then ruled by Venice, in 1541. His real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos. El Greco, the Greek, was just a nickname the Spanish gave him later.
He trained in the old Byzantine tradition, painting flat, golden religious icons. That spiritual, unworldly look never fully left him, even when he learned to paint like a Westerner.
He passed through Venice and Rome
Around 1567 he moved to Venice and absorbed the rich color and loose brushwork of Titian's city. In Rome he also became a sharp portrait painter, but his pride got him into trouble.
By one famous account he offered to repaint Michelangelo's Last Judgment, which he found indecent, and to do it better. That kind of arrogance made him enemies and few patrons.
Toledo made him, the king rejected him
In 1577 he came to Spain hoping to win royal commissions from Philip II. The king tried him once, disliked the result, and never hired him again.
So El Greco settled in the old city of Toledo and became its painter. There, free of court taste, he developed the strange, soaring Mannerist style that is unmistakably his, lit with the dramatic dark and light of his adopted Spain.
Why his figures stretch toward heaven
El Greco's people are impossibly tall and thin, their bodies pulled upward like flames. For a long time some doctors guessed he had an eye defect, an astigmatism, that made him see the world stretched.
That theory has been thrown out. Any eye problem would have distorted his copying too. The elongation was a deliberate choice, a way to make flesh look weightless and reaching for God.
He lived grandly and died in debt
In Toledo he lived like a lord, renting a grand house and, the story goes, hiring musicians to play while he ate. He never married his companion Jeronima, but had a son, Jorge Manuel, who worked in his studio.
Despite steady commissions he was often in debt, and he died in Toledo in 1614.
Forgotten for centuries, then reborn
For about 250 years El Greco was dismissed as a bizarre oddity. Then, around 1900, artists looking for emotion over realism rediscovered him.
Cezanne and the Expressionists studied him, and Picasso drew directly on his work for the figures of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The rejected Greek had become a forerunner of modern art.
The questions people ask about El Greco
Who was El Greco?
A painter born in Greek Crete who became a master of the Spanish Renaissance, working mostly in Toledo.
What was his real name?
Domenikos Theotokopoulos. El Greco simply means the Greek.
When and where was he born?
On the island of Crete in 1541.
How did he die?
Of illness in Toledo, Spain, in 1614.
Why are his figures so stretched?
By choice, for spiritual effect. The old idea that it came from an eye defect has been rejected.
Where can you see his work?
In the Prado in Madrid, and across the city of Toledo, where many pieces still hang.
How a reject became modern
A Greek who annoyed Rome and was turned away by the king of Spain spent his life in a provincial Spanish town, then vanished from the story for 250 years. When he came back, in 1907, his stretched saints stood directly behind Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon and the birth of modern art. Few comebacks in history have been so complete.
For the strange details, see interesting facts about El Greco.