El Greco (1541 - 1614)

• Was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance.
• El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance.
• El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism.
• Doménikos Theotokópoulos has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school.
• He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.
• Almost nothing is known about his mother or his first wife, except that they were also Greek.
• His second wife was a Spaniard.

• El Greco's older brother, Manoússos Theotokópoulos, was a wealthy merchant and spent the last years of his life in El Greco's Toledo home.

• El Greco received his initial training as an icon painter of the Cretan school, a leading center of post-Byzantine art.

• Next