Domenico theotokopoulos biography
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El Greco (1541–1614)
El Greco is one of the few old master painters who enjoys widespread popularity. Like Vermeer, Piero della Francesca, and Botticelli, he was rescued from obscurity by an avid group of nineteenth-century collectors, critics, and artists and became one of the select members of the modern pantheon of great painters. For Picasso, as for so many later admirers, El Greco was both the quintessential Spaniard and a proto-modern—a painter of the spirit. It was as a painter who “felt the mystical inner construction” of life that El Greco was admired by Franz Marc and the members of the Blue Rider school: someone whose art stood as a rejection of the materialist culture of modern life.
Born in Crete, El Greco was trained as an icon painter. Two certain examples survive, and these remind us of the Neoplatonic, non-naturalistic basis of El Greco’s art, before he set about transforming himself into a disciple of Titian and an avid student of Tintoretto, Ve
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Biography
Cretan-born painter, sculptor, and architect who settled in Spain and is regarded as the first great genius of the Spanish School. He was known as El Greco (the Greek), but his real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos; and it was thus that he 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 Dormition of the Virgin discovered in 1983 (Church of the Koimesis tis Theotokou, Syros). In 1566 he is referred to in a Cretan document as a master painter; soon afterwards he went to Venice (Crete was then a Venetian possession), then in 1570 moved to Rome. The miniaturist Giulio Clovio, whom he met there, described him as a pupil of Titian, but of all the Venetian painters Tintoretto influenced him most (e.g. Christ Healing the Blind, c. 1570), and Michelangelo's impact on his development was also i
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El Greco
Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco, 'The Greek', was born in Crete, which was then a Venetian possession. El Greco trained in Venice, where he developed his intense, colourful Mannerist style.
By 1577 El Greco had settled in Toledo, Spain, where he lived the rest of his life, executing mostly pictures for local religious foundations. He was also active as an accomplished painter of portraits. In Venice El Greco worked beneath Titian; he was much influenced bygd Tintoretto and the Bassano. He was in Rome in 1570 and studied the work of Michelangelo and Raphael. As a native of Crete he was deeply influenced bygd Byzantine art.
El Greco received a kommission from Philip II for the Escorial ('The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice'), but the painting was not well received. In 'The Adoration of the Name of Jesus' Philip II is seen in the foreground. The majority of El Greco's paintings were produced for Toledo and its neighbourhood. He made several versions of his most famous comp