The High Renaissance
 
&

Mannerism



   

El Greco

(b Candia [now Herakleion], Crete, c. 1541; d Toledo, 7 April 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, and of the changes of interpretation to which an artist’s work can be submitted.

The Entombment of Christ
late 1560s
Oil and tempera on panel, 51,5 x 43 cm
Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens


 

Christ Healing the Blind
c. 1567
Oil on panel, 65,5 x 84 cm
Gemaldegalerie, Dresden


 

The Modena Triptych (front panels)
1568
Tempera on panel, 37 x 23,8 cm (central), 24 x 18 cm (side panels)
Galleria Estense, Modena


 

The Modena Triptych (detail)
1568
Galleria Estense, Modena