Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy 9780271063065

Citation preview

Art and the Religious Image in

El Greco’s Italy

Art and the Religious Image in

El Greco’s Italy

Andrew R. Casper The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

This book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the andrew w. mellon foundation.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Casper, Andrew R., author. Art and the religious image in El Greco’s Italy / Andrew R. Casper. p. cm Summary: “Explores the early career of Domenikos Theotokopoulos, ‘El Greco,’ in particular his engagement with Italian art around the time of his sojourn in Venice and Rome (1567–76). Examines the form, function, and conception of religious images in the second half of the sixteenth century”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-271-06054-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Greco, 1541?–1614—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Art, Italian—16th century—Influence. 3. Christian art and symbolism—Italy—Renaissance, 1450–1600 I. Title. ND813.T4C237 2014 759.6—dc23 2013012119

Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Designed by Jo Ellen Ackerman, Bessas & Ackerman Printed in Hong Kong through Asia Pacific Offset, Inc. Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.

Additional credits: page ii, detail of El Greco, Pietà  (fig. 44); page v, detail of El Greco, Annunciation (fig. 49); page vii, detail of El Greco, Annunciation (fig. 49).

For Louisa

contents

ix

List of Illustrations

xiii Acknowledgments 1 Introduction

chapter one

15

The Divinity of Painting



chapter two

43

The Devotional Image



chapter three

73

Synthesis as Artistic Ideal



chapter four

The Theatrics of the 97 Counter-Reformation Narrative





chapter five

The Artist as Antiquarian in 125 Christian Rome





chapter six

151 From Icon to Altarpiece 175 Notes 193 Bibliography 209 Index

15. El Greco, Escutcheon with St. Veronica’s Veil, ca. 1577–79. Private collection

Illustrations

1. El Greco, Dormition of the Virgin, ca. 1565. Holy Cathedral of the Dormition of the Virgin, Ermoupolis, Syros 2 2. El Greco, The Assumption of the Virgin, 1577–79. The Art Institute of Chicago 3 3. El Greco, Adoration of the Magi, before 1567. Benaki 5 Museum, Athens 4. El Greco, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, before 1567. Benaki Museum, Athens

17

5. Virgin Mesopanditissa. Santa Maria della Salute, Venice 19 6. Jan Gossaert, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, ca. 1520. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 21 7. Giulio Bonasone, engraving showing Socrates painting, from Achillis Bocchii Bonon. symbolicarum quaestionum de Universo genere quas serio ludebat (Bologna: Novae 23 Academiae Bocchanae, 1555) 8. Caravaggio, Inspiration of St. Matthew, 1602. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

23

9. Giorgio Vasari, St. Luke Painting the Madonna and 24 Child, ca. 1565. SS Annunziata, Florence 10. Maerten van Heemskerck, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, 1532. Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 24 11. Raphael, Sistine Madonna, ca. 1513. Gemäldegalerie 25 Alte Meister, Dresden 12. Raphael [after?], St. Luke Painting the Madonna, sixteenth century. Accademia di San Luca, Rome

25

13. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Allegory of Painting, ca. 1564–70. Albertina, Vienna

27

14. Federico Zuccaro, Father of Disegno, late sixteenth century. Viviani Collection, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino 27

30

16. El Greco, St. Veronica, ca. 1580. Formerly Colección 30 Maria Louisa Caturla, Madrid 17. El Greco, St. Veronica, ca. 1580. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo 31 18. El Greco, St. Veronica’s Veil, ca. 1580. Private collection 31 19. Ugo da Carpi, St. Veronica Altarpiece, ca. 1525. Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro, Vatican

36

20. Copy of Jan van Eyck, Holy Face, ca. 1438. Gemälde36 galerie, Staatlichen Museen, Berlin 21. El Greco, Baptism of Christ, ca. 1567–70. Historical 44 Museum of Crete, Heraklion 22. El Greco, Modena Triptych, showing Adoration of the Shepherds (left), Christ Crowning the Christian Solider (center), and Baptism of Christ (right), ca. 1567. Galleria 467 Estense, Modena 23. El Greco, Modena Triptych, showing the Annunciation (left), View of Mount Sinai (center), and Expulsion from Paradise (right), ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena 46 24. El Greco, Baptism of Christ from Modena Triptych, 47 ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena 25. Giovanni Battista d’Angeli (del Moro), Baptism of 47 Christ, mid-sixteenth century 26. El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1567. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, 48 Ontario, Canada 27. El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds from Modena 49 Triptych, ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena 28. El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1572–76. 49 Private collection 29. El Greco, Expulsion from Paradise from Modena Triptych, ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena

50

ix

illustrations

50

43. El Greco, detail of Cleansing of the Temple, ca. 1570. 74 Minneapolis Institute of Arts

31. Jacopo Caraglio, after Titian, Annunciation, ca. 1527–37 51

44. El Greco, Pietà, ca. 1570. The Philadelphia Museum 77 of Art

32. El Greco, View of Mount Sinai, ca. 1570. Historical Museum of Crete, Heraklion 52

45. El Greco, Pietà, ca. 1575. Hispanic Society of America, 78 New York

33. El Greco, Washing of the Feet from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara 53

46. Michelangelo, Pietà, ca. 1547–55. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence 79

30. El Greco, Annunciation from Modena Triptych, ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena

34. El Greco, Agony in the Garden from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara 53 35. El Greco, Christ Before Pilate from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara 54 36. El Greco, Crucifixion from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara 54 37. Giovanni Battista d’Angeli, Crucifixion, mid-sixteenth century 54 38. Georgios Klontzas, Scenes of Christ’s Passion, ca. 1550–1600. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

55

39. El Greco, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, ca. 1570. 57 Istituto Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples 40. El Greco, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, ca. 1570. 57 Private collection, Madrid 41. El Greco, Burial of Christ, ca. 1568–70. National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens

61

42. Michael Damaskinos, Madonna del Rosario, ca. 1572. High altar of the Cappella del SS Rosario, Church of San 66 Benedetto, Conversano, Italy

x

47. El Greco, study after Michelangelo’s Day, ca. 1570s. 81 Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich 48. Titian, Annunciation, ca. 1559–64. San Salvador, Venice 84 49. El Greco, Annunciation, ca. 1570. Museo del Prado, Madrid 85 50. El Greco, Annunciation, ca. 1570–76. Colección Muñoz, Barcelona

86

51. El Greco, Annunciation, ca. 1570–76. Museo Thyssen87 Bornemisza, Madrid 52. El Greco, Christ Cleansing the Temple, before 1570. 100 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC 53. El Greco, Cleansing of the Temple, ca. 1570. Minneapo101 lis Institute of Arts 54. El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1570. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden 104 55. El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1570. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

106

56. El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1572. Galleria 107 Nazionale, Parma 57. Battista Franco, after Raphael, Peter Healing the Lame, 108 ca. 1554–61 58. Giulio Clovio, Blinding of Elymas, ca. 1528–34. Louvre, Paris

109

59. Scena tragica, from Sebastiano Serlio, Il secondo libro 112 di perspettiva (Paris: Iehan Barbé, 1545)

illustrations

60. Theater cross-section, from Sebastiano Serlio, Il secondo libro di perspettiva (Paris: Iehan Barbé, 1545) 116

71. Interior of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, Rome 141

61. Stage scenographies by Vincenzo Scamozzi in Andrea Palladio, Teatro Olimpico, ca. 1585. Vicenza 116

72. El Greco, Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón), ca. 1570–72. 146 Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

62. El Greco, Portrait of Giulio Clovio, ca. 1572. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples 128

73. El Greco, Fable, ca. 1577. Museo del Prado, Madrid 147

63. El Greco, Portrait of an Architect, ca. 1570–75. National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen

129

64. El Greco, Portrait of a Sculptor, ca. 1576. Private collection 130 65. Giuliano da Sangallo, sketch of the Temple of the Sibyl from Libro di disegni, Codice Baberiniano Latino 4424, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 134 66. Maerten van Heemskerck, Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, ca. 1532–36, from the Roman Sketchbook II, inv. 79 D 2 A 134 Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin 67. El Greco, detail from Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1572. 135 Galleria Nazionale, Parma 68. Giovanni Antonio Dosio, Arch of Constantine, mid-sixteenth century. Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle 135 Stampe, Uffizi, Florence 69. Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri, Baths of Diocletian, from Urbis Romae aedificiorum illustrium quae supersunt reliquiae (Rome, 1569) 137 70. After Giovanni Antonio Dosio, woodcut illustration of Baths of Diocletian, from Bernardo Gamucci, Le antichità della città di Roma (Venice: Giovanni 137 Varisco e i Compagni, 1569)

74. Michelangelo, Erythraean Sibyl, ca. 1508–12. Sistine 148 Chapel, Vatican 75. El Greco, high altar at Santo Domingo el Antiguo, Toledo 154 76. Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, ca. 1516–18. Santa 157 Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice 77. Jacopo Tintoretto, Assumption of the Virgin, ca. 1555. 159 Chiesa dei Gesuiti, Venice 78. Cherubino Alberti, Assumption of the Virgin, ca. 1571

159

79. El Greco, Trinity, ca. 1577–79. Museo del Prado, Madrid 160 80. Albrecht Dürer, Holy Trinity, ca. 1511

161

81. Michelangelo, study for the Colonna Pietà, early 1540s. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

161

82. El Greco, Resurrection, ca. 1577–79. Santo Domingo el 162 Antiguo, Toledo 83. El Greco, St. Sebastian, ca. 1577–78. Museo Catedral163 ico, Palencia 84. El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1577–79. 167 Fundación Botín, Santander

xi

Acknowledgments

This book culminates a journey that began during my doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I am most grateful to Michael Cole for pointing out the importance of this material and teaching me that the most arduous endeavors yield a unique joy. I credit any advancements I may have made as an art historian along the way to his guidance. I would be remiss not to thank Larry Silver for holding me and my work to ever higher standards while remaining fair, kind, and generous; Renata Holod for spurring my interest in theories of vision; and indeed the entire Penn community—the most nurturing intellectual environment I could hope for. Research was supported in part by grants from the Fulbright Program, Miami University, the Newberry Library, and the University of Pennsylvania. Additional support for publication has been provided by the Art History Publication Initiative, which covered the extensive costs of production and copyright permissions. Chapter 4 incorporates material previously published as “Experiential Vision in El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind” in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte in 2011. I thank the editors of the journal for granting permission to offer a fuller and more nuanced contextualization of those themes in this book. The process of this book’s development has brought out the best in my colleagues and fellow scholars, friends and strangers alike. I am grateful for their generosity of time, knowledge, and patience. In particular I thank David Cast, Una Roman D’Elia, Jack Freiberg, Christian Kleinbub, Margaret Morse, and Ian Verstegen for commenting on various chapter drafts from the vantage of their boundless expertise; Nicos Hadjinicolaou for providing a forum, and an

audience of specialists, for me to present my research on El Greco’s paintings of the Veronica at the Fourth International El Greco Symposium in Crete in 2005; Edo Gamba, Angela Roberts, Allison Sherman, and Krystina Stermole for an unforgettable year in Venice; Rosi Mosca-Herrera, Stephanie Pilat and John Romano for their friendship while in Rome; Grant Peterre for a crucial photograph; my colleagues in the Early Modern Studies Collective at Miami University, and especially Renee Baernstein, Wietse de Boer, Charles Ganelin, and Cindy Klestinec, for interrogating my work and patiently enduring repeated requests for affirmation, which they indulged; and Daniel Tonozzi for his help with many of the Italian translations (though all mistakes, infelicities, or inaccuracies are my own doing). My colleagues in the Department of Art at Miami arranged for the research leave and course releases necessary for completing the manuscript despite the attendant strain on our curriculum. Further, they have greeted every stage of this book’s creation with an enthusiasm whose sincerity has been nothing short of exemplary. Not least of all I thank my students, and in particular the participants in undergraduate seminars on early-modern vision (spring 2010) and the icon (spring 2008 and 2012), for their impressive insights and dedication to helping me work out key ideas central to my development of this material. The anonymous reviewers for Pennsylvania State University Press provided feedback that was both supportive and challenging, making this a better book. Ellie Goodman has been a truly superb and encouraging editor since the moment I timidly submitted extracts of the manuscript for review. Of course, I would not be able to write these words without the support of Pepper Stetler, who has been supportive beyond what is reasonable and certainly beyond description. I dedicate this book to our beautiful Louisa, just for being who she is.

