Doménikos Theotokópoulos, most widely known as El Greco, was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. El Greco was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters often adding the word Κρής, which means "Cretan" in Ancient Greek.
Paintings by El Greco
The Disrobing of Christ (1578)
The Disrobing of Christ or El Expolio (Latin: Exspolĭum) is a painting by El Greco begun in the summer of 1577 and completed in the spring of 1579 for the High Altar of the sacristy of the Cathedral of Toledo, where it still normally hangs. In late 2013 it was on temporary display at the Prado in Madrid (with the other El Grecos), following a period of cleaning and conservation work there; it was returned to Toledo in 2014. It is one of El Greco's most famous works. A document dated July 2, 1577 which refers to this painting is the earliest record of El Greco's presence in Spain. The commission for the painting was secured thanks to El Greco's friendship from Rome with Luis, the son of Diego de Castilla, the dean of the Cathedral of Toledo. De Castilla senior also arranged El Greco's other major commission, on which he worked simultaneously, the paintings for the Toledan church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo.
The painting shows Christ looking up to Heaven with an expression of serenity; His idealized figure seems segregated from the other people and the violence surrounding him. A figure dressed in black in the background points at Christ accusingly, while two others argue over who will have His garments. A man in green to Christ's left holds Him firmly with a rope and is about to rip off His robe in preparation for his crucifixion. At the lower right, a man in yellow bends over the cross and drills a hole to facilitate the insertion of a nail to be driven through Christ's feet. The radiant face of the Savior is violently juxtaposed to the coarse figures of the executioners, who are amassed around Him creating an impression of disturbance with their movements, their gestures and lances.
Opening of the Fifth Seal (1610)
The Opening of the Fifth Seal (or The Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse or The Vision of Saint John) was painted in the last years of El Greco's life for a side-altar of the church of Saint John the Baptist outside the walls of Toledo. Before 1908, El Greco's painting had been referred to as Profane Love. The scholar Manuel B. Cossio had doubts about the title and suggested the Opening of the Fifth Seal. The Metropolitan Museum, where the painting is kept, comments: "the picture is unfinished and much damaged and abraded."
The painting's subject is taken from the Book of Revelation 6:9–11, where the souls of martyrs cry out to God for justice upon their persecutors on Earth. The ecstatic figure of St. John dominates the canvas, while behind him naked souls writhe in a chaotic storm of emotion as they receive white robes of salvation.
View of Toledo (1596)
View of Toledo (Spanish: Vista de Toledo), is one of the two surviving landscapes painted by El Greco, along with View and Plan of Toledo. View of Toledo is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
View of Toledo is among the best known depictions of the sky in Western art, along with Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night and the landscapes of J. M. W. Turner and Claude Monet. Art historian Keith Christiansen included View of Toledo among the artist's most ambitious masterpieces, describing it as one of Western art's most celebrated landscapes.
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (1586)
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (Spanish: El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz) is a 1586 painting by El Greco, a prominent Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect of Greek origin. Widely considered among his finest works, it illustrates a popular local legend of his time. An exceptionally large painting, it is divided into two sections, heavenly above and terrestrial below, but it gives little impression of duality, since the upper and lower sections are brought together compositionally.
The painting has been lauded by art scholars, characterized, inter alia, as "one of the most truthful pages in the history of Spain", as a masterpiece of Western art and of late Mannerism, and as the epitome of Greco's artistic style.
The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest (1580)
The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest (also known as The Gentleman with His Hand at His Breast or Gentleman with his Hand on his Chest) (Spanish: El caballero de la mano en el pecho) is an oil painting by El Greco, one of the earliest works painted by the artist in Spain.
Painted in Toledo around 1580, and on display at the Museo del Prado, it is the most famous of a series of secular portraits of unknown gentlemen, all of them dressed in black and wearing white ruffs, against dark backgrounds.
Laocoön (El Greco) (1610)
The Laocoön is an oil painting created between 1610 and 1614 by Greek painter El Greco. It is part of a collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
The painting depicts the Greek and Roman mythological story of the deaths of Laocoön, a Trojan priest of Poseidon, and his two sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. Laocoön and his sons were strangled by sea serpents, a punishment sent by the gods after Laocoön attempted to warn his countrymen about the Trojan horse. Although inspired by the recently discovered monumental Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons in Rome, Laocoön is a product of Mannerism, an artistic movement originating in Italy during the 16th century that countered the artistic ideals of the Renaissance. El Greco's painting deliberately breaks away from the balance and harmony of Renaissance art with its strong emotional atmosphere and distorted figures.
Saint Martin and the Beggar (El Greco) (1597)
Saint Martin and the Beggar is a painting by the Greek mannerist painter El Greco, painted c. 1597–1599, that currently is in the collection of The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. It depicts a legend in the life of Christian saint Martin of Tours: the saint cut off half his cloak and gave it to a beggar.
El Greco made a smaller version of the painting that is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Portrait of Fray Hortensio Félix Paravacino (1609)
Portrait of Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino is a 1609 oil on canvas painting by El Greco, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It shows Hortensio Félix Paravicino, a monk of the Trinitarian Order and major Spanish poet who was also a close friend of the painter. He is shown in the Trinitarian habit.
Adoration of the Shepherds (El Greco, Madrid) (1612)
The Adoration of the Shepherds is a painting of the traditional subject which was painted during the last year of El Greco's life. The painting is a work which the artist made to hang over his own tomb in the convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo.
El Greco's remains were transferred to another church after a few years, but the painting remained at Santo Domingo until the 20th century.
Portrait of Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli (1600)
Portrait of Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli is a c. 1597–1603 painting by El Greco, painted during his time in Toledo. It depicts his son and collaborator Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli. It is now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville in Seville.
Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli collaborated with his father, El Greco, on many works. In this portrait, he is shown wearing black clothes and a white ruff, in front of a dark background. He holds brushes and a palette in his hands. The pictorial style is consistent with other Venetian painting.
Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco) (1565)
Dormition of the Virgin is a tempera painting on panel executed by El Greco near the end of his Cretan period, probably before 1567. El Greco's signature on the base of the central candelabrum was discovered in 1983. The discovery of the Dormition led to the attribution of three other signed works of "Doménicos" to El Greco (Modena Triptych, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, and The Adoration of the Magi) and then to the acceptance as authentic of more works, signed or not (such as The Passion of Christ (Pietà with Angels), painted in 1566).
This discovery constituted a significant advance in the understanding of El Greco's formation and early career. The painting combines post-Byzantine and Italian mannerist stylistic and iconographic elements. El Greco is now seen as an artist with a formative training on Crete; a series of works illuminate the style of early El Greco, some painted while he was still in Crete, some from his period in Venice, and some from his subsequent stay in Rome.
Concert of Angels (1600)
Concert of Angels is a work of El Greco in oil on canvas from 1608, during his last period in Toledo, Spain. It is exhibited at the National Gallery in Athens.
Created at the end of his life, art historians have disputed whether this painting is a finished work or part of a working study for a commission of the Annunciation for the chapel of the Hospital de Tavera. It is not an independent composition but a cut-down fragment of the whole. It shows a celestial choir of angels, some of them with their backs to the viewer. Designed to hang high above the head of the viewer, the very extended heads and the anatomy of the characters show the influence of Michelangelo, though there are probably retouchings by Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli, the son of the painter. It once formed part of a threesome of paintings for the chapel. It is unknown when the paintings were removed from the chapel. It is also unknown when this painting was cut down, but Tiziana Frati assumes it was done in the latter half of the 19th century. Stylistically it is similar to the concert of angels seen at the top of El Greco's annunciation in the Prado.