El Greco: Contemplating Heaven
Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco, was born on Crete in 1541. His nickname means “the Greek,” a reference to his homeland. He was first trained as a Byzantine icon painter, which explains the spiritual intensity, flattened space, and relative lack of concern for ordinary naturalism found throughout his later work. After studying the rich color and freer brushwork of Venetian masters such as Titian and Tintoretto, he developed his own unmistakable style, with elongated bodies, dramatic contrasts of light, and colors that seem almost supernatural. He painted broadly, repeatedly reworking the canvas rather than carefully concealing every brushstroke. His distortions weren't incompetence. They were deliberate attempts to represent spiritual realities that ordinary bodily proportions couldn't adequately convey. His unnaturally long bodies, upward-reaching limbs, and glowing colors draw the eye toward Heaven rather than the earth. Instead of emphasizing physical realism, he emphasized the soul, divine glory, ecstasy, and transcendence, suggesting that the saints belong more to the heavenly realm than the earthly one.
El Greco eventually settled in Toledo, Spain, where he spent the rest of his life working chiefly for Catholic churches, monasteries, convents, and other religious institutions. His paintings present Catholic doctrine with complete seriousness, including Christ's Passion, the saints, the sacraments, Heaven, judgment, and the supernatural order. Everything we know indicates that he was a faithful Catholic. His principal known moral failing was his relationship with Jerónima de las Cuevas, the mother of his son, whom he apparently never married. Assuming they lived as husband and wife, this plainly fell short of Catholic moral teaching. Still, there are no well-supported accusations that he was otherwise a degenerate.
What I love most about El Greco's art is how surreal it is. His use of color, especially the blues, gives his work an ethereal quality that makes Heaven feel just beyond the veil. I often revisit his Agony in the Garden in my mind when I meditate on that particular Mystery of the Rosary. While I appreciate realism, he doesn't deviate from it enough, or in a way that detracts. His stylization feels exactly right because it elevates the mind to God rather than merely depicting the material world. His paintings don't simply portray sacred events, they become aids to contemplation, lifting the mind beyond the material world toward the heavenly reality they depict.
