El Greco at the Museo Nacional Thussey-Bornemisza.
El Greco was a master of Spanish painting, whose highly individual dramatic and expressionistic style met with the puzzlement of his contemporaries but gained newfound appreciation in the 20th century. He married Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting. He is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism. He has been characterised by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no school. He also worked as a sculptor and as an architect.
El Greco was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, in Greek letters often adding the word Kes, which means Cretan in Ancient Greek.
Extreme distortion of body characterises was a feature in his latest works, such as a tendency to elongate the human figure. He discarded classicist criteria such as measure and proportion. In his mature works he demonstrated a characteristic tendency to dramatise rather than to describe.
He regarded colour as the most important and the most ungovernable element of painting and declared that colour had primacy over form. He used brilliant, dissonant colours and strange shapes, sometimes disregarding the laws of nature. Painter Francisco Pacheco who visited El Greco in 1611, wrote that El Greco liked 'the colours crude and unmixed in great blocks as a boastful display of his dexterity' and that 'he believed in constant repainting and retouching in order to make the broad masses flat as in nature'.
Christ with the Cross, 1587-1596
Christ holding the cross was a favourite motif with El Greco. He created an isolated image that seems to have been extremely popular with his clients to judge from the nunmber of known autographed versions and copies. He transformed a narrative episode into a devotional one, presenting a moment from Christ's sacrifice that encourages the viewer to focus on his physical suffering.
In these images Christ is depicted alone, standing, and bust-length or slightly more than half-length, holding the cross and wearing the crown of thorns that produces wounds from which the blood runs down his face and neck. The backgrounds of these compositions are either a dark sky, or, as in the present canvas, a neutral tone that emphasises the figure and further encourages the use of the painting as a devotional image. The episode, which took place during Christ's ascent of Mount Golgotha, depicts him pausing to look up at the sky and establish a dialogue with God the Father, during which he accepts his sacrifice. The result is to emphasise the spiritual aspect of this episode over the earthly, narrative one.
The hands are always crucial elements in these compositions. Like Christ's face, they function to convey the emotional mood, while the beautiful manner in which they are painted emphasises their position and symbolic function. They have long, slender fingers of elegant proportions with the bone structure clearly visible, terminating in pearly nails that are firmly and sensitively modelled.
The Immaculate Conception, 1608-1614
A very poor photograph of this painting, I'm afraid. I had problems with my camera while we were in Madrid.
The Immaculate Conception was originally in the church of San Vicente. The figure of the Madonna floats heavenward in a proxysm of ecstacy as she is supported by long, distorted angels. The fantastic view of Toledo below, abstractly rendered, is dazzling in its ghostly moonlit brilliance, and the clusters of roses and lillies, symbols of the Virgin's purity, are unalloyed in their sheer beauty.
The Annunciation, 1575-76
Throughout his life El Greco painted numerous versions of the Anunciation, thus allowing his stylistic development to be traced through his treatment of this Bibilical episode. This painting is thought to be one of the last versions to be executed in Italy, and is clearly influenced by the Venetian style. From her prayer-stool on the left of the painting, the Virgin listens attentively to the message of the Archangel, a figure rendered very much in the Veronese style.
The light and the colouring owe much to Titian, a painter El Greco admired, while the arrangement of the figures and the treatment of the drapery strongly recall the work of Tintoretto. Here, El Greco places the figures within a simple architectural setting, loosely framing them to make the scene more realistic.
The hands are highly expressive, showing the Virgin's fear and surprise and the angel's adoration.
Looking closer
This is a small-scale replica of the canvas on the same subject now in the Museo del Prado and was originally part of the altarpiece painted for the church of the Augustinian Collegio de Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion.
El Greco painted the scenes in small spaces, emphasising the vertical format, and bathing them in a ghostly light that enhances the unreality of the figures, which are arranged in a very marked foreshortening and have very expressive features. The colours which are cold, intense and contrasting, are appliced very loosely over powerful anatomical constructions and are perfect of El Greco's hightly personal style in the final stretch of his career. The emotional force of the painting is increased by the use of contrasting colour and the style of the brushstroke.
El Greco organised the compositional space into two halves corresponding to the earthly and celestial realms.
The earthly realm contains few concrete references apart from the reading desk and various attributes of the Virgin. The spatial context of any elements of the room have disappeared and the air that envelops the figures has an unreal atmosphere. El Greco focused on the moment when Mary accepts the message of the Archangel, which crosses its hands on its breast in a gesture of veneration.
The upper half of the composition is filled with a cloud of glory in which a choir of musical angels playing instruments follow the directions of the one on the left who beats time, holding the score.
El Greco unites the earthly and celestial realms with a ray of light made up of cherubims' heads through which the dove of the Holy Spirit descends.
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