IV.

Emergence As a Spanish Master

In 1586 El Greco painted one of his greatest masterpieces, The Burial of Count Orgaz, for the Church of Santo Tomé in Toledo. This work, still in place, portrays a 14th-century Toledan nobleman laid in his grave (in actuality situated just below the painting) by SS Stephen and Augustine. Above, the count’s soul rises to a heaven densely populated with angels, saints, and contemporary political figures. The Burial also manifests El Greco’s typical elongation of figures and a horror vacui (dread of unfilled spaces), features of his art that became more pronounced in later years. These characteristics may be associated with international Mannerism, which is still evident in the art of El Greco sometime after it had ceased to be widely popular in European painting. El Greco’s intensely personal vision was rooted in his highly cultivated spirituality. Indeed, there is present in his canvases a mystical atmosphere similar to that evoked in the writings of such contemporaneous Spanish mystics as St Teresa of Ávila and St John of the Cross, although no evidence exists that El Greco had any personal contact with them.

El Greco was a prosperous man. He had a large house in Toledo, where he received members of the nobility and the intellectual elite, such as the poets Luis de Góngora and Fray Hortensio Felix de Paravicino, whose portrait, painted by El Greco from 1609 to 1610, is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. El Greco also painted views of the city of Toledo itself, such as View of Toledo (c. 1600-1610, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), even though landscape was a genre traditionally neglected by Spanish artists.