El Greco

El Greco lived to be seventy-three years old. Thanks to the painstaking research-work of San Roman in the archives of Toledo , the latter half of his career has become almost familiar to us. The earlier half, however, is a complete blank except for three isolated dates. In 1541 Domenikos Theotokopoulos was born at Candia , capital of Venetian Crete. In November 1570 the "young Candiot, pupil of Titian," was welcomed to Rome by Giulio Clovio who, numbering him among "the most excellent in painting," solicited Cardinal Farnese to house him temporarily in the garret of his palace. In July 1577 "Mecer Dominico Theotocopuli" appeared in Toledo after a sojourn in Madrid .

The situation is the same as concerns the chronology of his works. The catalogue of paintings ascribed to his Italian period has "mushroomed" to alarming proportions. Even the most generally accepted of his early works, though signed in Greek characters, never bear a date. If we accept the Descent from the Cross ( Venice) and the Adoration of the Shepherds ( Bergamo) recently published by Pallucchini, together with the dates of 1565 for the first and 1567 for the second, then the El Greco of this period appears as a clever but unoriginal potboiler of current Venetian and Roman styles crossed with elements lifted from Italian and Flemish prints.

Arrogant and uncompromising, proudly aware of his own merits and originality amidst an army of rank imitators, El Greco must have given offense more than once. Even so, the ill-will of his fellow artists hardly accounts for his emigrating to Spain . The years 1570-1575 saw the completion of the Escorial , with Philip II bringing together the team of artists who were to carry out the work of decoration. Concurrently the Farnese Palace was the meeting-place of all Spanish humanists living in Rome , and through the librarian there, Canon Fulvio Orsini, early friend and patron of El Greco and a keen collector of antiques, medallions and paintings, he no doubt came into contact with them. Perhaps it had already struck him that Spain , future Eldorado of painters from all over Europe , had much to offer under a monarch who was not only the victor of Lepanto but one of the most enlightened patrons of Titian.

In any event the wandering Greek settled for good in Toledo where he found in Dona jeronima a loyal, lifelong helpmate and a source of inspiration who, in his eyes, doubtless embodied the ideal of womanhood that every creative artist yearns for. The fact remains that the face of a single woman is common to the first masterpieces of the Toledo period, a long, oval-shaped face with large, tender, sorrowful eyes; this is the woman who looks out of his pictures almost obsessively right up to his death. El Greco was commissioned to paint the altarpieces, for which he also designed allegorical figures of the seven Virtues, executed by the sculptor Juan Bautista Monegro.