THE GENTLEMAN WITH THE HAND ON
THE CHEST.
Around 1580. Oil on canvas, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. There is no certainty about the identity of the portrayed gentleman. It is one of the best known Spanish portraits in the world. A gentleman with his hand on his chest looks at the viewer as if making a pact with him. The posture of the hand looks like an oath gesture. This man is finely and elegantly dressed and carries a golden sword. The medallion with a chain is also made of gold. In its time it became the classic and honorable representation of the Spanish of the Golden Age. It was painted in its first Spanish stage.
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DOMÉNIKOS THEOTOKÓPOULOS
-EL GRECO-
Greece 1541 - Spain 1614.
Hello, I am El Greco,people called me that because as I was born in Greece, and for the Spanish my name was so difficult to pronounce (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) that they better called me El Greco, that is to say, Greek. I was born in the capital of the island of Crete some time ago, in 1541, territory of the Republic of Venice at that time, into a Greek family, but of a Catholic rather than an Orthodox religion. My family worked as collaborators of the colonial power, my father was a merchant and tax collector so I was trained as a painter of icons, which were paintings of religious devotion that followed fixed rules since the Middle Ages. At 22 he was already a painting teacher. When I was 26 I went to Venice, at that time it was the largest artistic center in Italy. I lived there until 1570 and more than being a disciple of Tiziano, a very famous and important painter, I was able to learn his style from outside his workshop. Soon I became an authentic Venetian painter, very colorful. After a study trip to Italy (Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Parma, Florence), I decided to stay in Rome for a while, there I met the intellectual circle of Cardinal Alejandro Farnesio, who frequented various religious and Spanish men of letters, and initially I was housed in the attic of his palace.
A little later, I was expelled from the cardinal's servitude so I set up my own studio, working preferably since then as a portraitist and in small religious works for private clients. On one occasion, I made a mistake when I said about Michelangelo: "He is a good man, but he cannot paint." I earned the scorn of all the Roman painters and scholars, and I was not doing very well so I had to emigrate. At 36 I was already in Spain, wishing to enter the service of King Felipe II. I learned that El Escorial was being built, a very important monastery, and that they were hiring artists. Then I arrived in Toledo, "the second Rome", a cosmopolitan city and the heart of Spain.
However, I expanded my workshop by starting the production of altarpieces, not only canvases, for convents and parishes of the city and the Toledo archbishopric, paintings of reduced dimensions for a clientele of a private rather than an institutional nature. My son grew up and I worked with him on various projects, many other altarpieces that he never executed. In some of these last works, I innovatively projected artistic ensembles in which sculptures, the architecture of the altarpieces were combined with canvases and other fabrics embedded in walls or vaults, I wanted to make new and modern works.
In 1577, I was commissioned by El Expolio for the sacristy of the Cathedral and for El Escorial the Martyrdom of Saint Maurice. I came to Spain with a young Italian assistant, Francisco Prevoste, with whom I lived until my death. In 1578 my son Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli was born, the result of my relationship with Jerónima de las Cuevas, a friend from Toledo artisan. The king commissioned me two works, which I did with great care, but he did not like them at all, so he did not pay attention to me again.
I enjoyed life a lot, I had a reputation for being "extravagant", I had a lot of recognition in Toledo, and although I never worked for the king's court, I did work for many patrons who valued my work well despite many criticisms. I lived very well, I can't complain. At the age of 72 I fell very ill and my death happened, not without leaving an important legacy that later many artists from other places and other times studied me and were able to develop their own works and styles.