He must have been the most upwardly mobile social phenomenon of his time. The exhibition now at the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum provides striking documentation of El Greco's progress from being an off-shore painter of icons to the lofty post of artistic arbiter in the obsessively devout society that prevailed in Spain under the gloomy majesty of Philip II.
Demenikos Theotokopoulos was born in 1541, the son of a tax collector working in the region of Heraklion, in Crete. As a long-standing Venetian dependency, Crete formed an important bulwark against the constant threat from the East and there was lively intellectual interaction between the two communities. El Greco was certainly no stranger to Western ideas when he arrived in Venice in 1568.
Already a master icon-painter, the young Cretan entered Titian's workshop and soon became directly acquainted with the art of Veronese, Tintoretto, Parmigiano and all the other great Italian masters of the period. These are lavishly represented in a gallery adjoining the Greco exhibition at the KHM, but, while their influence on El Greco is immediately obvious, he remained essentially his own man, and never discarded the Byzantine legacy of his youth.
Two icons from the Benaki Museum in Athens show gilded light illuminating the faces of the figures in typical Byzantine fashion, and though the Modena Triptych, painted only a year after the artist's arrival in Venice, introduces much brighter colour, as well as more energy and activity, it has a similar, if subtler, effulgence.
In 1570, El Greco moved from Venice to Rome, where he spent the next seven years in assiduous study of the city's artistic masters. Always, however, he maintained the individuality - even theatricality - of his own strong personality, and this is at its most distinctive in the virtuoso painting Boy Lighting a Candle.
Light flickers across the child's face, the lips are pursed in concentration, and the hands are distinguished by the long fingers and meticulous oval fingernails characteristic of so much of El Greco's work. His highly personal and idiosyncratic style did not develop fully until he settled in Spain, taking up residence in Toledo in 1577 and fathering a son within the year.
It is not known whether he legalised his union with Jorge Manuel's mother, Jeronima de Las Cubas. But with the Inquisition thriving in Toledo, the Counter Reformation in full swing, and dour old Philip pondering death and the hereafter in his Spartan chamber at El Escorial, political correctness was the name of the game. In this stern religious climate it is unlikely that the ecclesiastic authorities would countenance carnal relations unhallowed by a formal marriage contract. Because, although he did not find favour with the King, El Greco and his art were snapped up eagerly by the clergy of Toledo.
He had no shortage of commissions, and as the years passed the power and nervous vigour of his technique intensified. In fact, it is already evident in his earliest Spanish pictures.
The complex design of The Adoration of the Holy Name, subtitled The Dream of Philip II, features the monarch in his usual black court dress, kneeling among a crowd of laymen and gorgeously robed church dignitaries. All of them look upwards to Heaven, where a vivid assembly of angels themselves worship the Holy Name. With singular lack of tact, El Greco also introduces the jaws of Hell, which gape open in avid anticipation beside the figure of the King.
There can be no doubting the fervour of the artist's inspiration, but to my mind his profound religious conviction is better expressed in less densely peopled compositions, especially in the two studies of the Holy Family with St Anne. One includes the naked child, St John; different models are used for St Joseph in each; while hands and features are delineated with immense care and elegance.
Still more moving and evocative are the single-figure studies, both sacred and profane, at which the painter excelled.
With the exception of two images of the Magdelene - fair and seductively rounded - his subjects are generally long and lean, with great dark eyes and solemn facial expression. Only St Peter in Tears is allowed brawny forearms and stubby workman's hands, whereas Christ and his other saints are slender, sometimes to the point of emaciation.
Light is a vital component in most of these pictures and is at its most dramatic in the storm clouds attending two studies of St Francis receiving the stigmata. The same highly charged clouds are massed above the famous View of Toledo, though strangely contrary to custom, light is subdued in the later fine picture of the apostle Andrew, with his cross. The saint is posed against a dark, anonymous background and his face reveals all the thoughtfulness and innate kindness of his nature.
While only a few dozen of El Greco's portraits have come down to us, the handful on display in Vienna are more than enough to illustrate the artist's extraordinary talent in this difficult medium.
A penetrating affinity with the sitter enables the painter to uncover the latter's inner personality and produce likenesses of startling realism, and though the identity of the celebrated Knight With His Hand on his Chest has never been properly established, it is clear that he was a well-known person of considerable consequence. Both the single cuff and the ruff surrounding his black clothing are of the finest lace, the hilt of his sword is richly embellished, and the face staring out gravely above this restrained grandeur combines the melancholy and pride associated with well-born Spaniards of the time.
But the most eloquent of all El Greco's portraits is surely his affectionate picture of Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino. The humane and genial disposition for which this friar was widely loved are brought to life with vibrant brushwork and relaxed and fluid lines, and it seems as if the seated figure might speak or spring into action at any moment. There is even a hint of humour - a rare commodity in Spain in those days - about the mouth, and it is easy to believe that the preacher and the painter were close personal friends. Each admired the other's work, and Paravicino, who numbered poetry among his many gifts, dedicated four sonnets to the Greek.
With only 40 works of art on display, the KHM exhibition is no blockbuster; instead, its strength lies in the relatively unfamiliar pictures brought from the US and from Britain, Italy, Hungary and Greece. They have been carefully selected, along with material from Spain, to demonstrate the multi-faceted diversity of El Greco's art, and they show scant sign of the grotesque elongation and "deliberate deformation" that once prompted critics to accuse the painter of astigmatism and even to question his sanity.
The El Greco exhibition continues at the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum until September 2nd
