Domínikos Theotokópoulosa, known as Grecob, born October 1, 1541 in Candia (today Heraklion) in Crete (then possession of the Republic of Venice) and died April 7, 1614 in Toledo, is a painter, sculptor and architect who was mainly active in Spain.

He is considered the founding painter of the Spanish School of the 16th century. His pictorial work, a synthesis of Renaissance Mannerism and Byzantine art, is characterized by elongated shapes and bright colors. Although he was celebrated during his lifetime, he was subsequently forgotten for more than a century. Rediscovered in the middle of the 19th century by the French Romantics in particular, his atypical painting has sparked countless comments, often in contradiction with proven historical facts. Its uniqueness influenced many 20th century artists, including Pablo Picasso and JACKSON Pollockc.
Biography
Beginnings in Crete

It seems that El Greco was trained in his hometown since he was made a master painter there in 1566. It then bears the Greek name of Menegos, whose Latin translation is Dominico1. He was then an icon painter in the Orthodox Byzantine tradition, helped by his brother Manuso, ten years his senior. We have different icons of him.
Stay in Italy

El Greco stayed from 1568 to 1570 in Venice, where he was identified as a “disciple” of Titian, although he did not use the same technique. He was also influenced by Tintoretto and Bassano2. He lived on the fringes of the Greek community of Venice and then collaborated with the Cretan geographer Georgios Suderos Kalopados to whom he sent cartographic drawings of Crete in 15681.

After a trip to Parma, where he saw the work of Correggio and Parmesan3,2, he arrived in Rome where he placed himself in the service of Cardinal Alexander Farnese in 1570. This is how he became involved with Fulvio Orsini, the cardinal's librarian, who became his protector and who acquired several of his works for his collections, including a View of Mount Sinai and the Portrait of Giulio Clovio. The latter, a miniaturist of Croatian origin, author of the cardinal's book of hours, became his friend4. From this period dates the portrait of Charles de Guise who organized the protection of the Greek Orthodox after the battle of Lepanto. This painting, kept in Zurich, which was long attributed to Tintoretto, was attributed to Greco in 1978.

El Greco left the Farnese Palace in 1572, without knowing the reason for his departure. According to Giulio Mancini5, it was El Greco's proposal to destroy and repaint the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel which provoked the wrath of the cardinal and his court6. According to some, he wanted to eliminate “indecent” nudes2. If not for this reason, his opposition to Michelangelo is quite well documented and dates back to his Roman period. He mentions in his notes that Michelangelo never knew how to paint hair or imitate skin tones, due to a lack of colors7,3. However, we have preserved the letter requesting an explanation from El Greco to Cardinal Farnese, a letter which remained unanswered.

On September 18, 1572, he was registered at the Accademia di San Luca as a painter of miniatures, which leaves art historians perplexed. It seems that he remained in Italy until 1576 with his two assistants, Lattanzio Bonastri da Lucignano and Francesco Preboste. The latter will accompany him to Spain.
The Holy Alliance, or the dream of Philip II, between 1577 and 1580, Escurial. Proposal rejected for the decoration of the Escorial.
The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice, circa 1580-1582, Escurial. 2nd canvas rejected for the Escorial.
Installation in Spain

He arrived in Spain, under Philip II, during the period considered the Golden Age, when wealth flowed and the arts developed, despite the censorship of the Inquisition.

It seems that El Greco was living in Madrid near the Court when he received the commission for L'Expolio for the cathedral of Toledo. The dean of the cathedral, Diego de Castilla, is the father of Luis de Castilla with whom El Greco had become friends in Rome. The composition of the Trinity altarpiece commissioned in 1577 for Santo Domingo el Antiguo de Toledo seems to have also been approved by this same Diego de Castilla.

In 1578, his son Jorge Manuel was born in Toledo. Nothing is known about the child's mother, Jeronima de las Cuevas, whom El Greco did not marry. The child was raised by the Cuevas family and El Greco himself did not settle in Toledo until 1585.

In 1579, Philip II of Spain commissioned The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice, intended for the Escorial Palace, but the painting, no more than The Holy Alliance, did not please the king, nor the Court, nor the Inquisition which did not find it faithful enough to the spirit of the Council of Trent8. During this council, the starting point of the Counter-Reformation in Catholic countries, it was decided to put in the foreground the mystical and supernatural aspects of religious experience9: the martyrdom of the saint in El Greco's painting is in the second plan, little li

hire musicians, whom he paid to accompany his meals12”. In 1604, El Greco and his family occupied 24 rooms in the house.
Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara, 1600-1601, New York, Metropolitan museum of art.

