September 25, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Doménikos Theotokópoulos, born on the isle of Crete in 1541 and later known by the nickname “El Greco” (the Greek), is without doubt one of the most intriguing and stylistically unusual painters in the Western European tradition. His paintings glow with an unearthly light, vibrate with saturated colors, mesmerize with their swirling masses and ethereal figures. What exactly is going on in an El Greco painting? Why did he render objects in this highly subjective and “unrealistic” way?
We can answer this question better by looking at El Greco’s origins, the age in which he lived, and his religious mysticism.
El Greco grew up among the Greek Orthodox with their age-old tradition of iconography. He was himself initially trained in this tradition. His earliest works are icons painted on panels with egg tempera, following the Byzantine conventions we discussed here. These conventions include a certain hieratic stiffness in the figures, which are distributed in space in an abstract manner and with no attempt at creating a lifelike perspective. Or rather, the perspective is meant to be a theological one that cannot be seen with bodily eyes, and the life-likeness is in spiritual assimilation to Christ and His holy ones, who are above space and time, in eternal glory.
As a young man in search of further education and work, El Greco went first to Venice, then to Rome. Each city was experiencing tremendous rebirth in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, with the Catholic Counter-Reformation in full swing. A strong emphasis was placed at this time in Italy on the cultus of the saints as intercessors and models of holiness, the glorification of the Church through bold architecture and lavish painting, and the praise of God through liturgical worship of nobility, splendor, and decorum. All this was encouraged by the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which finished its work just years before El Greco came to Rome in 1570.
After a few productive but not entirely successful years in Rome, El Greco made his way via Madrid to Toledo, where he found the supportive patrons he needed. Here, from 1577 onwards, he would spend the remainder of his life, completing many magnificent and strikingly original paintings, until he died in 1614 at the age of 73. El Greco’s long residence in Spain allowed him to become acquainted with the spiritual writings of the Carmelites, above all those of St Teresa of Jesus (1515–1582) and St John of the Cross (1542–1591).
These three elements must be taken side-by-side to appreciate the unique genius of this painter, who described himself in his will as “a devout Catholic,” and who painted some of 16th century’s Spain’s most extraordinary Catholic devotional images.
His Byzantine training accustomed him to depicting men, artifacts, and the natural world in a non-naturalistic, symbolic, metaphysical way. He was less interested in painting the external appearance of a saint, and more interested in bringing out the living flame of love at the saint’s core. This is why his figures often look like dancing tongues of fire, ready to sublimate into heavenly light, illuminated by the inner radiance of grace. At the same time, his immersion in Italian mannerist art of the Tridentine period equipped him with a flair for the dramatic and a sense of sacramental sensualism. His exposure to the intense mysticism of the Carmelite Doctors sharpened his “spiritual senses” and made him attentive to the invisible realities that underlie, explain, and shine through visible ones.
Although many paintings of El Greco’s could be taken as illustrations, I have chosen this View of Toledo (1596–1600), one of my favorites since the first time I saw it. The first thing one notices is the tremendous sense of movement in the entire landscape, as if the city is in the process of spilling out over the hills, the hills are oozing like lava, the plants are ready to get up and run away, and the clouds are swooping in like avenging or protecting angels. This is El Greco’s brilliant way of capturing the existential energy at the heart of all creatures, the signature they bear of Him who named Himself “I am who am.”
These bushes and trees, hills and streams, clouds and stones, are not static lumps of indifferent matter; they are expressions of the divine Ideas that stand behind them; they are thoroughly imbued with personality, intentionality, a purposeful straining to be what they are, as much as they can. To use Aristotle’s language, these objects are “fully in act,” and ready, even eager it would appear, to act upon each other and upon us. This is a painting that comes at us, leaving its impression on our minds.
When an outdoor view is quiet, placid, and sunny, we tend to see it as passive, stable, and perhaps a bit tame. El Greco has chosen his moment well: we seem to be at the edge of a great storm, with the menace of lowering clouds and the eerie turquoise shimmer of buildings in the half-light. In such circumstances we are on the alert, the world is slightly threatening in its otherness and its vastness, and we start to notice more: the greenery, piercingly bright as if it had swallowed its own Platonic forms, swaying with the breezes; the individual leaves on the tree in the lower left; the tiny people fishing in the river, the man on horseback about to mount the little island, the townsfolk walking up to the gate. This is a world at once strange and inhabited, a home and an exile, a fragile and temporary city on a hill that welcomes pilgrims for a short while until they must yield their souls to God and their bodies to the earth.
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.” The words of the great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins could have been written to describe this very painting, which reveals a hidden Life at work in the world, a vital metaphysical current drawing us inwards and upwards, baffling our easy answers, alluring us into mystery. The material world trembles at the edge of an abyss of nothingness from which it is held back by the creative hand of God, investing it with value and meaning. This same world points ever beyond itself to its Maker.