xiii

Introduction

The seventeenth-century poet and preacher Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino summarized the life of the painter commonly known as El Greco (The Greek) by writing, “Crete gave him life and his paintbrushes / Toledo [Spain] gave him a better country, where he began / with his death, to attain eternity.”1 This essential biographical data is accurate. Born around the year 1541, Domenikos Theotokopoulos started his career as an icon painter on the island of Crete. He was later better known as Dominico Greco, and today simply as El Greco, but these monikers signify the same émigré to Spain whose legacy is preserved in stirring

Detail of figure 1

paintings that have provoked both rapt admiration and scornful disapproval since his death in 1614. However, Paravicino’s abridged account of the life of this Greek-born “Spanish” painter fails to acknowledge any formative influence from the artist’s stay in Italy from 1567 to 1576—a time and place that witnessed great consternation concerning the proper form and function of sacred art. Indeed, the stylistic discrepancies between the Dormition of the Virgin painted in Crete around 1565 (fig. 1) and the Assumption of the Virgin completed in 1577 for the high altar of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo (fig. 2)—paintings that frame El Greco’s

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

nine-year sojourn in Venice and Rome—prove that the artist’s Italian phase was more pivotal than what Paravicino’s omission of it might suggest. Both paintings bear similar signatures: “[Δ]ΟΜΗΝΙΚΟC ΘΕΟΤΟΚΌΠΟΥΛΟC Ο ΔΕΙΞΑC” (Domenikos Theotokopoulos displayed it) on the Dormition and the slightly more informative “δομήνικος θεοτοκόπουλος κρής ό δείξας α φ ο ζ” (Domenikos Theotokopoulos of Crete displayed it, 1577) on the later altarpiece.2 However, without these declarations of

creative agency, few would likely recognize that the same hand produced these dissonant works within only a dozen years. The earlier icon is typical of the kind of painting in which El Greco had received extensive training in Crete. Resplendent in its use of gold, the composition follows a standard Byzantine formula to depict Mary’s death and the transitus of her soul into heaven. Its intimate size would have made it suitable for the use of a single viewer meditating on this subject of deep theological and

Figure 1 El Greco, Dormition of the Virgin, ca. 1565. Holy Cathedral of the Dormition of the Virgin, Ermoupolis, Syros. Photo: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2nd Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities.

2

Figure 2 Domenikos Theotokopoulos, called El Greco, Spanish, born Crete, 1541–1614, The Assumption of the Virgin, 1577–79. Oil on canvas, 158 3⁄4 × 83 3⁄4 in. (403.2 × 211.8 cm); original image, approximate: 1561⁄16 × 793⁄4 in. (396.4 × 202.5 cm). Gift of Nancy Atwood Sprague in memory of Albert Arnold Sprague, 1906.99, The Art Institute of Chicago. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago.

3

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

spiritual significance. By comparison, the soaring Assumption of the Virgin, part of the painter’s first commission in Spain, is enormous. As the main panel of a massive altar retablo, this painting addressed a larger public audience in a liturgical setting. Stylistically it owes much to the practices and techniques employed by painters in Venice and Rome that evidently remained fresh in the artist’s mind after having spent nearly a decade in Italy. But what really happened after El Greco’s visualization of Mary’s Dormition that inspired him to paint the Assumption so differently just a short time later? More important, what does this shift in artistic practice indicate about the environment in which he worked in the intervening period and its impact on his attitudes regarding the images he made? Answering these questions requires a fresh look at an artist whose life achievements resist his being assigned a single cultural identity. El Greco’s itinerancy has persuaded many to cast him as an exotic foreigner working on the fringes of local artistic establishments at every stage of his career. His stay in Venice and Rome frequently stands as an anomalous footnote to his more famous Spanish period or is ignored altogether. When El Greco’s Italian period is recognized, it is too often subjected to the same unsubstantiated biographical embellishments that since the nineteenth century have cast him as a victim of debilitating ophthalmological conditions, an eccentric mystic, and a protomodernist visionary.3 This book frames early El Greco differently. I reveal that he was far more conventional than what is normally said about him. He consciously broadened his artistic repertoire from the production of post-Byzantine icons to local conventions of Italian painting in order to respond calculatedly

4

and productively to contemporary preoccupations about the proper form and function of sacred imagery. The only thing unusual about him was the astonishing brevity in which he underwent a drastic stylistic metamorphosis as part of his reformulation of the religious image. Only three years after arriving in Venice in 1567 as a Cretan icon painter, he went to Rome having mastered Venetian color. In 1576 he went to Spain as an eager student—and informed critic—of Michelangelo. The paintings from this period exhibit a range of sixteenth-century Italian artistic trends, including an extensive reliance on prints for compositional inspiration, a thoughtful implementation of Venetian art theory in his working practice, a studious application of perspective for formal and symbolic effects, and an informed use of ancient architecture for the settings of religious narratives. Recognizing these characteristics, not only augments our understanding of El Greco’s early artistic activities, but also invites speculation on how some of the most formative artistic discussions of his time helped shape his output and his conception of how his paintings functioned as religious images in late sixteenth-century Italy. Any analysis of El Greco’s early career must overlay the unusual itinerary that took him from Crete to Spain via Venice and Rome within a span of only ten years. Thanks to its position as a trading crossroads, Crete and its capital, Candia (today Heraklion), was a major center for the exportation of icons throughout the Mediterranean.4 Moreover, the cosmopolitan culture that nurtured El Greco’s first artistic activities fostered a predisposition to follow Italian models, resulting in a distinct pictorial hybridity.5 The widespread dissemination of Italian art provided

introduction

access to these sources.6 His frequent borrowings from prints show how extensively he relied on this medium in particular.7 The icon St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (see fig. 4 in chapter 1) models the Evangelist after a figure in Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving of Raphael’s Last Supper drawing.8 The angel descending to crown the saint with laurel originates in a print by Giovanni Battista d’Angeli (del Moro) after a drawing by Bernardino Campi titled Victory Crowning the Roman Vestal Tucia.9 The candlestick in the foreground of the Dormition of the Virgin derives from prints by Marcantonio Raimondi and Enea Vico.10 The most eclectic departure from Byzantine models among El Greco’s Cretan works is found in the Adoration of the Magi (fig. 3).11 This icon exhibits a looser application of paint, a limited use of gold, and a more spacious background than in the artist’s other works. The mannered pose of the Virgin, with her legs crossed as she leans forward to present the Christ child to the retinue of adoring Magi, comes from an engraving titled the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine by Marco d’Angeli after Andrea Schiavone.12 The soldier appearing on the right with his back turned outward originates in Parmigianino’s Resurrection etching.13 The figure removing his crown may come from an engraving by Giovanni Battista Franco.14 The king on the left holding a gold urn and paten has its origins in Correggio’s Adoration of the Magi at the Brera in Milan, which also appeared in prints.15 The architectural setting featuring ruined buildings has northern origins, coming from a print titled Balaam and the Angel by Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert after Maerten van Heemskerck.16 While this persistent lure of Italy was probably what brought El Greco to Venice in 1567, the exact

circumstances of his move are unclear. What we do know is recorded in a handful of documents. On June 6, 1566, he served as a legal witness in Candia as a “master painter,” indicating that he left the island as a fully trained iconographer.17 Two other documents—from December 26 and 27, 1566— indicate that El Greco prepared for his journey by auctioning “un quadro della Passione del nostro Signor Giesu Christo, dorato”—putting 1566 as the terminus post quem for the artist’s arrival in Venice.18 Yet the only known document for his stay in Venice is a letter dated August 18, 1568, referencing drawings he was supposed to send to the cartographer Giorgio Sideris Calapodas.19 By the time El Greco arrived in Venice in 1567, the city’s Cretan population had become the largest ethnic minority in Italy. The community’s most prosperous period centered around the construction of San Giorgio dei Greci from 1539 to 1573, a period in which many Greek artists worked for both Venetian and Cretan clients.20 El Greco’s arrival coincided with

Figure 3 El Greco, Adoration of the Magi, before 1567. Benaki Museum, Athens. Photo © 2014 by Benaki Museum, Athens.

5

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

an unprecedented wave of immigrant artists from Crete.21 The most successful was Michael Damaskinos, who had already proven to be an accomplished artist in Candia before his first stint in Venice from 1566 to 1569. After a short interlude in Messina, Damaskinos returned to Venice in 1574 and stayed until 1582 or 1583 to work on the iconostasis and the sancta sanctorum at San Giorgio dei Greci.22 El Greco’s career path diverged markedly from that of his peers. Though he never lost sight of his Cretan origins—he never signed a painting in any language but Greek and often appended his name with the declarative “of Crete”—he distanced himself from the Greek community in Venice and does not appear to have been bothered by a lack of one in Rome.23 Neither did El Greco come to Italy to work as a madonnero as was once thought. Twentieth­-century scholars haphazardly applied this derogatory label to artists of the so-called CretoVenetian school who produced cheap and stylistically hybrid panels of the Madonna and other religious subjects for an unsophisticated and low-paying clientele.24 These immigrant artists were, in the words of Harold Wethey, “totally unskilled, untutored, and ignorant of the very rudiments of good painting.” Few today would challenge his declaration that “the attempt to transform the young El Greco into a tenth-rate vendor of small religious panels is the most regrettable development in the critical history of the artist’s career.”25 Instead, El Greco’s Italian paintings reveal a more accomplished study after the styles and techniques of Italian masters than what we see in other Cretan painters. His short stay in Venice in the late 1560s exposed him to artists who helped shape his early development.26 A letter from Giulio Clovio dated November 16, 1570, introduced El

