Feature

el greco

Becoming
El Greco
This April marks the 400th anniversary of El Grecos death, with museums
worldwide mounting special events and exhibitions in honour of the artists life and work.
But who was El Greco, and is it possible to reconcile his stylistic development
with an art-historical tradition that has often distanced him from his Greek origins?

Writer Andrew r.casper

T
he fickle nature of historical
memory makes it difficult to
imagine if El Grecos admirers and
detractors during the arc of his
career, from the late 1500s to the early 1600s,
could have anticipated that his death in 1614
would occasion such pervasive attention 400
years later. Such as it is, the painters passing
or rather, the legacy of the life and artistic
work that preceded it is being celebrated
through a number of highly publicised events
that promise to thrust the artist into the
spotlight perhaps more forcefully than ever
before. All year long, the Spanish city of
Toledo, the artists adopted home for the
entirety of his mature career, is staging a
series of symposia, exhibitions, and other
activities to honour the life and career of her
native son who died 400 years ago (on 7
April, to be exact).1 Japan got its celebrations
out of the way with the retrospective El Grecos
Visual Poetics at the National Museum of Art,
Osaka and then Tokyo Metropolitan Art
Museum, where it closed on7 April last year.
Elsewhere, museums worldwide housing
paintings from the artists extant corpus are
marking the quadricentennial in their own
ways in the first half of the calendar year.
Of note, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
in Madrid has been showcasing four newly
restored paintings in aspecial exhibition
El Greco: From Italy to Toledo (10 January
2 March) and will later host an international
symposium (2123 May); on 22 March, the
National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
honours the anniversary with a scholarly
symposium, El Greco: 400 Years After; and
on 3 May, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
will feature a film and roundtable discussion
by prominent El Greco scholars. Later in the
year, two exhibitions at the Benaki Museum
in Athens El Grecos Friends and Patrons
in Toledo and El Greco Between Venice
and Rome (both November 2014February
2015) will be punctuated by a three-day
international conference, El Greco: From
Crete, to Venice, to Rome, to Toledo (21
23 November). Surely there are others that
have eluded the attention of even this El
Greco scholar.
Truth be told, were these institutions to
advertise their celebrations using the artists
given name, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, it is
unlikely that many outside the relatively small
circle of specialists on the master would take
notice, let alone realise who the man with the
cumbersome Greek name is. But the name

