An astonishing religious scene from a solitary genius
In this series, our columnist Charles Saatchi takes a peek behind some of the world’s most significant paintings. This week, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz
Doménikos Theotokópoulos, known as El Greco (“the Greek”), was an outsider – a strange young man who came to Spain from his native Crete to seek advancement. He quickly established his reputation as an artist of remarkable powers, at the fulcrum of Spanish society in the court of King Phillip II.
His painterly style positioned him as a mystic, a tortured solitary genius. The character of the man, certainly when he was in Venice and Rome as an apprentice, can best be understood through one of the key moments of his life. When asked his opinion of Michelangelo, then dead but a pre-eminent artist whose legacy must have weighed heavily on the shoulders of aspiring painters, El Greco replied: “He was a good man, but he did not know how to paint.” He further dismissed Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, offering the Pope his services to paint over the entire fresco.
Such audacious rejection of his forebears is borne out in El Greco’s own inimitable technique. His paintings are expressionistic, raw, and quite removed from the style of his day. His greatest masterpiece was created in 1586, when he was 45. The Burial of the Count of Orgaz is considered by many to be one of the most astonishing religious paintings of all time. Measuring an immense 15ft (4.6m) tall, it is divided into two, picturing the heavens at the top, and the burial scene below.
According to legend, the Count of Orgaz was such a pious and charitable man that St Stephen and St Augustine descended from paradise to bury him with their own hands. The painting was commissioned for the parish church that El Greco attended, Iglesia de Santo Tomé, near Toledo. It is still housed there, and the chapel has become a site of pilgrimage for art lovers who continue to marvel at its splendour.
The picture also broke ground by avoiding any references to customary Roman tropes or Venetian motifs. This landmark work was devoid of any depiction of space, with no horizon, or sky, or perspective. The figures massing around the burial were portraits of the nobles of Toledo at the time. Above, in the swirling mists, Christ is the crowning point of a triangle formed by the Madonna and St John the Baptist. The striking way in which the upper and lower sections are brought together compositionally has entranced viewers since the day it was painted – El Greco’s figures dancing across the painting with a shimmering glow.
Though the painting led many to consider El Greco a Mannerist
– a self-consciously elegant and artificial style often referred to as Late Renaissance – in fact it is more reminiscent of Byzantine art. Its dramatic, expressionistic approach was worlds apart from the paintings of his contemporaries. But the tortured bodies, twisting limbs and extraordinary choices of colour made him a favourite of 20thcentury artists, who revisited El Greco after his work had spent hundreds of years in obscurity. Picasso, for instance, acknowledged El Greco on his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’avignon, especially his painting Opening of the Fifth Seal.
In his mid-twenties, El Greco had moved to Venice in order to become a disciple of Titian, in whose studio he is believed to have worked. Even at a young age, and as an apprentice, his peers recognised his formidable skills, and perhaps this early success and regard from fellow artists encouraged his arrogant strain. Certainly by the time he reached Rome, around 1570, he had begun to accrue enemies.
The architect Pirro Ligorio referred to him as the “foolish foreigner”, and a quarrel with his leading patron, Alessandro Farnese, ended with El Greco being asked to leave his benefactor’s grand palazzo. He probably chose to depart Italy for Spain in 1577 because his rivals had ensured he received a frosty reception amongst the glitterati of the Roman art world.
When he arrived in Toledo, then a religious centre, the ancient Spanish city was the location of an important monastery, and a palace of overwhelming magnificence was under construction. King Phillip II needed artists – many celebrity painters of the day were unwilling to come to Spain, then a relative backwater, culturally, compared with the might of Renaissance Italy.
Having befriended various individuals connected to the royal project, El Greco received a commission. But, despite successive assignments, he never achieved the status of court painter that he had envisaged. Two of his major works were disliked by the monarch – Phillip was set against the use of living people as models for religious scenes, and the ungodly elevation of style over content. The painter’s self-regard and robust ego were also viewed dimly; his commissions slowed after complaints about aspects of his process.
Rumours spread that he suffered from astigmatism, and it was this that accounted for his strangely elongated figures. Many of his works were consigned to minor churches and municipal buildings, rather than in the stately, august locations they were intended for.
Despite his career not taking him to the heights he wished, El Greco did enjoy considerable success, enabling him to live in lavish style. He occupied a 24-room apartment in Toledo, and would regularly hire musicians to play to him while he ate. He spent money freely, and enjoyed dressing in the latest fashions. But his courtier lifestyle stretched El Greco beyond his means as a painter and, when he died, he had built up many debts.
El Greco must have felt his “foreignness” throughout his life, and always being known as “the Greek” must have constantly amplified his sense of being an outsider. However he remained loyal to his origins, insisting on signing his paintings with his full Greek name, in Greek letters.
By most accounts, he never learnt Spanish, beyond a few phrases. Yet today, alongside Goya and Velázquez, he is claimed by Spain as one of its very greatest masters.
‘Michelangelo was a good man, but he did not know how to paint’