El Greco

View of Toledo, Burial of the Count of Orgaz

Born in Crete, trained in Venice, fulfilled in Toledo. His elongated figures, livid colors, and ecstatic intensity were so far outside the mainstream that he was forgotten for three centuries — then rediscovered by the Expressionists as a proto-modern. The Burial of the Count of Orgaz unites earth and heaven in a single composition of staggering ambition.

Key works

• The Burial of the Count of Orgaz1586— Earth below, heaven above — the two worlds joined
  Church of Santo Tome, Toledo
• View of Toledo~1600— The most dramatic landscape before Romanticism
  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Opening of the Fifth Seal~1610— Visionary apocalypse — Picasso studied it
  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Connections

External