PRADO, El Greco

A unique personality from late 16th century painting which will surely remain impressed in your memories of the Prado is Domenikos Theotokopoulos, who was born on the island of Crete. At that time Crete was part of the Republic of Venice, and having trained with a painter of icons, the artist moved to Italy, staying in Titian and Tintoretto's Venice and Michelangelo's Rome.

But at some point he left Italy and moved to Toledo, where he became "El Greco", and surely the most original active painter in Spain among those of his generation.

He lived in the era of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and his altarpieces show a very original way of renewing sacred art. His religious paintings are all the more intense and moving because they lack a background, thus all his figures stand out in a hollow and unreal space, with phosphorescent colors and locked gestures, almost as if they retained a link with the Byzantine icons that the artist had admired and copied in his youth in Crete. I suggest starting with the altar painting Resurrection, which is one of his most significant works....