6

Greco to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese as a “young discepolo of Titian from Candia” recently arrived in Rome.27 It is unclear if “disciple” signifies an established formal relationship or if the young artist merely admired and studied Titian’s works on his own.28 Regardless, the elder master’s influence on the young El Greco was undeniably strong. This letter is also one of the few documents recording El Greco’s activities in Rome, a destination where, as Giorgio Vasari described, many artists of the highest ambition felt the urge to visit in order to study works by the great masters.29 Clovio, a miniaturist and long-time servant of the cardinal, asked that El Greco be granted a room in the Farnese Palace until he could find suitable housing elsewhere. Though El Greco was already in the city (Clovio’s letter mentioned a self-portrait that had already dazzled all the artists of Rome), the painter must have settled in the palace by December 1570. His career might have ended up differently had his stay there not come to an abrupt end. A letter El Greco wrote to the cardinal on July 6, 1572, expresses remorse for a hasty dismissal from the court only a little more than a year and a half after his introduction.30 El Greco’s loss of a potential patron in Alessandro Farnese may have expedited the artist’s decision to join the painters’ guild in Rome. The registry records that on September 18, 1572, just two months after El Greco’s release from the Farnese household, he paid the two scudi fee for admission.31 Neither the extent nor the nature of El Greco’s involvement is very clear. Confusion stems from the fact that when the guild documents were first published it was said that he registered as a “pittore a carte.” This would seem to classify him as a painter of miniatures, suggesting a continuing guidance under the

introduction

miniaturist Clovio.32 However, the term comes from a seventeenth-century index of all individuals registered between 1535 and 1653 and therefore might not be the language used at the time that El Greco became a member. The earlier records categorize each member as pittore (painter), ricamatore (embroiderer), banderaio (banner maker), miniatore (miniaturist or illuminator), or battiloro (gold beater)—raising the question of why, if El Greco was a miniaturist, he was listed in the 1572 entry as a pittore and not miniatore. El Greco’s admittance into the guild so soon after his departure from the Farnese court is indicative of an unwavering determination to stay in Rome. But this event initiates the most contentious period of the artist’s entire career. His precise whereabouts are unknown from the time he entered the guild until at least October 21, 1576, when he reportedly appealed for financial aid from the Royal Almoner in Madrid.33 Speculation that the artist traveled elsewhere in Italy after 1572, especially the engaging theory that he returned to Venice for a few years before heading off to Spain, has been endorsed by a small but vociferous collection of scholars for much of the twentieth century.34 Jens Ferdinand Willumsen pointed out that Giovanni Baglione’s Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino a’tempi di papa Urbano Ottavo nel 1642, an exhaustive list of artists working in Rome after 1572, does not include Domenikos Theotokopoulos.35 Unfortunately, no existing documentation can confirm that the artist went anywhere else.36 In fact, El Greco was likely still in Rome when he painted and signed a portrait of Vincenzo Anastagi in 1575.37 The reasons for El Greco’s decision to go to Spain are also a subject of much speculation. Giulio

Mancini alleged that El Greco made disparaging comments regarding Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, offering to rip the fresco to the ground and do another that was better and more modest. This libel supposedly drew the ire of El Greco’s peers, whereupon he fled Rome to seek the patronage of Philip II in Spain.38 Though some have taken Mancini’s anecdote as evidence for the driving force behind El Greco’s departure, it is unlikely that condemnation of Michelangelo could have invited such repercussions.39 The Last Judgment was subjected to widespread ridicule that culminated in Pius IV’s demand that Daniele da Volterra clothe Michelangelo’s writhing nudes in fresco a secco britches. Besides, El Greco’s comments would hardly have been unique or original. Vicious invectives against Michelangelo’s work were common, as his paintings became scapegoats for the formal offenses committed by religious painters in this period of heightened vigilance.40 Pietro Aretino’s notorious outrage got expanded in Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura of 1557. In 1564 the theologian Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano issued a treatise criticizing the fresco’s fullest range of indecorous improprieties. Since it is unlikely that an unflattering appraisal of Michelangelo’s painting could have forced El Greco out of Rome, a more plausible premise for traveling to Spain was the promise of work. While Venice and Rome nourished El Greco’s artistic development, they did not provide an abundance of employment opportunities that would have allowed him to remain in Italy. For this reason, the artist set out in search of opportunities to advance professionally elsewhere, even if that meant going abroad for the second time in his young career. By 1577 El Greco signed contracts for the Espolio at the

7

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

sacristy altar of the Toledo cathedral and the high altar retablo at Santo Domingo el Antiguo. He never stepped foot in Italy again. The preceding biographical sketch serves as a backdrop for the largely nonbiographical aims of this book. My focus on early El Greco, to the exclusion of his more famous career in Spain, has two interrelated goals. First, it positions his time in Venice and Rome as formative and profitable to his artistic development. While his earliest paintings offer insights into his unique pictorial mind, they also aggregate key trends and ideas that shaped artistic production in the second half of the sixteenth century. Of course, El Greco’s Spanish works are no less valuable in that regard; but his art underwent such drastic changes in style, patronage, and even audience that attempts to find continuity across his career risk missing the meaningful nuances of this underexplored early phase that only a focused examination can provide. Hence this book’s second, more expansive aim: to use El Greco’s early career as a vantage point for reevaluating the religious image in sixteenth-­ century Italy. I draw attention to the ties between El Greco’s art and the environment in which he worked by showing how he generated new ways of conceiving sacred imagery in response to the burgeoning need to reconcile artistic achievement with ever-evolving concerns for the aims of Christian art. It is by looking with greater sensitivity to the functional and religious—not just artistic—aspects of El Greco’s productivity in Italy that we can appreciate the connections between this misunderstood artist’s religious environment and the artistic output of his early career. El Greco’s early career has figured very little in recent scholarly attempts to evaluate properly the

8

mutual dependence of “art” and the “religious image” in the second half of the sixteenth century. For example, Marcia Hall’s The Sacred Image in the Age of Art highlights tensions between upholding the religious function of images promulgated by the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent in 1563 and maintaining the value of artistic virtuosity, as sanctioned by the otherwise unrelated founding of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence that same year. The author focuses on the efforts of select artists—El Greco included—to respond to ecclesiastical requirements that religious art foster devotion, while also asserting their creative autonomy.41 But the chapter on El Greco further perpetuates scholarly bias against his earlier phases by discussing his output in Spain—a profile made all the more curious by Hall’s otherwise Italocentric focus. Her book thus leaves the artist’s much more pointed pictorial statements on religious imagery, as well as the contextual nuances that shaped his artistic practice and philosophy in Italy, largely unexamined. El Greco’s compositional and stylistic techniques articulate uniquely the interdependence of art and devotion in a way that broad period generalizations cannot fully accommodate. Federico Zeri highlights Scipione Pulzone’s approach to reforming the visual arts toward a more devotionally affective function through the formulation of a timeless and emphatically pious style.42 In one masterful and more recent case study of how a single artist negotiated this terrain, Stuart Lingo shows that Federico Barocci crafted paintings that were both artistically alluring and spiritually affective.43 The nature of Barocci’s production says as much about his unique artistic inclinations as it does the environment in which he worked. Indeed, the artists El Greco admired most

introduction

operated similarly. Una Roman D’Elia shows how Titian used literary formulae to shape his religious works into distinct genres in accordance with new concerns over decorum and propriety then emerging in Venice.44 Alexander Nagel explores Michelangelo’s lifelong efforts to devise images of the dead Christ that embraced the formal and functional legacy of cult images in a way consistent with his ideas of artistic and spiritual reform cultivated before the Council of Trent’s decree on images.45 The artists of the Carracci family, by contrast, instituted a response from outside the Roman (or Venetian) center(s). Charles Dempsey has shown that these artists, influenced by their own north Italian sensibilities, advocated a reform of painting that denied Michelangelo’s manner in favor of one that brought back the ideas of the “devout style” cultivated by Francesco Francia and Pietro Perugino but criticized by Vasari as backward and provincial.46 In each of these cases the artist comes up with his own solutions to the challenge of creating sacred images. A similar discussion of El Greco, hitherto lacking, ought to allow for an examination tailored to the contours of his own experience and his own artistic inclinations in this time and place. The premise of this book is that El Greco’s unique artistic pedigree distills key components of the controversy over religious images that do not reveal themselves as forcefully when examined through works by other, even more renowned Italian artists. He entered the fray of Counter-­ Reformation Italy from an unusual yet advantageous perspective. He arrived a mere four years after the end of the Council of Trent from a place that was peripheral to the main focus of discussion. Yet while Crete’s retrospective, post-Byzantine

artistic manner avoided the scrutiny that befell artists on mainland Italy, nobody has examined these issues from the vantage of an icon painter in Italy whose works contribute much to our understanding of the development of the religious image. In fact, the Council of Trent’s decree hardly went unnoticed by Orthodox communities. Cretan portrayals of the Triumph of Orthodoxy conflate the Catholic reaffirmation of images with the Second Council of Nicaea’s support for icons in 787 and the Byzantine defeat of iconoclasm in 843.47 Consequently, El Greco’s earliest training inflected a Byzantine way of thinking about sacred images that was not altogether distinct from what was being promoted in Italy.48 But this also makes his drastic artistic transformation, striving to match the achievements of Titian, Michelangelo, and other artists he admired, all the more puzzling. El Greco’s stylistic transition does indeed prove especially difficult to reconcile against this backdrop. But few studies that confront his formal development consider the functional value of his works with respect to sixteenth-century preoccupations with sacred imagery. Scholars too often distort El Greco’s primary intentions by emphasizing that the artist disavowed his Greek heritage in order to become a full-fledged European virtuoso.49 Such treatments risk drawing correlative assumptions about the purpose of his paintings by suggesting that El Greco devoted himself to artistic concerns above all else and that his stylistic deviations from a Byzantine norm signal a typological transformation that both he and his art underwent. As a result, his decision to abandon his Cretan style can too easily be seen as a willing rejection of the devotional purpose attached to his Byzantine-style paintings; no longer can he

9

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

appropriately be called an icon painter once he picks up a brush in Venice and Rome because his images cease to look the part. While it is undeniable that El Greco developed a more Italianized manner to the detriment of his former Byzantine one, we should not assume that he intended to alter the function of the things he made. The works he produced in Venice, Rome, and beyond are still predominantly religious in nature. Moreover, this book shows that the types, formats, and subjects he painted exemplify the range of conceptual problems that he confronted when seeking ways to ensure that sacred works of art served devotional ends. We might then ask, if El Greco arrived in Venice as an icon painter, did he ever stop painting them? An answer requires devoting unprecedented attention to the artist’s early career alongside a careful examination of the far bigger question of what an icon is. While a direct derivative of the Greek eikon was not commonly used in this time, conceptions of the religious image nevertheless derive from traditional icon theory. The Council of Trent advised artists to adhere to basic principles regarding decorum and religious devotion—namely, to faithfully depict sacred subjects that inspire piety. In so doing the council repeated the standard definition of the icon by stipulating that “the honor which is shown to [images] is referred to the prototype which they represent.”50 Furthermore, Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura (1557) described religious images as visual aids that are “not only, as the saying goes, the books of the ignorant, but [that] also (like stimuli of a highly agreeable kind) awaken understanding to their devotions—lifting both the former and the latter into contemplating the subject they represent.”51 The

