El Greco online oil painting online - oil paintings gallery

El Greco
(1541-1614)

Cretan-born painter, sculptor, and architect who settled in Spain and is regarded as the first great genius of the Spanish School. El Greco was known as he (the Greek), but his real name was Domenikos Theotocopoulos; and it was thus that El Greco signed his paintings throughout his life, always in Greek characters, and sometimes followed by Kres (Cretan).

Little is known of his youth, and only a few works survive by him in the Byzantine tradition of icon painting, notably the recently discovered Dormition of the Virgin (Church of the Koimesis tis Theotokou, Syros). In 1566 El Greco is referred to in a Cretan document as a master painter; soon afterwards El Greco went to Venice (Crete was then a Venetian possession), then in 1570 moved to Rome. The miniaturist Giulio Clovio, whom El Greco met there, described him as a pupil of Titian, but of all the Venetian painters Tintoretto influenced him most, and Michelangelo's impact on his development was also important. - El Greco online gallery oil painting - El Greco online gallery oil painting of El Greco Bio, Greece oil paintings online by Greece gallery oil paintings.

Among the surviving works of his Italian period are two paintings of the Purification of the Temple (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and NG, Washington), a much-repeated theme, and the portrait of Giulio Clovio (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples). By 1577 El Greco was at Toledo, where he remained until his death, and it was there that El Greco matured his characteristic style in which figures elongated into flame-like forms and usually painted in cold, eerie, bluish colors express intense religious feeling. The commission that took him to Toledo -- the high altarpiece of the church of S. Domingo el Antiguo -- was gained through Diego de Castilla, Dean of Canons at Toledo Cathedral, whom El Greco had met in Rome. The central part of the altarpiece, a 4-m. high canvas of The Assumption of the Virgin (Art Institute of Chicago, 1577), was easily his biggest work to date, but El Greco carried off the dynamic composition triumphantly. A succession of great altarpieces followed throughout his career, the two most famous being El Espolio (Christ Stripped of His Garments) (Toledo Cathedral, 1577-79) and The Burial of Count Orgaz (S. Tomé, Toledo, 1586-88). These two mighty works convey the awesomeness of great spiritual events with a sense of mystic rapture, and in his late work El Greco went even further in freeing his figures from earth-bound restrictions; The Adoration of the Shepherds (Prado, Madrid, 1612-1614), painted for his own tomb, is a prime example. - El Greco online gallery oil painting - El Greco online gallery oil painting of El Greco Bio, Greece oil paintings online by Greece gallery oil paintings.

The titles of gallery oil painting old master El Greco