GRECO, El
Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614
Greek painter, designer and engraver, active in Italy and Spain. One of the most original and interesting painters of 16th-century Europe, he transformed the Byzantine style of his early paintings into another, wholly Western manner. He was active in his native Crete, in Venice and Rome, and, during the second half of his life, in Toledo. He was renowned in his lifetime for his originality and extravagance and provides one of the most curious examples of the oscillations of taste in the evaluation of a painter,
ID: 62332 The Annunciation 315 x 174 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid The "expressionist" stylistic traits, characteristic of El Greco's paintings at the end of the 1590s, are also found in the paintings of a retable El Greco created for the Augustinian college of Nuestra Se?ora de la Encarnacion in Madrid between 1596 and 1600. The patroness of the college, the lady-in-waiting Do?a Mar?a de Cordoba y Arag?n, had died back in 1593, implying that the commission likely came from her executor. The retable, like many other works in possession of the Church, was disassembled into its component parts during the French occupation of Spain. All we know from the surviving written sources is that El Greco supplied a total of seven paintings. This Annunciation in the Prado is one of these paintings, and it is an especially good example of the daring palette that characterizes the entire series. At the bottom of the canvas, the terrestrial world is barely indicated by the steps, sewing basket and rose-bush in flame. The flames are rendered so naturalistically that they probably have appeared to mirror the real candle flames burning on the altar during the celebration of the Mass. But above and beyond El Greco has distorted light, colour and form. Indeed,all the form are in a state of flux. the grand rhythm of the wings of Gabriel and the Holy Spirit quicken the drama. Garments of crystalline blue, crimson and yellow-green vibrate against the blue-grey void. Incandescent light is reflected off the figures with such intensity that each seems to be its own source of light