10

referential task of the sacred image to signify its prototype gets aligned with its power to be emotionally affective. Therefore, the sixteenth-century icon was regarded as both a transparent image that draws attention to the prototype represented and a visual aid that invites devotional engagement with it. El Greco was not unique in formatting his paintings to ensure this referential and devotional goal. Consequently, a broader aim of this book is to challenge scholarly examinations of early-modern religious art that still see explicit devotional engagement as a feature germane to a medieval, not Renaissance, experience of images. The religious function of an image is too often seen to be at odds with the recognition of its status as a work of art. For example, Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence notoriously asserts that the Renaissance “era of art” and its insistence on virtuosic artistry signals the demise of the cult image.52 But I suggest that this antithesis might miss the frequent inextricability of artistic self-awareness and religious purpose—an alignment of form and function that Belting indeed regarded as intrinsic to some medieval devotional images.53 Why should the art of sixteenth-century Italy be any different? As David Freedberg remarked, “To separate the aura of art from the aura of images is to tell only half a story.”54 El Greco’s paintings further invalidate dichotomies of “art” and “image” because of his unique stylistic transformation, not despite it. El Greco lived at a time when the correlation between style and function allowed artists to tailor their images to the tastes and preferences of their viewers. The Tridentine reemphasis on the efficacy of sacred art laid the groundwork for all religious works to function in the ways associated with icons as long as the venerating public, collectively or

introduction

individually, treated them as such. Though there was some understanding of a preference for simpler, more “medieval” compositions, the vagueness of the Council of Trent’s decree prevented any unified stylistic response. As a result, we cannot simply recognize an icon when we see one. Instead, “iconicity” is determined not by a single prescribed style but rather by an image’s capacity in the mind of the beholder to function as a devotional aid in the terms conveyed by the Councils of Nicaea and Trent: it must provide access to the prototype portrayed and not in itself be regarded as an object of reverence. Artistic embellishments, if done well, could make positive contributions to an image’s devotional goal. It is in seeking a definition of the icon that resists contradicting the artificial conditions of the work of art that we realize the potential for any image to act as an icon because it is a work of art. Consequently, this book shows how El Greco’s early body of work articulates what I call the “artful icon.” This category combines traditional notions of the icon as a devotional image with the inherent valorization of aesthetic achievement in the second half of the sixteenth century (fully described in chapter 1). One unique measure of the artful icon is the treatment of paintings by known masters as works that attract an allure similar to that garnered by anonymously crafted miracle-working icons. Raphael’s Spasimo di Sicilia was nearly lost at sea when the ship transporting it to Palermo sank in a storm. Only through allegedly divine intervention did the picture survive the wreckage and wash ashore near Genoa. Vasari reported in the 1568 edition of Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori that “it was found to be a divine work and proved to be uninjured . . . for even the fury of

the winds and the sea respected the beauty of such a painting.”55 Vasari asserted the inherent sanctity (and indestructibility) of Raphael’s art by grafting the older legend of the Virgin Annunciate of Trapani onto its burgeoning reputation as a cult image. The point is not so much whether Vasari’s account is journalistically reliable but rather that he found Raphael’s artistic achievement worthy of receiving a rhetorical flourish that highlights its ability to attract divine attention. Importantly, Vasari’s treatment of this work of art–cum–miraculous image reflects the prevailing attitudes of his own time, decades removed from the time of its creation. The way he thus embellished the works of the “divine Raphael” speaks to the perceived capacity for artistic craft to bolster the prestige of religious works of art just when El Greco himself would wash up on Italy’s shores. This heightened reverence for artistic craft— and the tantalizing notion that creative virtuosity gets validated through acts of celestial favor—also changed the perception of older cult images that were otherwise not regarded as artistic artifacts. The painting Christ Carrying the Cross at the church of San Rocco in Venice reportedly began to perform miracles in 1519 and subsequently became one of the city’s most highly venerated icons. The painting’s earliest documentary records classify it as an anonymous work, but Vasari and Francesco Sansovino later assigned it to Giorgione and Titian.56 In a similar fashion, Vasari and Benedetto Varchi attributed the miraculous fresco at Santissima Annunziata in Florence to known artists, the former supporting Giotto’s student Pietro Cavallini as the painting’s real master.57 These post facto attributions of mystical images to the hands of known painters signal a later sixteenth-century

11

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

exaltation of artists and the images they made. This in turn bears witness to the cult of artistic excellence that nurtured El Greco’s development. Of course, El Greco did not reasonably expect his paintings to produce miracles. But he surely recognized that this desire to credit artists for making images that were especially powerful devotional aids was indicative of a newfound esteem for painters to garner both artistic and religious prestige through the works they created. The artful icon thus emerges through the recognition that the artistic conditions of a created image define it as an icon. In fact, Charles Barber’s reevaluation of Byzantine icon theory from an art-historical point of view shows that iconoclastic debates centered on the very objecthood of the manufactured icon as well as on the representational potential—and limits—of an image to convey its prototype through visual (that is, artistic) means. The result was the conceptual valorization of the icon on the basis of its very artifice being essential to its meaning and function.58 El Greco’s artistic output proves the continuation of such notions in his day. The following chapters show how his paintings from Venice and Rome embody sixteenth-century conceptions of the religious image as both a devotional object and an artistic product. After the first chapter’s thorough examination of the artful icon manifested in paintings of St. Luke painting the Virgin and Child and of St. Veronica’s veil as self-reflexive statements on the ontology of the religious image, chapter 2 focuses on more common devotional paintings of standard biblical scenes in the form of small portable panels, either standing alone or as incorporated into triptychs. By maintaining a production of pictures based on compositional repetition, El Greco’s procedures

12

differed little from those learned in Crete. Furthermore, he aligned his practice with prevailing debates concerning the relative devoutness of the “Greek style,” which he rejected, and the more modern Italian manner in a way that reveals a demand for devotional works whose artistry represented the most up-to-date aesthetic achievements. Belief in the causal relationship between an image’s appearance and its devotional effectiveness for certain audiences provided El Greco the impetus to fashion a style after the examples of the great Italian masters who preceded him. Chapter 3 analyzes his synthetic union of disparate artistic styles to follow the formula for the hypothetical “god of painting” who, according to Paolo Pino, would successfully combine the form-defining design of Michelangelo with Titian’s proclivities as a colorist. By putting this theoretical hybrid of disegno and colorito into practice, El Greco demonstrated the extent to which current theories of art informed his painting practice when enacted to provide effective vehicles for devotional engagement. El Greco’s mastery of Italian painting styles led him to pursue new and more ambitious compositions that further pushed the formal possibilities of the artful icon. Chapter 4 looks at how his Cleansing of the Temple and Christ Healing the Blind paintings employ theatrical effects of performative gesture and scenographic perspective to fit a new model of the religious narrative as a form of devotional image that is both affective and didactic. Chapter 5 focuses on three paintings made in Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s court in the early 1570s to explain how El Greco’s activities in Rome shaped his thinking as a creator of religious art: a portrait of Giulio Clovio that exemplifies the role of the religious painter as an intellectual, an informed

introduction

use of ancient Roman architecture in the Parma Christ Healing the Blind to bolster the theme of spiritual renewal, and an allegorical Boy Blowing an Ember that demonstrates the reception and physical manifestation of light as divine grace. Finally, chapter 6 looks at the paintings El Greco completed for the altarpiece at Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo as a culminating summa of his Italian experience. I discuss the format of the altarpiece as a devotional image according to the contemporary uses and functions of the altars on which such works appeared. The relationship between viewer and prototype, the dialogue between artistic representation and the real presence of the ensemble’s Eucharistic tabernacle, and the liturgical function that these features played all manifest the altarpiece as the epitome of the artful icon.

Together these chapters show that artistic excellence does not contradict the iconicity of El Greco’s religious images but rather enhances it.59 The virtuoso artfulness that characterizes El Greco’s body of work, building up his stylistic repertoire in disegno, colorito, figural complexity, a nuanced artificial perspective, and antiquarian references, conforms to the prevailing conception of religious works of art as images designed to meet devotional needs. His sensitivity to these issues is symptomatic of his having remained an icon painter at heart, having kept the devotional requirements of his works foremost in his mind. Consequently, this book shows that El Greco’s Italy provided an arena for the artist to systematically address key forms and subjects in order to engage and integrate notions of “art” and the “religious image.”

13

chapter one

The Divinity of Painting

One of El Greco’s earliest surviving Cretan icons is St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (fig. 4). This icon is heavily damaged, as eroded portions of the surface obscure parts of the saint’s body. Both the nature and location of this wear are indexes of heartfelt acts of devotion by the faithful through caressing and kissing this representation of St. Luke. Despite this powerfully direct evidence for the icon’s effectiveness as a devotional image, we can still discern the profile of the haloed saint seated with his left foot resting on the rung of the easel placed before him. With his right hand he applies the finishing touches to a gilded icon of the Hodegetria. It is

Detail of figure 18

remarkable that this miniature panel inserted within this portrayal of St. Luke is the only surviving example by El Greco of what was beyond doubt the most commonly depicted subject for icon painters in Crete. A standard type that portrays Mary looking outward and gesturing to her son, this format shows the path of salvation passing through Christ. To underscore Luke’s role in having crafted this image, an open box of pigments rests on the stool between the legs of the easel. Above the saint’s head an angel loosely enshrouded in a green tunic acknowledges his creative achievement by swooping down to crown him with laurel.

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

St. Luke’s legendary status as the first portraitist of Mary and her infant son has Byzantine roots.1 Nevertheless, only a handful of Cretan artists from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ever portrayed this subject.2 While El Greco’s composition varies little from other versions, he rather uniquely employed two distinct artistic styles within the same work, thereby exhibiting his aim to master both Eastern and Western pictorial idioms. The small icon of the Hodegetria relies entirely on late-Byzantine pictorial conventions common to works by Cretan iconographers. Having been dubbed by one scholar as “without exaggeration, one of the finest of the era,” its flawless execution attests to El Greco’s skill in Byzantine-style icon painting.3 However, he enlivened other areas of this composition with Western stylistic and iconographic elements. We see this most especially in the more modeled figure of Luke, his agitated drapery, and the convincing naturalism of the angel weightlessly hovering above. The artist also achieved a more refined illusion of three-dimensional space than what one typically finds in works by Cretan painters. By thus illustrating his new representational form against the old Cretan style, El Greco’s icon boldly foreshadows the path his art would ultimately take as he moved beyond the pictorial manner in which he was first trained. We cannot understand fully the stylistic development of El Greco’s art until we appreciate how he conceived of his craft and his role as an artist. The icon of St. Luke and a series of paintings depicting St. Veronica’s veil, a cloth that miraculously recorded an imprint of Christ’s face, reveal self-reflexive qualities that document a distinctly autobiographical conception of the artist’s role as painter and of his esteem for the artistic process of

making religious images. By aligning his activities with the legendary role of the Evangelist as the creator of the first portrait of the Madonna and Child, El Greco casts his St. Luke icon as a paradigm for the art of icon painting. Equally, he endowed his Veronica paintings with conspicuous signs of artifice by emphasizing the relic as an object represented within the fictive space of the paintings. In this chapter I examine these works from the vantage of sixteenth-century conceptions of the art of painting as a divine enterprise that openly acknowledge the creative conditions of an image. Scholars tend to portray Italian Renaissance paintings separately from the more archaic religious images that normally attract cult followings. However, artists, critics, and theologians did not easily allow for a distinction between crafting art and making an icon. El Greco’s pictorial practice and the presentation of his paintings as things artfully created valorizes his own artistic hand as a mediator between viewer and prototype, thereby providing a vehicle to devotional engagement made manifest in new conceptions of the artful icon.

St. Luke as Artist, the Artist as St. Luke El Greco’s St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child may represent the corporate identity of the confraternity of painters in Candia that adopted the Evangelist as patron saint. But the relatively small size of the panel also suggests that it was instead privately commissioned.4 Though the circumstances leading to the creation of the icon are unknown, this should not preclude our ability to comprehend its significance to El Greco’s status as a maker of religious images. This icon has not received the attention it deserves as a self-referential Figure 4 El Greco, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, before 1567. Benaki Museum, Athens. Photo © 2014 by Benaki Museum, Athens.

