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Domenico Theotokopoulo

A CRETAN KNOWN AS "EL GRECO

Domenico Theotokopoulos was born in Heraklion, in 1541. He was first taught hagiography at a venetian workshop and was influenced by the Cretan Hagiographic School (16th century) and the byzantine art. El Greco was trained as an icon painter on his native island of Crete, then a territory of the Venetian Republic.

El greco - Domenico Theotokopoulo

A young man of enormous talent and ambition, he left Crete around 1568 for Italy, where he learned the grand manner of Italian painting. In 1577, unable to achieve the success he desired in the highly competitive art world of Venice and Rome, El Greco, now thirty-six years old, departed for Spain, where he spent the remainder of a long and productive career in the city of Toledo. He was patronized there by members of the city's wealthy and educated elite who valued the presence of an intellectual artist who had been trained in Italy. He spent most of his life in Toledo, Spain, where he died in 1614. El Greco, as he was called, occupied with sculpture and architecture, although the only samples of his work are the sculpt icon- stands in Santo Domingo el Antiguo (1577), the chapel of San Jose in Toledo (1597-1599) and the church of Mercy Hospital in Ilieskas (1603 - 1605). El Greco's painting follows the four cities where he lived: Heraklio, Venice, Rome and Toledo. The most known of his work are: "Boy blowing the coal", "Holy Trinity", "St. John Baptist", "Merciful Virgin Mary", "The "Ascension of Virgin Mary" and others.

Special thanks to Mr Niko Papoutsakis, presidents of the Cretan Association of British Columbia and great lover of Crete, for sending us this article

Read how the City of Iraklion acquired the "Baptism of the Christ" an original El Greco painting

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