114 apollo march 2014

Feature
el greco
that features prominently on every bit of
publicity for these events, as well as gracing
every publication on the artist in the last
century, is of course his rather popularly
known and recognisable nickname, El Greco.
While guaranteed to draw attention from
scholars, students and casual enthusiasts
alike, few realise that this name is entirely
posthumous; El Greco as an autonomous
appellative was never used during the artists
lifetime. This cognitive discrepancy between
the artists unknown yet proper name, and
hismore commonly indeed, universally
used though anachronistic moniker suggests
that the process of becoming El Greco has
transcended the lifespan of the man himself
and continues to unfold to this day. What is
it about El Greco today that warrants such
laudatory exultation one century short of a
rounder half-millennium after his death
besides, that is, the obvious reminder of our
own mortality, which denies any of us the
chance to witness perhaps even larger cele-
brations in 2114? Who, in other words, is
the El Greco whose death the world is paus-
ing to remember so urgently 400 years after
the fact?
One of the most unique, and ultimately
misunderstood, masters in the history of
Western art, El Grecos legacy is preserved
inthe form of paintings that have both
confounded and inspired viewers ever since
he put brush to canvas. He is best regarded
(some might say blamed) for the flickering
luminosity imparted to the representation
ofsaints and holy figures (Figs. 2, 4, 5), as
well asto portraits of his own contemporaries
(Fig. 3), whose dematerialisation of form
surely appeared nearly as strange to viewers
in El Grecos time as it does to our own eyes.
Indeed, nobody really painted like El Greco
before, during, or after his emergence in late
16th-century Spain. Observers still frequently
ponder whether a unique infatuation with
spiritual mysticism, debilitating astigmatism,
or plain eccentricity could be responsible for
distorting his perception of the world into
elongated supernatural forms, seemingly
weightless bodies, erratic flashes of light
116 apollo march 2014
2
andcolour, and spatial environments that
manage to appear at once claustrophobic and
vacuous (Fig. 7). But we too easily forget that
these are traits that adorn what amount to
lateworks, produced by an already mature
painter whose underexplored artistic genesis
took place earlier and more geographically
distant than many realise. And so focusing
1 P
 ortrait of a Man (presumed
self-portrait), c. 15901600
El Greco (Domenikos
Theotokopoulos; 15411614)
Oil on canvas, 52.746.7cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
2 Christ Carrying the Cross, 160005
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 10878cm
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
3 Portrait of Antonio Covarrubias, c. 1600
El Greco
3 Oil on canvas, 6857cm
Muse du Louvre, Paris
RMN-Grand Palais (Muse du
Louvre)/Thierry Ollivier
4 Adoration of the Shepherds, 161214
El Greco
Oil on Canvas, 319180cm
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
juston the paintings in which El Grecos hand
is most recognisable by observers today is to
miss, and possibly warp, the true nature of
who El Greco was or, better yet, who he had
by then become.
Born around 1541 in Crete, El Greco was
trained as an icon painter in his hometown of
Candia (now Heraklion) before moving to
4
feature
el greco
Venice in 1567. There he studied the art
of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and other
masters of Venetian Renaissance painting.
In1570, for reasons that are not entirely clear
perhaps a nagging desire to advance his
self-driven tutorial on Italian Renaissance art
El Greco left for Rome, where he hoped, but
ultimately failed, to attract long-term patronage
from Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. In 1572 he
joined the local painters guild, the precursor
to the Academy of Saint Luke, and by most
accounts though some scholars disagree
remained in Rome for the next four years.
In1576 El Greco moved again, to Spain, likely
motivated by the promise of lucrative work
opportunities that had up to that point eluded
him. Though he did not earn the lofty appoint-
ment to the Spanish royal court that he initially
desired, his vagabonding came to asudden
end when he found happier reception and
more prosperous professional circumstances as
a painter of mostly religious images in Toledo.
After completing the design and execution of
the high altar of Santo Domingo el Antiguo,
the first major commission of his career, and
the Espolio (157779) for the cathedral, he
remained in Toledo until his death in 1614.
Henever returned to Crete or Italy. How
can El Grecos surviving output of works
be reconciled with abiographical trajectory
that began with lurching starts and stops
in the eastern Mediterranean and ended up
depositing him thrice-removed and about
1600 miles from his place of birth for the
remainder of his life?
Luckily, we are dramatically better
equipped today to understand who this artist
was than we were even a couple of decades
ago. El Greco has been the subject of
burgeoning scholarly interest among art
historians that has steadily accelerated over
the course ofthe past 20 or 30 years. When
we now look through the lens of the artists
biography at paintings that have drawn rapt
attention for much of the period since his
death, and also others only recently redis-
covered after centuries of obscurity, we
are struck more than ever by how much
El Grecos style changed rapidly and
march 2014 apollo 117
Feature
el greco
5 St Peter, 161013
6 Adoration of the Magi, c. 156067
7 The Annunciation, 15971600
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 315174cm
seemingly capriciously, but always in accor-
8 St Luke Painting the Virgin and Child,
dance with theplaces where he found himself
living and working. And yet at the same time,
as I have explored elsewhere, this transient-
cum-stationary artist openly and consistently
identified himself as aGreek painter, never
signing a painting at any point of his career
inany language other than his native one.
Infact, he often appended a simple yet declar-
ative of Crete after his proper name on
paintings, and on documents referred to
himself with his full Greek name Domenikos
Theotokopoulos even as others adopted the
more expedient yet Latin-inflected Domenico
Greco. Consequently, nobody could make
anymistake that he was anything but a
foreigner to them yet had forged a painting
style foreign to everyone. Greekness, appar-
ently, carried marketable prestige that he
wished to maintain as an expat artist, even
5 8
if the appearance of his paintings in Italy
andSpain concealed visible clues of his
ethnicidentity.2
The indelibility of El Grecos Greek
origins and, by consequence, that of his
stylistic metamorphosis emerged with stark
clarity in the exhibition The Origins of El
Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete at the
Alexander S. Onassis Cultural Center in New
York in 200910.3 There, seven panels spanning
the arc of El Grecos career joined 41 other
works by 15th- and 16th-century Cretan icon
painters. The juxtaposition of examples of El
Grecos earliest work with those of his Greek
compatriots were revelatory. Firstly, it showed
how closely he followed what might be charac-
terised as Byzantine styles of painting, marked
by a resplendent use of gold and restrained,
even sinewy figural forms. Secondly, it
exhibited El Grecos embrace of the surprising
hybridity of styles that Cretan icon painters in
the 16th century specially cultivated as Italian
Renaissance models exerted an ever greater
influence (Figs. 6 & 8). Hence we see El Greco
emerging out of a cultural and artistic context
that maintained a strong hold on its Byzantine
roots, but allowed for some artistic experi-
mentation with achievements by 16th-century
Italian and other European masters, often
118 apollo march 2014
feature
el greco
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 209106cm
Monasterio de San Lorenzo
de El Escorial, Madrid
Spanish National Heritage
El Greco
Egg tempera on panel, 5662cm
Benaki Museum, Athens
The Bridgeman Art Library
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
before 1567
El Greco
Tempera and gold on canvas attached
to panel, 41.633cm
Benaki Museum, Athens
The Bridgeman Art Library
transmitted through prints. In this way, the
exhibition made representative examples
of El Grecos Italian and Spanish phases
glimmer with new appreciation for how much
he changed.
Having been informed by a tradition that
fertilised a Byzantine and Western artistic
polyglottism, it should not be surprising that
when El Greco arrived in Italy he found
recourse to explore Italian Renaissance
painting with determined focus and intensity,
quickly discarding visible signs of his Cretan
training. My own book, Art and the Religious
Image in El Grecos Italy (published this year
with Penn State University Press), seeks to
understand better the artists largely over-
looked Italian period in a way that should
clarify as much as it muddles his later, more
recognisable work. My focus is on the religious
motivations for El Grecos paintings from the
Venetian and Roman periods. These bear
evidence of efforts to reformulate religious
images in accordance with their prescribed
devotional purpose, newly re-emphasised in
the Counter Reformation but also maintain
the value of conspicuous artistry as a means to
that end. Resulting in representative examples
of what I call the artful icon, the core of this
6 7
march 2014 apollo 119
Feature
el greco
9 Christ Healing the Blind Man
157075
El Greco
Oil on canvas, 5061cm
Galleria Nazionale, Parma

