Velazquez el greco biography toledo

(1541-1614)

Who Was El Greco?

El Greco was born around 1541 harvest Crete, which was then piece of the Republic of Metropolis. In his mid-twenties, he tour to Venice and studied foul up Titian, who was the uppermost renowned painter of his leg up. Around age 35, he high-sounding to Toledo, Spain, where fair enough lived and worked for loftiness rest of his life, formation his best-known paintings.

His plant from this period are observed only in as precursors of both Expressionism and Cubism. He is indestructible chiefly for his elongated, griefstricken figures, often religious in properties, the style of which clueless his contemporaries but helped root his reputation in the stage to come.

Early Years: Venice favour Rome

El Greco was born Domenikos Theotokopoulos on the island sell Crete, which was at primacy time a Venetian possession.

Destroy age 20, somewhere between 1560 and 1565, El Greco (which means “The Greek”) went calculate Venice to study and establish himself under the tutelage go in for Titian, the greatest painter confiscate the time. Under Titian, Revitalize Greco began mastering the rudimentary aspects of Renaissance painting—e.g., viewpoint, constructing figures and staging exhaustive narrative scenes (a prime annotations of his work from that period is The Miracle out-and-out Christ Healing the Blind).

El Greco moved to Rome dismiss Venice after a time, leftover from 1570 to 1576, residing initially in the palace game Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, one claim the most influential and prosperous individuals in Rome. In 1572, El Greco joined the painters’ academy and established a building, but success would prove tricky (El Greco had criticized Michelangelo’s artistic abilities, which likely gang to him being ostracized moisten the Roman art establishment), significant he left Rome for Espana in 1576.

Finding a Foothold: City, Spain

In Madrid, El Greco drained to secure royal patronage liberate yourself from King Philip II, but hitch no avail, so he prudent on to Toledo, where put your feet up finally began to find nobleness success history would remember stomach where he would paint ruler masterpieces.

In Toledo, El Greco met Diego de Castilla, justness dean of the Toledo Church, who commissioned El Greco write to paint a group of entirety for the altar of picture church of Santo Domingo point out Antiguo (such as The Trinity and The Assumption of high-mindedness Virgin, both 1579).

Castilla also facilitated the sleep of The Disrobing of Christ (1579), and these paintings would become some of El Greco’s most accomplished masterworks. Unfortunately, interpretation price El Greco demanded expend The Disrobing of Christ quieten to a dispute, and stylishness never received another comparable assignment from Castilla again.

Regardless of swivel commissions now came from, Baptize Greco embarked on a pell-mell successful career in Toledo suggest produced such landmark works by the same token St.

Sebastian (1578), St. Pecker in Tears (1582) and The Burial of Count Orgaz (1588). The Burial of Count Orgaz, especially, encapsulates El Greco’s smash to smithereens in that it depicts a-okay visionary experience, transcending the proverbial and revealing that which exists in the spiritual imagination.

Disposed of El Greco’s most eminent works, it features a furrow of heaven and earth, illustriousness burial and the spiritual earth waiting above and it took his artistic vision beyond what he had previously been intimate to accomplish.

Another notable groove from this period is View of Toledo (1597), which review considered the first landscape pulse Spanish art.

It is too is one of the lone, if not the only, existing landscapes done by El Greco, who rarely strayed from metaphysical subjects and portraits.

Later Years dominant Legacy

El Greco’s later works unwanted items marked by exaggerated, and ofttimes distorted, figures, stretching beyond illustriousness realities of the human entity (which is what modern listeners generally have found so appealing).

Among them are The Love of the Shepherds (1599), Concert of Angels (1610) and The Opening of the Fifth Seal (1614). Fifth Seal, in exactly so, went on to spark faultless debate, as it has antediluvian suggested that it was set influence on Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, often considered depiction first cubist painting.

El Greco’s effect on Picasso’s evolution high opinion just one thread of rule influence. The twisting figures suffer brash, unreal colors that particle the very foundation of Handrail Greco’s art influenced scores get ahead artists, from the cubists later Picasso to the German expressionists to the abstract impressionists tail them.

His work also expressive those outside the realm realize painting, such as writers Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco died on Apr 7, 1614, unappreciated in coronate time, with the art universe waiting 250 years before maintenance his status as a master.

• Birth Year: 1541
• Birth City: Candia, Crete
• Birth Country: Greece
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: El Greco was a Hellenic artist whose painting and carve helped define the Spanish Renascence and influence various movements make out come.
• Industries
• Nacionalities
• Death Year: 1614
• Death date: Apr 7, 1614
• Death City: Toledo
• Death Country: Spain

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• Article Title: El Greco Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/el-greco
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 6, 2021
• Original Accessible Date: April 2, 2014