Religious and private orders poured in, particularly numerous portraits. In 1596, he received the commission for the major altarpiece of the Collegio de la Encarnación in Madrid, then in 1603 that of the Collegio de San Bernardino in Toledo and that of the Hospital de la Caridad de Illescas, finally that of Tavera, for which he creates painting, sculpture and architecture1.

In 1603, his son Jorge Manuel married, he appeared as his father's assistant or as an independent painter in the style invented by his father. The painter is also assisted by Luis Tristan. In 1604, El Greco's brother, Manuso, died in Toledo, where he was buried.

Between 1605 and 1608, the engraver Diego de Astor reproduced a series of his paintings.
Last years, ruined and sick

The year 1606 marks the start of the trials of the sponsors of the altarpieces against El Greco and his son. They are often the consequence of the commercial processes of the painter who, for example, asked his assistant Francisco Prebloste to make an agreement with a Genoese from Seville so that his paintings could be reproduced in embroidery. His workshop reproduces each of his paintings three or four times in different formats, particularly devotional paintings such as the series dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi. Furthermore, from 1608, his state of health deteriorated, and his son Jorge Manuel falsified his signature on contracts1.

In 1611, Francisco Pacheco, painter, art theorist and theologian, visited him in Toledo. He describes his meeting with El Greco who shows him his models, models and wax sculptures made by his hand, used to compose the canvases, then the small oil painted originals of all his compositions. To the question: “Which is more difficult, painting or drawing?” », Greco would have replied “use color”. On this occasion, he confirmed his opinion on Michelangelo and added: “he was certainly a good man but who did not know how to paint”13. Pacheco describes El Greco as a “painter-philosopher”14.

In 1612, his son bought him a tomb. El Greco died ruined on April 7, 1614 in Toledo, leaving no will. He is buried there religiously in the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. His son takes inventory of his father's possessions while trying to escape seizures from the Tavera Hospital with whom he is in court over the still unfinished altarpiece.

In 1619, El Greco's remains were transferred to the Church of San Torcuato in Toledo. The church was destroyed in 1868, the graves scattered. All that remains of his tomb is the description of the Spanish poet Luis de Góngora, contemporary of Greco, Tomb of Domenico Greco, excellent painter:

    “Elegant in form, O Passerby, This luminous stone of hard porphyry Deprives the world of the softest brush, Which gave spirit to wood and life to the painting. His name is worthy of a breath more powerful than that of the trumpets of Fame. This marble field amplifies it. Worship him and move on. Here lies the Greek. He inherited Nature Art. He studied Art. From Iris the colors. From Phoebus the lights and from Morpheus the shadows. May this urn, despite its hardness, Drink the tears, and exude their perfumes. Funeral Bark of the Saba tree. »

Social circle in Toledo
View of Toledo under a storm, 1596-1600, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portrait of Jerónimo de Cevallos, mayor of Toledo, 1613, Madrid, Prado Museum.
Brother Hortensio Felix de Paravicino, circa 1609, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

In the circle of the El Greco family in Toledo, as we know it today, that is to say with Manuso, the elder merchant brother, Jorge Manuel, the son, Jeronima de las Cuevas, the child's mother, as well as the various assistants of the workshop, is joined by a small group of Toledan friends and scholars whose names we know and whose portraits El Greco painted.

El Greco frequented Luis de Castilla, dean of the cathedral of Toledo and natural son of Diego de Castilla, who owned some of his paintings. Andrez Nunez of Madrid, priest of the church of Santo Tomé, and related to the de La Fuente family, also owned paintings by El Greco, and helped the painter obtain commissions from clients, including a doctor, Martin Ramirez de Zayas, professor of theology at the University of Toledo. Alonso de la Fuente Montalban is the treasurer of La Ceca de Toledo. In the council of the city government, the doctrinal orthodoxy of the paintings is the charge of Doctor Pedro Salazar de Mendoza who, it seems, owned the View of Toledo. This council also counts among its members Jeronimo Oraa de Chiroboga, Rodriguez Vazquez de Arce, whose portrait is currently in the Prado Museum, Francisco Pantoja de Ayala, Domingo Peeronima de las Cuevas, El Greco's companion, is mentioned in different documents, notably in the last power of the painter to his son. We know nothing about her, about her social origin; the fact that she is mentioned in this power does not indicate that she was dead or alive at the time of its writing. Her name was attached in the 19th century in England, to the Woman in Furs from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. This painting is today attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello18. The existence of an El Greco daughter has no historical basis, a pure invention of Théophile Gautier and cited by Maurice Barrès.

