El Greco

by David Davies (Editor), Xavier Bray (Contributor), Keith Christiansen (Contributor)

This book addresses the full range of the artist's achievements (including sculpture), and considers his personality from both a religious and intellectual point of view. Every stage of El Greco's career is represented here, from his Byzantine icons to the late altarpieces in which the artist's individual treatment of mystical imagery reached its climax. El Greco's different subjects - including religious, mythological, genre, landscape and portrait works - are addressed, as well as the historical context in which the paintings were made.
Published to accompany the exhibition El Greco organised by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the National Gallery, London.

Genres: Art, Art History, Biography

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[The Badger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find this compilation of El Greco's paintings powerful for two reasons: the intense, dramatic Post-Byzantine paintings were considered nearly sacrilegious for their time (which is no doubt a fact that endeared Nikos Kazantzakis to El Greco's work centuries later); and I was reared in Crete (where El Greco was also born), so I visited the tiny El Greco museum with my school yearly from the time I was 6-years-old until I was 11. I remember looking up in awe at huge paintings I didn't understand--burgundy cloaked figured and dark skies, something meant to be religious, but frightening to a child (I just knew I felt uneasy and was ready for the next phase of the trip where we got to feed the pelican). I had nearly forgotten those trips until I saw this book.

[Zea · Rating 5 out of 5]

he really was that guy

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

El Greco 101 :)
Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541-1614)

"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face"
(St Paul, I Corinthians, xiii. 12.)

"Future ages will admire his genius but none will imitate it"
Hortensio Paravicino

Notes:
Find out more about Neoplatonism
•Dictionary: a philosophical system, originated in the 3rd century a.d. by Plotinus, founded chiefly on Platonic doctrine and Eastern mysticism, with later influences from Christianity. It holds that all existence consists of emanations from the One with whom the soul may be reunited.
•Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplat...

p4:
Another important aspect of this spiritual movement was the profound interest in Neoplatonism. This provided an intellectual framework with its concept of the subordination of the physical world to the world of the spirit, that higher reality to which man aspired. It would seem that, with the gradual erosion of Erasmian influence, the spiritual writers derived increasing intellectual support from Neoplatonism.