Portal:Europe/Featured biography/11
Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541 – 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco, was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance.
El Greco was born in
Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain
, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both
pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting
.