16

17

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

statement of the artist’s vocation that renders thematic the art of painting. El Greco likely realized the connections between the legendary role of the Evangelist as the patron saint of painting and his own identity as a painter. The subject, of course, was especially popular for artists in the north such as Rogier van der Weyden, whose seminal composition served to bolster the divine authority of the artist’s craft.5 Indeed, Erwin Panofsky has encouraged viewers to read such pictures of the Evangelistcum-painter more narrowly as figurative, when not literal, self-portraits.6 Befitting the elevated social status granted to painters, the Evangelist was often shown in the guise of a contemporary painter and positioned in the surroundings of a lavishly furnished studio.7 We can see El Greco’s painting as another rendition of this self-referential theme. The autobiographical nature of the subject as El Greco would have understood it is outlined in a prayer that the eighteenth-century monk Dionysius of Fourna allegedly copied from a mid-fifteenth-­ century manuscript: To Mary, Mother of God and Eternal Virgin O Thou, who are as resplendent as the sun, very beloved and all-­ gracious mother of God, Mary! St. Luke, source of eloquence, most knowledgeable physician, perfect master and doctor accomplished in all the sciences and in all fields of wisdom, after having been sanctified by the precepts of the Gospel, which he preached by word and which he wrote, desired to show evidently to all the world the deeply wonderful love that he had for your gracious and divine grandeur: he considered, and rightly, that, of all that he possessed in learning and in spiritual wealth, there was nothing worthy of being offered to you, if it were not the representation of your admirable and most charming beauty, which he had contemplated in fact with

18

his own eyes. This sainted and wise man employed all the resources of colors and of gilded mosaics in order to paint and to record faithfully this image on his panels, after the rules of his art. In my turn, I, feeble imitator, have wished to follow in the steps of this wise man, and I have given myself to sacred painting, with the hope that my means shall not fall short of my good desire, to accomplish my duty towards your holy person, your venerable grandeur and your admirable magnificence.8

El Greco may have had a prayer very much like this one in mind when painting his icon. It establishes the act of painting as an expression of pious devotion to both St. Luke and the Virgin Mother of God. Furthermore, the reference to the “rules of [Luke’s] art” invites inquiries into the manner by which El Greco broadcast the rules of his own art and how he conceived his role as a maker of images that facilitate the worshipper’s access to the prototype portrayed. An important feature of this icon’s inherent self-referentiality is the signature, “ΧΕIΡ ΔΟΜΗNIKΟΥ” (hand of Domenikos). Its location beneath the icon of the Virgin and Child and below the stool supporting an open container of pigments calls attention to the materials that the artist mixed together to manufacture the very picture on which they appear. Moreover, the very fact that this icon bears the name of its maker is itself a noteworthy indicator of the status accorded to artists in sixteenthcentury Crete. An abbreviated inscription on the fluttering banner carried by the angel swooping to crown the saint with laurel amplifies the meaning of this autograph. It can be transcribed as “[ΘΕΙ]ΑΝ ΕΙKΟ[Ν]Α ΥΨΩΣΕ” (He raised to a divine icon),9 “[ΕΙ]ΑΝ ΕΙΚΟ[Ν]Α Υ” (He created the divine image),10 or, most precisely, “ANEIKO[N]

the divinity of painting

I / CACAN / ΥΨΩCΕ” (After he had painted . . . he raised on high).11 This angelic designation thus characterizes Luke’s icon as an elevated, divine creation. But who is the subject of the banner’s text? Who has painted the divine image? El Greco’s signature makes the subject of the angel’s message deliberately ambiguous. While the seated figure is not likely an actual self-portrait, the conspicuous inclusion of El Greco’s own name below the “divine image,” as well as the prominent display of the worldly tools used to create it, forges a revealing analogy between his creative hand and the activities of the Evangelist-saint. By identifying himself as the icon’s creative agent, El Greco has wrested authorship away from Luke exclusively, claiming it in part as his own. It is no accident that El Greco’s self-made identity as a latter-day St. Luke coincided with a period of intense devotional enthusiasm for the icons that his predecessor allegedly left behind.12 The scholarly impulse to treat images of St. Luke in the West only as professional emblems has prohibited explorations into how the power of the legend itself pertains to the popular appeal of the holy images Luke created.13 It is significant, therefore, that El Greco created his icon in an environment in Crete that revered Luke’s icons. The Virgin Mesopanditissa, which was transferred to Candia’s Cathedral of St. Titus after escaping iconoclastic destruction in Constantinople, was one of the most important images in the city during the sixteenth century (the icon is now at Santa Maria della Salute in Venice; fig. 5).14 Its legendary status as an icon painted by St. Luke suggests that it could be the very prototype that El Greco had in mind when painting the scene with the saint some years later. His viewers certainly would have been able to recognize such a connection.

The cultic veneration of St. Luke’s icons encompassed a domain extending far beyond the confines of El Greco’s native Crete, establishing broad connections regarding artistic identity between the Byzantine East and the Latin West. By El Greco’s time the promotion of miracle-working images of the Madonna and Child as authentic works from Luke’s hand was already under way in Italy, as with the Madonna dell’Impruneta in Florence.15 The public devotion toward such images saw a marked increase in the sixteenth century, when many old images associated with the saint received renewed attention and other ostensible originals came to light.16 To give but one example of

Figure 5 Virgin Mesopanditissa. Santa Maria della Salute, Venice. By permission of the Ufficio Promozione Beni Culturali, Diocesi Patriarcato di Venezia.

19

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

the renewed appeal of such icons, the Virgin Nicopeia at San Marco in Venice was featured in Francesco Sansovino’s guidebook, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare (1581), as a sacred image painted by St. Luke that was worthy of widespread public adoration.17 Though the image itself was always believed to have ancient origins, its attribution to Luke’s hand was then relatively recent, documented only as far back as a 1463 inventory of the San Marco treasury.18 El Greco’s alignment with St. Luke as painter found a receptive audience even in Rome, where ties to the cultural legacy of Byzantium were not as strong as they were in Venice. Indeed, documentary records for the rise of sixteenth-century pilgrimage in Rome describe a cult following of icons supposedly painted by Luke whose fervor surpassed the attention such images garnered even in Venice or Crete.19 Guidebooks from the Jubilee years of 1550 and 1575 maintained that seven Marian images scattered across the city’s churches were then attributed to the hand of the Evangelist.20 Luigi Contarini’s L’antiquità di Roma, published in Venice in 1575, mentioned the existence of seven though only listed five.21 Andrea Palladio’s Descritione (1554) listed eight.22 Later, Pietro Martire Felini’s Trattato nuovo delle cose maravigliose dell’alma città di Roma (1610) added Santa Maria della Pace and, for the first time, Santa Maria Maggiore to the growing list of churches housing Luke’s icons of Mary and Christ.23 St. Luke thus emerges in the second half of the 1500s in Italy as an astonishingly prolific painter who served as a suitable example after which artists could model their own identities as creators of religious images. This increased proliferation of paintings by St. Luke in the sixteenth century is in part a by-product

20

of the theological debates surrounding the cult of images. The legendary work of the Evangelist as painter provided Catholic supporters with an authoritative precedent that legitimized the use and making of religious art.24 Attesting to the importance in this period of the legend of St. Luke as an artist is the fact that the Council of Trent twice convened in the presence of icons purportedly painted by his hand.25 This attention made the subject all the more potent as a model for El Greco’s professional identity, especially at a time when the young artist most actively sought recognition as a maker of religious images in order to advance his career.

The Angelic Arts The type of attraction St. Luke’s icons held for their sixteenth-century viewers does impose limits on the extent to which El Greco’s activities as a painter could have been thought to parallel the Evangelist’s. Luke’s icons were revered for conveying the true likeness of Christ and his mother because he had observed them in the flesh. They also often garnered a reputation for performing supernaturally in ways that would have set them apart from other types of images whose origins were not in any way considered extraordinary. Though it is unlikely that El Greco expected his paintings to behave miraculously, he still could have conceived of his activities as a painter to be celestially ordained thanks to period conceptions of the divinity of the creative arts. Two distinct compositional characteristics of El Greco’s St. Luke icon indicate how he thought of painting as a divine activity. First, Byzantine images of this subject never contain angels, and yet a winged figure enshrouded in wind-whipped

the divinity of painting

drapery appears prominently in El Greco’s portrayal. Second, while early accounts of St. Luke as painter specifically refer to his having painted the Virgin and her infant son from life,26 there is no such model in El Greco’s depiction of this event. These two features are interrelated. Representations of St. Luke by artists from western Europe commonly show angels playing an active role in the artistic process. The idea of an angel operating as Luke’s aid is evident in Jan Gossaert’s second St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, in which an angel guides the Evangelist’s hand as he records graphically the mystical apparition of Mary and Christ before him (fig. 6). The decision to include the angel assisting Luke in this manner was inspired by the icon of Christ at San Giovanni in Laterano that Gossaert saw in Rome in 1508. Some claimed that this long-venerated image had been completed by an angel—perhaps, the artist would have us believe, in the manner depicted in his painting.27 El Greco’s angel does not appear to participate directly in Luke’s physical manufacture of the image. The banner he carries conferring authorship of the “divine image” declares the process by which Luke creates his icon of the Virgin and Child to be a divinely charged activity. But the absence of the live model in El Greco’s icon should not imply that Luke engages in an act of creatio ex nihilo.28 Instead, it suggests that the saint copies the portrait from an unseen mental vision and that the angel’s active emergence into the scene signals the process by which that mental image is brought into the artist’s imagination. Consequently this image exhibits El Greco’s pictorial speculation that draws from ideas regarding artistic creation as a collaborative enterprise between the human and the divine.

