GRECO, DOMENICO THEOTOKOPULI, known as il. — Painter, born at Candia on 1 October 1541, died at Toledo on 7 April 1614. Having come to Italy, to Venice, he was perhaps a pupil of Titian, but he also became acquainted with the art of J. Bassano, Tintoretto, Schiavone, Veronese and, at Parma, that of Correggio and Parmigianino.
In Rome, where he was from approximately 1570 to 1572, he saw the works of Michelangelo. He was also in Naples and perhaps in Malta; in 1576 he departed from Genoa for Spain; in 1577 he was certainly in Toledo, where he found an environment congenial to his temperament. Here, in 1577, he painted for the church of S. Domingo e Antiguo the Assumption of the Virgin, the Resurrection, the ss. John the Evangelist and John the Baptist, and the Adoration of the Shepherds, works still in their original location, except for the Assumption, now in the Art Institute of Chicago. This Assumption is one of the Greco’s most Titianesque paintings. In 1579 he was asked to work for the Escurrale, and there he painted three pictures representing S. Ildefonso, S. Peter and S. Francis, in addition to the altarpiece with S. Maurice and the Theban Legion. Among his works from the Spanish period, the most famous are the Esposito for the cathedral of Toledo (1572) and the Innununzione del conte d’Orgaz, painted for the church of S. Tomé, also in Toledo, certainly completed in 1584. Among the works from the Italian period, during which the artist was forming himself on Venetian models, are cited: the triptych with The Annunciation in the Gallery of Modena, Jesus in the House of Martha (Venice, formerly the Brass collection), The Healing of the Blind Man (Dresden and Parma); The Merchants Driven from the Temple (Richmond, Cook collection); The Annunciation (Florence, Contini Collection), The Boy with the Candle (Gallery of Naples). But numerous examples of his activity preceding even these works—that is, from the very heart of his early Venetian years—have recently come to light, following the fortunate discovery of the (signed) Politico in the Estense Gallery of Modena. With their aid, the hypothesis concerning the origins of G. is now confirmed: a broad study of the great Venetian painting—in addition to this, G. brought with him the magic of certain Oriental chromatic secrets—and of the evocative linearism of Parma.
Among the works of his maturity, besides those already mentioned, are remembered The Pentecost (Madrid, Prado, where numerous other canvases by him are found); The Apostles (Toledo, Provincial Museum); The Adoration of the Shepherds (New York, Metropolitan Museum); The View of Toledo (Toledo, Museo del G.), and, among the portraits, that of The Inquisitor Nino de Guevara (New York, Winterthur, Reinhart collection).
If one could speak of mannerism in his case, one would have to speak of a mannerism of color, which in him reaches hallucinatory effects, as in the Oriental art of the Middle Ages. And the color is accompanied by a fantastically decorative line, through which his paintings convey the sense of astonishing, instinctive anticipations of attitudes that entered modern art from theoretical premises. — Vedi tav. LXXX.