THE artist Domenikos Theotokópoulos (1541-1614), commonly known by his professional nickname El Greco (“the Greek”), was claimed as inspiration by promoters of new modes in painting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By focusing praise on his late works, which distort the human form into elongated flame-like waves of vibrant colour, critics created an enduring perception of El Greco as a proto-modernist.
The El Greco championed by advocates of the avant-garde was an artist impatiently testing the bounds of representation and religion — yearning to break into an exploration of “pure form”. Paradoxically, the present Budapest exhibition, among the most comprehensive of the master’s works ever mounted (more than 50 autographed pieces), revises this view, while reinforcing the artist’s reputation for experimental genius.
El Greco was a seasoned border-crosser. Trained as an iconographer in his native Crete, then a Venetian colony, he migrated to Venice, c.1567, and retrained in Western painting conventions. From there, he moved first to Rome (1570) and then Spain (1577), settling in Toledo. His mature work overlaid Byzantine motif, Venetian composition, and a Toledan favouring of “dry palette” — a chromatic and textural preference that his work helped to make characteristic of Spanish painting.
The fusion of traditions is typified by Saint James the Great as a Pilgrim (c.1587-96, Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo). James’s frontal depiction on a uniform gold ground recalls Byzantine icons, and yet the shadow from his shoulder on the wall achieves a distinctly Western trompe-l’œil effect.
El Greco’s development stemmed, however, not just from artistic restlessness, but also new Catholic spiritual trends deriving from the Council of Trent (1543-63).
One way in which the Counter-Reformation sought to outflank Protestantism’s appeal to scripture was by popularising meditation on biblical incidents according to ecclesial methods (especially the Ignatian categories of memory, understanding, and will). Another was Trent’s endorsement (1546) of St Jerome’s Vulgate Latin New Testament as scripture’s “authentic” text, requiring its citation in sermons and academic disputes.
© Madrid, Photographic archive. Museo Nacional del PradoEl Greco, The Baptism of Christ, 1597-1600, Museo Nacional del Prado
Simultaneously, Protestant criticism of confession stimulated the recasting of penance not as an isolated act, but (to quote the catalogue) a continuing struggle with “a painful memory of faults committed that returns throughout one’s life”.
These strands coalesce in El Greco’s depiction St Jerome in Penitence (c.1600, Royal Academy, Madrid). Here, we see the church Father simultaneously engaged in meditation and mortification.
The former is denoted by the stone with which he strikes his well-modelled torso. The singularly fixed gaze and inclination of Jerome’s face as he contemplates the crucifix bespeaks a deep meditation, whose disciplined nature is signalled by the hour glass and skull, referring, respectively, to mastering time and putting to death earthly desires.
The ivy, top left, suggests Jerome’s task is “evergreen” — not accomplishable in this life. Conversely, the closed book locates Jerome in his last years — after his great work of Bible translation was complete.
Meditative practice becomes more immediate to us in two other paintings displayed here. The new piety of “enduring penance” found paramount manifestation in “the gift of tears”. Contemporary spiritual writing spoke of this ambiguously, betokening either the soul’s sorrow for sin or its deep desire for union with God. Both meanings may inform The Tears of St Peter (c.1587-90, Bowes Museum, Co. Durham), where the ivy motif likewise appears.
Here, perhaps literally, in light of the resurrection scene glimpsed behind, Peter’s eyes fill again with the tears that he “wept bitterly” (Luke 22.64-5) on realising his threefold betrayal of Jesus.
The art historian Véronique Gerard Powell posits El Greco’s inspiration by the Italian Luigi Tansillo’s (1510-68) poem “St Peter’s Tears”, first published in Venice (1560) and available in Spanish from 1587. Tansillo’s poetic “dialogue of gazes” meshes with Tridentine teaching on harmony between divine grace and human response in the transformative work of Justification.
In Tansillo’s poem, the gaze of Jesus, showering forgiveness, is returned by Peter’s, bathed in tears: “thus the fear which had lain like ice in Peter’s heart and made him repress the truth, now that Christ turned His eyes on him, melted and was changed into tears”. The clear blue sky around Peter’s head suggests a this-worldly halo consonant with the Counter-Reformation’s “earthed spirituality”.
The picture that takes us deepest into meditative experience, however, is The Nativity (c.1603-05, Hospital of Our Lady of Charity, Illescas). The piece utilises an unusual tondo — circular — format. Exceptionally, the ox’s head becomes a central element, looming powerfully (lower foreground), its enhanced foreshortening reflecting the works position atop an altarpiece.
© Fundación Hospital Ntra. Sra. de la Caridad – Memoria Benéfica de Vega (FUNCAVE)El Greco, The Nativity (1603-05), Hospital de la Caridad de Illescas (Toledo)
Siting the animal’s horn close by a dark shadows on Mary’s leg offers a momentary “surface reading” of a thickened blood-like line of red running down from their point of notional intersection.
There is no sign of the swathing bands of Luke 2 here, but, rather, a simple linen cloth: the winding sheet common to all four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death. Mary’s pensive expression suggests foreknowledge of her son’s fate. The ass butting in to our left seems set to hasten Mary’s wrapping action by nudging her elbow forwards.
The picture’s air of foreboding reminds us that tradition’s insertion of ox and ass into the nativity was no decorative touch: both portend the Passion. The ass will convey Jesus towards his death when he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The ox, costliest form of Temple sacrifice, will be eclipsed in value by Christ’s self-offering.
Looking towards Christmas, it is an image that we might all benefit from contemplating.
“El Greco” is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Dózsa György út 41, Budapest, until 19 February. www.mfab.hu