Some art historians and positivist doctors, such as Maurice Barrès in the early 20th century, suggest that El Greco suffered from an eye problem, perhaps a retinal malformation which would have influenced his painting: "A Spanish oculist , Doctor German Béritens, maintained […] that it was astigmatism […] the proof: take from an optician the spectacle lenses that oculists prescribe […], El Greco's canvas will immediately appear normal to you , natural, totally devoid of these faults of distorting proportions”19. However, it should be noted that the elongation of forms is already present and characteristic of Spanish painters of the 16th century before Greco, in particular Luis de Morales.
Portrait of a gentleman from the House of Leiva, 1580, Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts.

The madness of El Greco, a theme that appeared with romanticism, in particular with Théophile Gautier, has no historical basis. The German historian Carl Justi, in 1888, in Diego Velázquez and his century, affirmed that El Greco's painting represents

    “the mirror and the summary of pictorial degenerations. Prisoner of his crazy dreams, his brush seems to want to reveal to us the secret of the extravagant incubi that his overheated brain generated. With his feverish fingers he modeled figures that seemed to be made of rubber, twelve heads high, and after having painted them haphazardly, without modeling or contours or perspective, he painted them in strange symmetrical rows; blue and sulfur were his favorite colors, the canvas having previously been coated with white and a blackish purple. This is most likely explained by a disturbance of the organ of sight; the psychological causes are the desire to appear original, megalomania, bravado, temporary miseries and inevitable offenses to a stranger. Such situations are not rare in the lives of artists, but they found favorable ground in his neuropathic nature. »

In 1955, a doctor from Toledo, Gregorio Marañón, claimed to explain the spirituality of El Greco's characters by the madness of the models used, who according to him “had the same morphology and the same expressive exaltation”; To do this, this doctor dressed the “insane” in the Toledo asylum in robes and photographed them in poses inspired by the paintings; his book El Greco y Toledo had a great impact in its time.

These quotes mark the incomprehension of certain historians of modern art in the face of a particular aesthetic, theological and poetic system which paradoxically does not function on the identity of the artist (his signature), but on a singular and sought-after image which can be repeated by others (the workshop, copyists, etc.) while retaining its iconic force20.

The House of El Greco museum in Toledo was invented from scratch at the beginning of the 20th century, by the Spanish painting dealer Vega-Inclan who sold Greco, but also Sorolla, Velázquez, and Goya to major collections and museums. Americans, and by the Spanish art historian Manuel Bartiolomé Cossio to satisfy tourists. It was built in 1905 by the Spanish architect Eludio Laredo who made a pastiche of a 16th century palace from the ruined walls of the palace of the Marquis of Villena, of approximately 2,000 m2, which Vega-Inclan had bought for this purpose. To do this, the architect brought stones from the Marchena Palace in Seville, or columns from Burgos. The museum was completed in 1925 with the construction of a Mudejar-style chapel. Vega-Inclan was also Spain's Minister of Tourism (commissario de Regio) from 1911 to 1928. Entirely decorated with period objects, the museum recreates a probable interior, kitchen, workshop, bedrooms, etc. in which El Greco could have lived, but where he never did. In 1909, 1,000 tourists visited the house, in 1911 4,000, in 1912 40,000, 80,000 in 1924, 100,000 in 1925. This house then became the first private tourist-cultural establishment in the city.
Works
Detailed article: List of works by El Greco.

After his death, his works fell into relative oblivion. El Greco was no longer known in the 19th century except by some of his students or followers. It was only at the very end of this century that artists and critics created an architectural structure decorated with columns and pediments. The architecture of the altarpiece is reminiscent of the iconostases of Greek Orthodox churches.
The Trinity, 1577, Madrid, Prado Museum.

The paintings of the altarpiece are today scattered in different museums, the current paintings are modern copies. The painting The Assumption of the Virgin, which occupies the largest part of this altarpiece, in the lower register, still reflects the Italian influence. The composition of the painting of The Trinity kept in Madrid at the Prado Museum is taken from an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, the pose of Christ is taken from Michelangelo. God is painted as a venerable old man with long hair and a white beard and holds the dead Christ before him in his hands. He is dressed in white like the Pope, wears