study is the unmistakable effort with which

the painter styled himself as an Italian master
(Fig. 9). El Greco remained an icon painter, in
the sense that he undoubtedly expected his
paintings to function religiously for Catholic
audiences in ways not altogether distinct from
what Orthodox (and, we must allow, Catholic)
audiences expected out of Cretan icons. But
his works also betray a range of Italian motifs
that he could only superficially have absorbed
outside Venice and Rome: an eager desire to
adopt the colouring practices of Venetian
painters and the form-defining design of
central Italian ones, particularly Michelangelo;
a concerted effort to understand the theo-
retical nuances of this stylistic synthesis;
implementation of the most recent practical,
theoretical, and scientific inquiries into optics
and perspective for the purposes of experiential
engagement; and a studious incorporation
of ancient Roman monuments to bolster a
distinctly Counter Reformation Christian
ideology. The paintings surprise many in how
different they appear from his Cretan icons
and how thoroughly mainsteam they appear
when measured against works by other Italian
9
painters (even in the early 1700s, Antonio
Palomino claimed that El Grecos works were viewers to experience the same fascination of artistic heirs that the master himself could
often mistaken for those of Titian). Equally and wonder that admirers in El Grecos own hardly have envisioned. We can only assume
extraordinary is how little they foreshadow lifetime could have felt. that El Grecos stirring paintings will continue
any desires to move away from Italy. If the publicity surrounding this years to be the contagions they have always been.
But El Greco did go to Spain. From there, 400th anniversary of El Grecos death does In that case, who will he have become the
we are tempted to say that he became the anything, it proves the longevity of his legacy, next time people gather to celebrate his life
familiar El Greco people today commonly which has informed the ebb and flow of and career? o
recognise. But the experiences in Crete and Western art for the intervening centuries as
Italy that preceded and ultimately spurred artists responded to his achievements in paint. Andrew R. Casper is Assistant Professor
thisthird stylistic metamorphosis have a way A final illustration of this very point can be of Art History at Miami University, and
of enriching the appeal of his more familiar found in the recent exhibition, in 2012, of the author of Art and the Religious Image
Spanish paintings, while casting added ElGreco and Modernism at the Kunstpalast in El Grecos Italy (Penn State University
mystery over them. His idiosyncratic style in in Dsseldorf, Germany.4 Visitors were treated Press, 2014).
this period bears few blatant connections to to incisive glimpses of the ways in which some
either the Cretan or Italian manner of pictorial of the most important exponents of European 1/ The full itinerary of events can be 3/ For the catalogue, see Anastasia
consulted at www.elgreco 2014.com, Drandaki (ed.), The Origins of El
representation. But neither is it inherently modernism German expressionists foremost accessed 30 January 2014. Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete,
Spanish. Perhaps it is this enduring otherness among them, but also Picasso and others 2/ See my article Greeks Abroad:
exh. cat., Onassis Cultural Center,
New York, 2009.
that he embraced then and which remains caught what has been called El Greco fever, (As)signing Artistic Identity in Early
Modern Europe, Renaissance Studies 4/ For the catalogue, see Beat Wismer
resonant for us now not the Cretan painter after large exhibitions of the masters work (forthcoming 2014); published and Michael Scholz-Hnsel (eds.),
online in early view format prior ElGreco and Modernism, exh. cat.,
he started out as, or the Italian Renaissance inthe early 1900s. In the eyes of these artists, to its appearance in print at Kunstpalast, Dsseldorf, 2012.
interloper that he eagerly tried to be for a ElGreco, dead for three centuries, was modern, www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
doi/10.1111/rest.12014/full,
decade that allows generations of later and his unique paintings influenced the work accessed 30 January 2014.

120 apollo march 2014