The emergence of angels coalescing in thin air has long served as a sign of a visionary event. Since the formless composition of these angels signals their status as simulacra of physical existence made visible through the altered medium of condensed air, their immateriality makes it difficult to discern if the mystical apparitions that they accompany are meant to be real or imaginary.29 The emphatically corporeal nature of El Greco’s angel, however, is a direct cause of the subject Luke manifests in paint. Angels are often given credit for acting as the deliverers of divine wisdom and illumination to prophets and sibyls. Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano’s Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori de’ pittori circa l’istorie (1564) discussed the trend of painters replacing revelatory rays of light with small

Figure 6 Jan Gossaert, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, ca. 1520. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

21

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

cupids, or spiritelli, whispering into the ear of the figure who receives the spiritual message.30 Others drew parallels between prophets and painters as recipients of divine wisdom. For instance, Fra Savonarola stated that “angels formed visions in the imagination of the prophets, and not only in them but in [the practitioners] of all the arts.”31 Thanks to these celestial beings and their status as the favored instruments by God to disseminate divine ideas, both painters and writers were privileged with the task of communicating the sacred to the faithful. This is not to say that these concepts regarding the identity of angels as messengers were merely in the air (so to speak) at the time El Greco set out to paint his icon of St. Luke, that he simply absorbed them into his thinking. Rather, he had access to texts discussing angels as the agents of divine inspiration that informed his visualization of Luke’s creative act as a spiritual cooperation with them. He owned a copy of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s fifth-century metaphysical treatise, De coelesti hierarchia.32 The “celestial hierarchy” is the sequential process by which divine knowledge gets conveyed from its source in God to the terrestrial realm. Angels are intelligent beings who act as God’s messengers to bridge the earthly and divine spheres by announcing “sacred orders, hidden visions, transcendent mysteries, and divine prophecies.” The angelic entities, which are arranged according to a stratified order of rank, “are first granted the divine enlightenment and it is they who pass on to us these revelations which are so far beyond us.”33 This means that all divine knowledge must first pass through the hierarchy of divine intelligences before angels in the lowest level transmit it to humans in a somewhat dulled form of the original—much, the author says, like the

22

increasing dimness of light as it passes through semiopaque matter.34 Pseudo-Dionysius goes on to describe how this angelic inspiration facilitates the reception of divine truth: “Under the illuminating guidance of this angel [one is] raised up to such a sacred contemplation that . . . he is able to look upon the most superior beings established under, around, and with God.”35 We imagine that the last stage of this transference takes place under conditions similar to those displayed in two works: a woodcut by Giulio Bonasone for Achille Bocchi’s Symbolicarum quaestionum (1555) that shows Socrates drawing on a tablet with a winged genius grasping his shoulders and whispering into his ear (fig. 7); and Caravaggio’s Inspiration of St. Matthew, where the saint glances up from writing his Gospel to receive further guidance from the angel dipping into the scene from above (fig. 8).36 If we accept that the same conditions that allowed Evangelists to write sacred texts fostered the composition seen in El Greco’s icon, we can interpret the angel as the messenger that brings to St. Luke the mental picture of the Virgin and Child that he reproduces on the panel before him. The implied analogy bolsters the weight of the visual arts by aligning it with the authority of sacred writing. Of course, no literary source refers to the Evangelist using a mystical vision as a model.37 But the visual record indicates that sixteenth-century artists conceived the legend differently than writers did. Painters frequently showed the Virgin and Child appearing as numinous apparitions escorted into the saint’s view by angels, instead of posing before him in the flesh. Gossaert, for instance, portrayed the pair enveloped in a mandorla of divine light, clouds, and winged figures. The artist

the divinity of painting

looks away from this scene as if it is an internal vision. Giorgio Vasari’s fresco at Santissima Annunziata in Florence similarly depicts the Virgin and Child appearing to Luke on a mystical cloud supported by a retinue of putti, though in this case the artist does look intently at the apparition before him (fig. 9).38 Maerten van Heemskerck similarly shows the Evangelist in the guise of a contemporary painter (perhaps a self-portrait) as he paints the Madonna and Child (fig. 10). This composition most especially substantiates the otherwise ineffable confluence of divine and human agencies by externalizing Luke’s inner vision, thus displaying Figure 7 Giulio Bonasone, engraving showing Socrates painting, from Achillis Bocchii Bonon. symbolicarum quaestionum de Universo genere quas serio ludebat (Bologna: Novae Academiae Bocchanae, 1555), plate 3. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

how a mental image stimulates his painting of the divine mother and child. The figure crowned with a laurel wreath personifies the artist’s capacity for poetic inspiration (more on this theme later), while the artist’s vision is accompanied by none other than a winged angel wielding a torch. By casting light onto the pair so that they can be observed by the mind’s eye, this angel signals the entrance of a mystical apparition into Luke’s mind, thereby figuratively and literally illuminating the subject of the painting to him.39 These pictorial precedents suggest that El Greco’s icon illustrates a similar scenario in which

Figure 8 Caravaggio, Inspiration of St. Matthew, 1602. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. Photo: Alinari / Art Resource, New York.

23

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

live models are either not sufficient or unavailable, thus necessitating a mental vision to be translated into a concrete visual form. This, evidently, requires an external source of inspiration. The angel is the agent responsible for bringing the unseen vision of the Madonna and Child into the artist’s imagination. The only difference is that El Greco appears to favor a completely internalized form of visionary apparition, whereas other artists suggest that such events might happen externally. We can anchor El Greco’s icon more firmly in then-contemporary conceptions of art as a form of divine inspiration by exploring artistic theories of the idea that share this basis for angelic inspiration. The idea is the intellectual vision conjured in the artist’s mind that serves as a basis for a completed work of art.40 The trope of artistic inspiration coming about through the implantation of an idea

Figure 9 Giorgio Vasari, St. Luke Painting the Madonna and Child, ca. 1565. SS Annunziata, Florence. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

24

Figure 10 Maerten van Heemskerck, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, 1532. Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem. Photo: Tom Haartsen.

the divinity of painting

apparition from a numinous vapor of angels (fig. 11). The painting of St. Luke that some attribute to Raphael, featuring the artist looking over the shoulder of the Evangelist toward the mystical apparition of its prototype, further illustrates a view of artistic inspiration that invokes the divine power of its revelation by way of visionary experiences (fig. 12).42 The idea in this instance is not constructed from the artist’s fantasy amalgamation of empirical experience but is instead a gift received from above and processed in the artist’s mind. Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography similarly recounts an event in which he was inspired by a vision of an angel to produce one of his most celebrated sculptures.43 While imprisoned at the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, Cellini saw an

from the celestial realm was so firmly entrenched in contemporary thought that an artist as sensitive to current trends in the practice and philosophy of art as El Greco was surely aware of its precepts. Raphael articulated this concept in a letter that tells of his having to rely on ideas conjured independently in his mind when lacking suitable models from which to select and construct a subject on his own accord.41 While he is vague as to how these ideas materialize, a consideration of this text alongside some of his paintings reveals a belief in the power of celestial beings to supply the artist’s mental vision of what he intends to paint through visionary forms. The Sistine Madonna shows the Virgin and Child appearing from the point of view of St. Luke, seen on a bank of clouds emerging as an Figure 11 Raphael, Sistine Madonna, ca. 1513. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Photo: bpk, Berlin / Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany / Elke Estel / Hans-Peter Klut / Art Resource, New York.

Figure 12 Raphael [after?], St. Luke Painting the Madonna, sixteenth century. Accademia di San Luca, Rome. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

25

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

apparition of an angelic entity who led him through his chamber toward a vision of a brightly shining sun. Captivated by the brilliance of this vision, he watched in amazement as the center of the sun transformed into the shape of Christ on the cross. This revelation, first brought to his attention by the refulgent angel that appeared after his supplications to God, inspired his creation sixteen years later of what he considered to be his greatest sculptural achievement: the marble crucifix originally intended for his tomb, today hanging at the Escorial in Spain.44 El Greco’s composition, as well as the art-­ theoretical discourse of the idea that it embraces, may even go further in suggesting the divine origins of the very creative powers that allowed him to make images. Gabriele Paleotti remarked that Luke had received from God the ability to create as an autonomous act, not just the divine prototype to use as a model in this single instance.45 The laurel crown conferred upon St. Luke offers another crucial clue in that regard. Laurel frequently symbolized the Platonic fury of poetic invention, the inspired moment at which the artist/poet conjures the subject of his creative work. Given the close relationship in Renaissance art theory between painting and poetry, this iconographic detail in El Greco’s image signifies a crucial component in the picture’s portrayal of the making of sacred images.46 A few allegorical depictions of the visual arts dating from around the same time as El Greco’s icon share iconographic references to angels conferring upon artists the capacity to create by crowning them with laurel. The Allegory of Painting attributed to Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo shows Victory, seated on a bank of clouds before an effulgent burst of light, dropping a crown of laurel

26

onto the enthroned Saturn below (fig. 13).47 Federico Zuccaro’s preparatory drawing for his ceiling fresco at the Palazzo Zuccaro, Father of Disegno, shows three winged angels representing Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture crowning him with laurel wreaths (fig. 14).48 This is, in essence, an allegory of the entire artistic process. It gives graphic form to the idea that all practitioners of the arts in any medium receive the power to create as a divine gift. Lomazzo’s and Zuccaro’s writings more clearly codify the meanings of these drawings and the ideas regarding art as divine inspiration. Each discusses the metaphysical and spiritual nature of the artist’s formulation of an idea in ways that drew from entrenched theories.49 Lomazzo’s theories of painting, as expressed in the Trattato del arte de la pintura (1584) and the Idea del tempio della pittura (1590), derived in part from Pseudo-Dionysius. Lomazzo describes the conveyance of divine beauty as a process originating in God and transmitted into the minds terrestrial beings by way of angels, who, seated around God’s throne in heaven, turn to glance at him in order to receive ideas to be passed downward into successive realms.50 The ideas posited by Zuccaro, whom El Greco met in the early 1570s in Rome, are especially illustrative of the inclination for theorists to describe the art of painting as a divine enterprise.51 His Idea de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti, published in 1607, years after it was written, summarizes lectures delivered over the course of the early years of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.52 Among his most unique contributions was his portrayal of disegno (a term he used to signify the entire practice of making art) as a metaphysical, not just manual, process. Zuccaro liberated art from the

the divinity of painting

slavish copy after natural forms by describing it as a spiritual endeavor in which the artist conjures an idea that can be used as a model for its material manifestation.53 Crucially, he submitted that the artist himself is only partly responsible for the creation of an image. On one hand, the formation of this inner concept depends on the accumulation of sense experiences culled from interactions with the natural world, which the artist’s fantasia pieces together to create images in the intellect. This process, which he termed disegno interno, has its Figure 13 Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Allegory of Painting, ca. 1564–70. Albertina, Vienna. Photo: Albertina, Vienna.

basis in Aristotle’s precepts regarding the workings of the soul.54 But the initial urge to manufacture and the ability to conceive mentally of a picture speaks to an artist’s inherent divinity, a power that normally resides outside the human realm. Art, as Zuccaro says, is the “spark of the divine”; the artist’s innate ability to create not only mirrors God’s powers of creation but also is directly inspired and implanted by him. Zuccaro supports this notion with an etymological reading of the term disegno. When divided into its syllabic parts,

Figure 14 Federico Zuccaro, Father of Disegno, late sixteenth century. Viviani Collection, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. Photo: Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici delle Marche Urbino.

27

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

with segn (sign) inserted in the middle of Di-o (God), the word itself (di-segn-o) signifies that the capacity for producing art is literally “the true sign of God in us” (vero segno di Dio in noi).55 While the idea that the artist’s act of creation mimics that of God is traceable to Francisco de Hollanda,56 Zuccaro was the first to assign the standard artistic term disegno to this process. In so doing, he described a routine artistic practice as one that carried divine connotations. Painted in Crete and drawing on a variety of these visual and textual sources, El Greco’s St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child reflects then-current ideologies of the visual arts. His icon is consistent with then-emerging Western conceptions of artistic and poetic inspiration, centered on the notion that the act of painting is a divinely charged activity involving the help of angels. It depicts the crucial moment in which the artist experiences the spark of divine fury and receives from above the inspiration to create the image before him. The angel, the celestial messenger entering the scene to crown the saint with laurel, appears as the purveyor of the artist’s idea. Stephen Campbell has shown that the common sixteenth-century topos of crediting humans with godlike creative qualities invites charges of the artist’s craft being distinctly nondivine and even dangerously subversive.57 But for El Greco the artist operates as the necessary instrument for manifesting divine ideas, using his hands to give material form to the mental image supplied by God. Angels, ultimately, get credit for delivering the concept that needs material expression. By showing the precise moment at which the seated painter receives both the ability to produce images and the model vision from which he paints his icon of the Madonna and Child, El Greco asserts that

28

the charge to create religious images combines both human and divine agencies.

