El Greco (1540–1614) – A personal history

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Ian Charnock explores the life of an artist who continues to intrigue, 400 years after his death

A most annoying cliché of recent years has been the description of a life or indeed any set of experiences as a ‘journey’. In the case of El Greco, however, it is both literally true (born in Crete, he certainly travelled to Venice, Rome, Madrid and Toledo but must have visited many other places en route) and figuratively true (from Greek Orthodox to Roman Catholic but with the possibility of Lutheranism somewhere in between, and from Byzantine icon master, to follower of Titian and Tintoretto, to acerbic critic of Michelangelo), becoming one of the most original artists who has ever put brush to support.

In his own testimony in a court case concerning a dispute over payment from a church, El Greco revealed his age and place of birth so that it is known that he was born in either 1540 or 1541 in the Candia, then the capital of Crete, which was at the time part of the Mediterranean empire of Venice. The family name of the artist was Theotokopoulos and his given name was Domenikos so he may have been born in early August and named for the founder of the Dominican order (died 6 August 1221).

The Theotokopoulos family worked as functionaries for the Venetian government and the artist’s brother, Manusso, was a tax collector. Domenikos trained as an artist, a master who charged the highest prices in Crete for his work. This early work was in the Byzantine tradition now associated with icon paintings, in which rich colour and line dominate any suggestion of three-dimensional space. In 1566 he was allowed to run a lottery, which enabled him to raise money. Whether this was to pay for his relocation to Venice or to provide for his family is unclear.

In Venice he probably lived in the area of San Giorgio – the church with the leaning tower where the Greek Orthodox ritual is still celebrated. Around the altar are representations of subjects that stayed with the artist all his life – the Annunciation, Adoration of the Shepherds (but not Magi), Baptism of Christ, and Crucifixion. His other most likely haunts were the studio of Titian  and possibly the Scuola di San Rocco to view the work in progress by Tintoretto.

What happened to El Greco after Venice? It is known that he went to Rome and was employed in various capacities by the influential Farnese family. Here he made friends with Fulvio Orsini and Guilio Clovio and antagonized the supporters of the recently deceased Michelangelo by criticizing that artist’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. He offered to repaint this to an equal standard and with more decorum, as would befit the new austerities of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation.

Then he seems to disappear from view until 2July 1577, when he is recorded as being in Toledo and having been to Madrid. Where did he go? Suggestions have included Naples, Parma, Florence and Dalmatia. All are possible for various reasons but there is as yet no documentary evidence to confirm or refute these hypotheses.

Why did El Greco go to Spain? There have been many suggestions. The obvious economics of the situation remain a good starting point: he was getting no major commissions in Italy and had met a number of influential Toledans so it seems likely that he had some form of introduction into the commissioning classes of Toledo. Luis de Castilla was one of these contacts. His father was Diego de Castilla, the Dean of Toledo cathedral, for whom El Greco painted El Espolio (The Disrobing of Christ, 1577–9). Also at this time Philip II was building El Escorial, the huge granite palace/mausoleum/monastery/library several miles outside the new capital of Madrid. The project needed artists and Philip was a great patron of Titian, El Greco’s hero, so perhaps he felt that he could secure royal patronage. El Greco did not please the king, however – his Martyrdom of the Theban Legion (1580–1) was praised and paid for but did not lead to any further major royal patronage. Thus El Greco returned to Toledo and remained there for the rest of his life.

Again this begs the question of why Toledo? The romantics would suggest love. The mother of his Spanish-born child, Jorge Manuel, was Dona Jeronima de las Cuevas. Yet they never married. One document described her as ‘una soltera’, which meant a single woman. Perhaps she died in childbirth, or maybe the artist was already married. The obvious answer would appear to be more mundane; he was able to build up a strong client/patron base in Toledo at first through his contacts and later owing to his own talents both artistic and social.

Nonetheless, the question always remains – why did he paint in the way that he did? What explains the elongation of the figures, the inconsistencies of scale, the unusual juxtapositions and the use of ‘shot’ colour, the visible brushstrokes? There is a surprising amount of information that does help art historians to make an informed judgement, although with the admirable independence of that body there is little actual agreement and there are still a number of avenues that have not been fully explored.

When El Greco lay dying he swore that he died in the ‘true Catholic faith’. He was also intestate so an inventory was made of his possessions. Among these items were a number of books – in Greek, in Italian, in Romance, but none in Latin. This list has been something of a double-edged sword for art historians. On the one hand the list appears authoritative but on the other several books have been discovered that were owned by the artist but were not included in the inventory. It is also known that scholars swapped books or gave them as gifts. Thus to rely on the inventory to support a thesis is to build on not entirely solid foundations.

The inventory was drawn up by a priest who was clearly not very interested in El Greco’s possessions.  There is a surprising sparsity of furniture and artist’s materials recorded and the books get rather short shrift. Thus instead of what we would expect now – author’s name, title of book, place and date of publication – quite often only the author’s name or the work’s title is recorded, not both, which makes very fertile soil for speculation.

In 1611 El Greco was interviewed by no less a person than the Inquisitor for Art, Francisco Pacheco, the father-in-law of a certain Diego Rodrigo da Silva y Velazquez. Although the interview was not published until 1649, in Pacheco’s Arte de la Pintura, there is much that still feels fresh as the day they met and so presumably the Inquisitor kept detailed notes. What do we learn from this meeting?  Pacheco certainly found the artist a most singular person, and despite expressing amazement more than once concerning the painter’s opinions on art and technique he nonetheless came to the conclusion that El Greco was a ‘a great philosopher’ who had written on art.

Unfortunately none of the writing on art alluded to by Pacheco has surfaced, if it has survived. Nonetheless, some of the artist’s own words have survived as annotations in books that he once owned. The painter wrote many marginal annotations in his copies of Barbaro’s edition of the Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius   and his copy of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, neither work having been listed in the 1614 inventory. Some of the notes are very short, others quite long and complex. He obviously had little love for Vasari nor for Florentine art; instead he reserved praise for Titian and Tintoretto. If one note encapsulated El Greco’s views it is: ‘The people know little of art and what they do is by coincidence.’ Elitist, moi?

What of the other usual suspect when it comes to the creation of art – the patrons and the context for the commissions? In Toledo his patrons were all intelligent men who had studied at university and had risen in the Church. These men were sophisticated theologians and much evidence suggests that El Greco’s work for them was the result of close consultation. To take but one example, El Greco’s work for the Seminary of the Incarnation in Madrid demonstrated how the artist could give visual cogency to the extremely detailed writings of the mystic Alonso de Orozco (1500–91) and at the same time make the paintings dramatic and something of a visionary experience in themselves. Orozco was inspired by the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an author whose work was also listed in El Greco’s library.

El Greco worked right up to the time of his death and was given the funeral of a respected man. As those patrons who had commissioned his work died and taste changed so El Greco’s work came to be misunderstood and later judged to be the ravings of a madman. It took Manet,  Astruc, and Picasso to fan the flames of El Greco’s art back into full prominence.