El Greco's Toledo Legacy: Art, Style, and The Count of Orgaz

El Greco's Artistic Style and Legacy

El Greco focused on the icons, rather than subordinating art to religious themes. Evicted by the court circle, El Greco finally settled in Toledo. This city became the setting for the masterpiece of 16th-century Spanish painting: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (El Entierro del Señor de Orgaz).

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz: A Masterpiece

A medieval legend underlies the painting. In 1323, when Don Gonzalo Ruiz, Lord of the town of Orgaz, died in Toledo, St. Augustine and St. Stephen descended from the sky to bury his body in the parish of Santo Tomé.

The painter's first great success was fragmenting the canvas horizontally into two registers (zones).

Compositional Registers

• The Lower Zone: St. Augustine and St. Stephen attend to the remains of the deceased benefactor. The funeral procession surrounding them depicts El Greco's intellectual friends and the local nobility. This is the artist's second success: treating the subject matter as a contemporary event featuring contemporary characters.
• The Upper Zone: An angel takes the soul of the Count of Orgaz, which is received in glory by Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St. John the Baptist.

El Greco's Later Style and Output

This masterpiece consolidated El Greco's prestige in Toledo and inaugurated a new phase in his style. His color palette faded, and figures accentuated their expressiveness through dislocation and distorted anatomical proportions.

His painted works generally fall into three categories:

1. Altarpieces for religious establishments.
2. Psychological portraits of the local aristocracy.
3. Landscapes of Toledo City.

Religious Commissions and the Apostolate

El Greco's altarpieces were designed to frame the canvases within architectural structures. The altars of the Palladian Chapel in the Hospital de San José and the Chapel of Charity concentrate arbitrary visions of saints and the Apostolate of the Virgin Mary.

The Apostolate series, originally formed by 13 panels, only retains two integrated pieces. They represent medium-bodied figures with hallucinated faces and lost looks.

Psychological Portraits and Social Commentary

His unique gallery of portraits includes doctors, lawyers, and aristocrats, such as the famous Knight with His Hand on His Chest.

Through these characters and his views of Toledo, El Greco captured the particular pulse of society and the topography of his adopted city.

Conclusion

El Greco died at age 73, remembered with admiration by many, but also facing criticism and indifference from others.