Manufacturing a True Image The suggestion that God’s divinity plays even a codependent role in artistic creation must be understood in its historical context as an endorsement of the value of religious images. As summarized by Gregorio Comanini’s Il Figino overo del fine della pittura (1591), the legend of St. Luke was one foundation myth for the origins of painting that buttressed and legitimized belief in the inherent divinity of art. It provided tangible confirmation of the divine approval for the production of images by promoting certain icons as original works of art by the saint. The legend of the sudarium, or veil, of St. Veronica (also called, simply, the Veronica) was perhaps even more potent in this regard because Christ himself produced it. Though El Greco certainly would have been aware of its Eastern analogue, the Mandylion of Edessa,58 the Veronica was at this point the most recognizable and heavily revered relic in all of Christendom because it conveyed an unmediated true likeness of Jesus Christ.59 As Jesus made his way through the streets of Jerusalem toward Calvary, he encountered a pagan woman, Veronica, who offered him a cloth with which to wipe his brow. Upon pressing the cloth against his sweaty, bloodstained face, a perfect impression of his countenance miraculously adhered to the fabric. Widespread belief in the immediacy of the cloth’s image to that of its prototype—in other words, its status as an αχειροποίητον (image not made by human hands)—elevated it to a stature superior to more commonly manufactured images. As a result,

the divinity of painting

the Veronica attracted an unprecedented cult attention because of its immediacy to Christ’s physical essence. It was also especially meaningful for artists because of its inherent metapictorial justification for making religious images. The cloth effectively substantiates God’s status as the first creator of images, an identification that got expressed by the Second Council of Nicaea and repeated elsewhere.60 Moreover, the Veronica’s status as a self-generated simulacrum of its prototype parallels the Christ’s own status as an “image” of God the father while allowing both image and subject to maintain equal authorities. Consequently it embodied the Byzantine notion that Christ’s Incarnation sanctioned the artificial production of icons.61 While El Greco portrayed St. Luke at the onset of his career, the Veronica featured much more prominently later in his body of work.62 Among El Greco’s most prominent depictions is an oval escutcheon held by angels that adorned the high altar of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo (fig. 15; and see fig. 75 in chapter 6). This was one of two paintings of the Veronica that El Greco painted for the church. The other, painted to adorn the nave wall, is now lost (fig. 16). He also produced a slightly smaller version of this same subject for the church of Santa Leocadia in Toledo, now at the city’s Museo de Santa Cruz (fig. 17).63 These latter two form part of a group of five images in which El Greco repeated almost exactly the form of the rectangular fabric and its mysterious image. Besides these pictures in which the veil serves as an identifiable attribute in a portrait of its owner, two others feature the Veronica alone, represented as a still-life hanging by nails against an undefined black ground. The more renowned of these, St.

Veronica’s Veil, which is signed, is of unknown origin (fig. 18); another unsigned version is still housed in the Convento de Capuchinas in Toledo. (A work at a private collection in Groton, Massachusetts, also features this same form. In its present state it shows just Christ’s face on the veil, but the presence of dismembered hands clutching the corners of the cloth reveals that a later owner cut it out of a larger composition with the saint that likely resembled the other two of the same subject.64) The twisted, bunched corners of the fabric are treated the same in all these paintings, regardless if pictured as if nailed to a black panel in the paintings of the sudarium alone or clenched between the figure’s fingers in the paintings of St. Veronica. The only discernable differences in composition are the slight variations in the fabric’s rectilinear patterns surrounding Christ’s face. Besides the nearly identical form of the cloth, the other major unifying characteristic among these depictions is the hypernaturalistic depiction of Christ’s face. It appears as if unaffected by the topography of the veil’s undulating surface. Its tightness of execution stands out against the loose, open brushwork defining the illuminated highlights of the fabric’s textural folds. The face’s emphatic naturalism underscores the viewer’s belief in the object’s status as a “true image,” or vera icona—supposedly the etymological source for Veronica’s name.65 El Greco’s portrait matches a literary description of Jesus from a famous letter supposedly written by Consul Publius Lentulus, governor of Judea immediately before Pontius Pilate, then believed to document what Christ actually looked like.66 This letter, which served as the model for many paintings of the subject, describes Jesus as follows:

29

Figure 15 El Greco, Escutcheon with St. Veronica’s Veil, ca. 1577–79. Private collection. Photo: Oronoz Archivo Fotográfico. Figure 16 El Greco, St. Veronica, ca. 1580. Formerly Colección Maria Louisa Caturla, Madrid. Photo © Fundació Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic / Arxiu Mas. Figure 17 El Greco, St. Veronica, ca. 1580. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York. Figure 18 El Greco, St. Veronica’s Veil, ca. 1580. Private collection.

30

31

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

A man of average or moderate height, and very distinguished. He has an impressive appearance, so that those who look on him love and fear him. His hair is the color of a ripe hazel-nut. It falls straight almost to the level of his ears; from there down it curls thickly and is rather more luxuriant, and this hangs down to his shoulders. In front his hair is parted in two, with the parting in the center in the Nazarene manner. His forehead is wide, smooth, and serene, and his face is without wrinkles or any marks. It is graced by a slightly reddish tinge, a faint color. His nose and mouth are faultless. His beard is thick and like a young man’s first beard, of the same color as his hair; it is not particularly long and is parted in the middle. His aspect is simple and mature. His eyes are brilliant, mobile, clear, splendid.67

El Greco evokes this canonical description in his paintings of the veil and of St. Veronica by featuring the dangling hazel-brown curls, parted beard, and bright, engaging eyes fixed beneath a broad forehead. In order to mark the object’s status as a Passion relic, these paintings include the crown of thorns pricking Christ’s skin and drawing forth droplets of blood.68 By otherwise relying on this authoritative text, El Greco sidestepped the problems inherent in the representation of God the Father, who himself was not incarnated and therefore had no definitive form, only spirit.69 El Greco also relied on an accepted and conventional manner of portrayal that would not likely attract the same scorn as did Michelangelo’s beardless Christ in the Last Judgment.70 It was this pictorial subject, and possibly this very text, that ensured the authority of the painter’s portrayal of the Godhead. While most scholars date these paintings of the Veronica to the years immediately after El Greco’s arrival in Toledo, this chronology risks missing the true meaning they held for the artist at the time he

32

created them. In fact, these paintings exhibit not a Spanish subject but a Roman one. St. Veronica’s veil continued to be a primary object of pilgrimage in Rome ever since its acquisition in the twelfth century.71 In years when it was put on public display, the city welcomed visitors numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The English chronicler Gregory Martin describes the exhibition of the Veronica during the Holy Thursday processions between 1576 and 1578, when the solemn presentation of the sudarium provoked “al the people [into falling] upon theyr knees, crying misericordia, and making doleful shoutes, and the Flagellanti then especially whipping theyr bodies and punishing theyr flesh.”72 Michel de Montaigne provides a similar testimony from his visit to Rome on Holy Thursday in 1580. Commenting on the throngs of worshippers gathered to behold the famous image of Christ, he remarked that “no relic has such veneration paid to it. The people throw themselves on their faces on the ground, most of them with tears in their eyes, and with lamentations and cries of compassion.”73 El Greco surely witnessed similar outpourings of devotion to the cloth during the 1575 Jubilee in Rome.74 This was only the second documented case of public exhibition of the veil since the 1527 sack of Rome and the first Holy Year in which the Veronica was shown since 1525.75 It was by all accounts a watershed event and was particularly vital for edifying church doctrine after the closing of the Council of Trent in 1563 and the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.76 As a proclamation of the church triumphant, the 1575 Jubilee provided the Papacy an opportunity to brandish its most prized possessions. Guidebooks encouraged visitors to venerate the relics pertaining to the mysteries of Christ’s Passion in particular, so the Veronica and the iron

the divinity of painting

point from St. Longinus’s spear that pierced Christ’s side at the Crucifixion (kept together at St. Peter’s Basilica) were especially revered.77 The Veronica featured most prominently at the traditional opening and closing of the Porta Santa at St. Peter’s, events marking the official beginning and end of the Holy Year celebrations. All accounts attest to the unbridled passion of the faithful that greeted the veil and other relics.78 We cannot confirm the authenticity of the relic that El Greco might have seen in Rome. There is no incontrovertible evidence that the cloth survived the violent destruction and mutilation of sacred objects that befell the city during the 1527 sack of Rome.79 Luigi Guicciardini’s canonical account does not touch upon the fate of the relic at all.80 A German soldier taking part in the destruction of liturgical objects remarked that “in all the churches—St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s, St. Lorenzo’s, and even the little ones—chalices, chasubles, monstrances, and ornaments were taken; not finding the Veronica, the looters took other relics.”81 However, Marino Sanuto offers a more disheartening testimony that “the Holy Face was looted and passed through thousands of hands, and by now through all the taverns in Rome.”82 Cardinal Salviati recounted an even more devastating fate of the cloth being set on fire as other relics were pillaged and thrown into the streets.83 While André Chastel blames sensationalist “shock journalism” for exaggerating the effects of the sack on sacred relics,84 the original must have been quietly and unceremoniously replaced with a copy some years after the relic was lost in the mayhem of 1527 as a way of appeasing a disillusioned populace. The likelihood that the object El Greco saw in Rome was in fact a facsimile does not appear to have

limited its power to stimulate heartfelt displays of piety in the viewing faithful. But it might have affected the way he saw the relic functioning as a religious image. This blurring of the boundaries between original and copy on the part of ecclesiastical authorities and worshippers alike contrasts with the way in which El Greco treated the subject in his paintings. Despite the status of the original Veronica as a miraculous “true image,” various pictorial features of El Greco’s paintings disclose the routine procedures used to duplicate it. El Greco was careful to establish a distinction between his painted copies and the original they portray, denying their interchangeability. He signed in Greek one of each of the two different types of compositions in which the Veronica appears: “ΔΟΜΉΝΙΚΟC ΘΕΟΤΟΚΌΠΟΥΛΟC” (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) on St. Veronica’s Veil (fig. 18); and “ΧΕIΡ ΔΟMHΝΙΚΟΥ” (hand of Domenikos) on the St. Veronica painted for Santo Domingo el Antiguo (fig. 16). Both signatures appear in conspicuous locations, immediately below the right corner of the billowing cloth featuring Christ’s miraculously printed face. Within the context of a larger group of duplicate compositions, these signatures not only authenticate El Greco’s hand as creative agent but also endorse his paintings as authorized compositions of his own invention. The inclusion of El Greco’s own name on these paintings says much about his conceptions of his craft. First, these two signatures endorse the same ideas of the art of icon painting that he had articulated in his earlier painting of St. Luke— suggesting that his ideas on painting remained consistent a decade later. He deployed a network of visual signs to broadcast his reliance on a creative act then considered divine. El Greco stressed by

