El Greco


Name
El Greco
Life Dates
c.1541 - 1614
Country
Greece
Movement
Mannerism

El Greco Biography

The most unusual painter in 16th-century Europe, El Greco combined the strict Byzantine style of his homeland, Greece, with influences received during his studies in Venice and the medieval tradition of the country where he worked, Spain.

Domenicos Theotocopoulos, later called El Greco, the Greek, by the Spaniards, was born in Candia, on the island of Crete. Nothing is known of his parentage. He was trained as icon-maker in a monastery; he then went to Venice (soon after 1560), where Titian became his greatest mentor. El Greco, however, obtained very little influence from his master; but a certain influence of Bassano, Baroccio, Veronese, and Tintoretto could be felt but on the whole his works are very individual and distinct. In 1570, El Greco went by way of Parma (where he appreciated Correggio) to Rome, where he met Michelangelo. He criticized his Last Judgment severely, and offered to produce a better composition. But on the whole Michelangelo and the Central Italian Mannerists stimulated him.


El Greco 87 Most Important Paintings and Artworks

El Greco Bibliography

Painting of Europe. XIII-XX centuries. Encyclopedic Dictionary. Moscow. Iskusstvo. 1999.

El Greco: Identity and Transformation by Jose Alvarez Lopera, N. Hadjinicolau, C. Strinati, Museo thys, J. Alvarez Lapera. Skira, 1999.

El Greco in Toledo by Fernando Marias. Scala Books, 2001.

El Greco: The Burial of Count Orgaz. by F. Calvo Serraller, Francisco Calvo Serraller. Thames & Hudson, 1995.

El Greco by David Davies, John H. Elliott. Yale University Press, 2003.

From El Greco to Goya: Painting in Spain 1561-1828 by Janis Tomlinson. Prentice Hall, 2003.

El Greco (Masters of Art) by Leo Bronstein. Harry N Abrams, 1990.

El Greco and His Patrons: Three Major Projects (Cambridge Studies in the History of Art) by Richard G. Mann, Francis Haskell (Editor), Nicholas Penn. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

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