33

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

way of his signature that he was responsible for creating sacred images, just as he had earlier pictured Luke with his hand outstretched applying a stroke of pigment to the icon placed before him. Second, the act of signing an iconic image of the Holy Face—whose value as a relic lies in having no artificial provenance—signals his own image’s createdness, crafted by virtue of an artist’s hand and artifice. The full significance of El Greco’s signatures on St. Veronica and St. Veronica’s Veil thus lies in their paradoxical claims for artistic authorship when representing a relic that in fact had none—an authorial assertion of remaking the nonmade that Renaissance artists had only sporadically achieved.85 The marks signaling El Greco’s brush and his creative act here stand in direct contrast to the self-generated image of Christ on the actual veil of Veronica. By including the word χειρ (hand) preceding his name in some of his signatures, El Greco literally contradicts the authority of the prototype as a nonmanufactured image. Moreover, besides being textually communicative, signatures can also be read graphically as a series of marks or traces left after the artist’s physical intervention on the pictorial surface.86 El Greco’s signatures thus function semiotically like exposed strokes of pigment, for both are indexes of the artist’s brush and, by extension, of the artist himself. In fact we notice that El Greco’s brushstrokes are indeed quite visible, especially when rendering the folds and textures of the cloth veil. Therefore, the artist left little doubt about the artistic origins of his paintings by demonstrating that very process of painterly execution—signaling the actions of the very hand he credited in his signature. It is especially meaningful that El Greco chose to leave indexical traces on paintings that represent

34

what is essentially another index. His inscribed name combines with his exposed brushwork to strike an analogy between “presence” and “creation.” He asserted a physical engagement with the pictorial surface through the application of pigment, just as Christ touched and pressed his face into the surface of Veronica’s towel, leaving behind a sweaty, blood-flecked stain in the pattern of his own likeness. This draws a parallel between artistic creativity and divine imprint that makes the resulting images by-products of physical presence. Whereas the Veronica bears the traces of a mechanical imprint created through the contact and subsequent transfer of Christ’s face to the surface of the fabric, it was the intervening process of artistic creation that generated El Greco’s portrayals of the relic. His artistic engagement with the subject effected the translation of an inner idea, or conception, of the veil’s miraculous image into an autonomous two-dimensional form. Each of El Greco’s paintings is thus a mediated interpretation of a famous sacred relic adored by the masses, having artistically re-created the subject rather than having merely copied it. To this end, El Greco’s paintings emphasize, even exaggerate, a fictive materiality as they assert the signs of artistic facture. This, in conjunction with his signatures, strives to present the subject as unambiguously represented and thus not itself present. He has no designs on deceiving the viewer into regarding the picture as the actual veil. With the fabric curling away from the dark ground and billowing from an unseen gust that separates the cloth’s edges from the limiting borders of the picture itself, El Greco displays the relic in a state of kinetic movement that accentuates its appearance within the frame of artificial pictorial space. Here

the divinity of painting

the frame functions as a hermeneutic device that, according to Victor Stoichita, “separates the image from anything non-image.”87 By portraying the edges of the veil pulled away from and thus contained within the edges of the picture, El Greco encloses it within a domain made present only by way of the process of painting—that is, within a boundary whose contents could only be artificial, not real. The painted Veronica is an entity wholly separable from the prototype that it signifies and also completely inseparable from the artificial realm created by the artist and his brush. Painters did not typically challenge the very ontology of miraculously imprinted images as El Greco did. The inception of an image free of human involvement was thought to mirror Christ’s divine Incarnation; disrupting that relationship was tantamount to interfering with theology. Consequently, it was common for painters who took on the subject of the Veronica to conceal artistic labor. Joseph Leo Koerner points to works by northern European masters that marshal an extreme realism to negate outward signs of a painting’s manufacture. Similarly, some woodcuts render the Holy Face as a disembodied, immaterial essence more akin to an impression than an artist’s derivative representation of it. As prints, the very mechanical nature of their production removed any notion of the direct intervention by the artist’s hand. It is as if the image of Christ’s face appeared through the paper just as suddenly and unexpectedly as it did on Veronica’s cloth.88 El Greco’s paintings of the Veronica clearly work to different effects by emphasizing their artificial condition. The fact that he signed some of them further reveals his defiance of such self-effacing pictorial and artistic conventions. The printmaker

Ugo da Carpi found a unique way to defer the agency of his own hand in a signature for what is his only known painting. His St. Veronica Altarpiece (1525), formerly placed in the ciborium of the altar of the Volto Santo at the old basilica of St. Peter in Rome, shows the figure holding her veil while flanked by Saints Peter and Paul (fig. 19). The artist used the negative space between Paul’s feet to insert his signature, “per Vgo da Carpi intaiatore, fata senza penelo” (made by Ugo da Carpi, engraver, without the use of a brush).89 Giorgio Vasari saw this unusual inscription as a declaration of the artist’s unorthodox means of creation—apparently dispensing his brushes and applying the pigment directly with his fingers. Michelangelo, who viewed the painting alongside Vasari, reportedly laughed at its poor quality, scoffing that the artist would have been better off using a paintbrush.90 This report, even if fabricated, reveals that Vasari did not understand the full significance of Ugo da Carpi’s signature with respect to its subject. By asserting that he painted the Veronica senza penelo, the painter implied a synecdochical relationship between his brush and his virtuoso hand and therefore suggested that the painting came into being by circumventing the mediating process of artificial creation. Through the denial of the participation of the painter’s principal tool, he discredited as well the involvement of his “art”— perhaps through a process of direct imprinting with which he, as an engraver, would be most familiar. Ugo da Carpi therefore, unlike El Greco, claimed to adopt a technique duplicating the direct printing process that fixed Christ’s image to the cloth, thereby preserving the miraculous origins of the subject by neutralizing the intervening process of artistic re-creation.91

35

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

El Greco’s insistent contradiction of the very nature of the icon non manufactum through crafting and then signing artificial depictions of the Veronica draws his works into a complicated discourse regarding representation itself. Ultimately, he sanctions the role of art in the process of making icons by way of his paintings’ means of presentation. Compare the artist’s signed pictures of the Veronica with one of the surviving copies of the Holy Face signed and dated by Jan van Eyck that is renowned for the singular directness with which it confronts these issues (fig. 20).92 The signature on the painted frame, “Joh[ann]es de eyck me fecit et [com]plevit anno 1438 31 januarij,” announces the status of the image as a made object—complete with the name of its creator and the precise date of execution. While both artists used their signatures to signal the artificial nature of their works, van Eyck used the canonical image of the Holy Face as a model to paint what is essentially a life portrait. The signature testifies, however illogically, to his being witness to the sitter’s presence at a specific time and place.93 Unlike El Greco’s paintings, van Eyck’s signed panel of the Holy Face becomes an image like the Veronica, not an image of the Veronica. Van Eyck lifted the elusive likeness from the cloth context of the veil and isolated it, crystallizing it into an autonomous portrait against a dark neutral background. Since the cloth is not visible at all, his portrait represents the paradox between the real presence of the Son of God and a painted depiction of him through the simultaneity of naturalistic fidelity and the inclusion of the signature that suggests the portrait had been painted from life. Van Eyck has removed, therefore, all intervening filters between the subject and the viewer. El Greco’s paintings, by contrast, display Christ’s image Figure 19 Ugo da Carpi, St. Veronica Altarpiece, ca. 1525. Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro, Vatican. Photo per gentile concessione della Fabbrica di San Pietro in Vaticano.

36

Figure 20 Copy of Jan van Eyck, Holy Face, ca. 1438. Gemäldegalerie, Staatlichen Museen, Berlin. Photo: bpk, Berlin / Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Jörg P. Anders / Art Resource, New York.

the divinity of painting

projected through two layers of representation. These nested frames—the pictorial surface and the represented cloth veil—each act as a lens of artifice through which the viewer must look in order to access and comprehend the face of Jesus Christ. El Greco thereby maintains strict intermediary layers between viewer and prototype. As a result, he heightens the viewer’s awareness of the painting as an autonomous object and not an image deceptively masquerading as the very thing it shows.

The Artful Icon We have seen that El Greco’s icon of St. Luke openly acknowledges a means of creation that enlisted the assistance of the divine for supplying the inspiration, or idea. His paintings of the Veronica exhibit an apparent contradiction of the subject’s status as an unmediated true image through the outward credit granted to the artist’s creative hand. These representations of a cult image (the Veronica) and another of the process of image making (St. Luke), as well as the literal and material signs of the artist’s hand with which El Greco invests both sets of paintings, complicate the relationship between miraculous originals and painted copies. His paintings overturn the authority of the acheiropo­ ieton while also drawing them into contentious theological quandaries regarding artificial creation. In the Old Testament man-made images carry the stigma of idolatry, for artificially manufactured things stand in defiance of God’s mandate to refrain from creating “any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4). To put it more bluntly, the scriptures define idols as “the work of men’s hands” (Psalms 115:4), and so it

is the act of human manufacture itself, not just the result of that productivity or its reception by worshippers, that violates the second commandment.94 Yet by El Greco’s time this complex relationship between art and iconicity had evolved such that an icon’s very status as an artificial image, as a thing made by human hands, came to be a requisite component of its function. A proper understanding of El Greco’s metapictorial paintings requires an analysis of the image-object’s relationship to its viewer that acknowledges the mediation of the aesthetic frame while also taking into account the religious conceptions that would have granted such an epistemic role to the image. The predominant focus within art history on conventional notions of what constitutes “art” is symptomatic of a disciplinary framework largely inflected by Vasari that privileges artistic creation as central to an image’s meaning. This, according to Georges Didi-Huberman, has deflected attention away from nonartistic qualities that were no less meaningful to religious images.95 Furthermore, Leon Battista Alberti’s postulate of the picture plane as a transparent window framing a view into the natural world is not so universally regarded as a paradigm to explain how these pictures present visual material to the viewer on their own authority.96 Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood propose that Renaissance viewers confronted religious images with a “substitutional” model of analysis instead of a “performative” one. The former links contemporary images to ancient prototypes in a process akin to the medieval practice of eschewing linear historical chronology by venerating then-modern icon copies as interchangeable with older originals. Nagel and Wood warn that the latter model, where an artist’s

37

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

singular creative performance has a direct bearing on an image’s meaning and function, distorts our comprehension of Renaissance modes of seeing that were in fact not so different from those employed by medieval predecessors.97 El Greco’s stylistic alterations to his latent Byzantinism seem to suggest that by the sixteenth century performativity came to overshadow substitution. Indeed, his paintings emphasize creative performance as a crucial role in an image’s ontological status as a singular product rendered as distinct from what it portrays. But what we see in his images is a mixing of the performative and the substitutable, not a binary separation of them. Though the self-referential and artificial conditions of El Greco’s paintings do disrupt attempts to see them as seamless substitutes, their referential power still guarantees access to the prototypes that they represent. In this way El Greco’s paintings articulate what I call the “artful icon,” an image that can channel the viewer’s attention to the prototype and at the same time proclaim its status as an artificial image that mediates that access. As we have seen, this category draws from both the divine and the human. First, it recognizes that the artistic talent and even the idea of the represented subject are divine gifts, as illustrated by the icon of St. Luke. But it also declares that the physical manufacture partakes of a purely human endeavor, as manifested by El Greco’s paintings of the Veronica. The resulting image, fashionably termed a “veil” or “mirror,” is a tangible, assertive, and even self-­ conscious thing, a solidified object that necessarily takes account of its own ontology by announcing the conditions of its own artifice.98 This model calls attention to the art object in a way that intervenes in what had normally been

38

regarded in classic icon theory as a seamless continuity between picture and prototype. In this way El Greco’s paintings fall in line with calls for a return to a more medieval conception of the materiality of the image. For example, as Caroline Walker Bynum remarked, “A medieval image is an object in a way that a Renaissance or modern painting is not”—meaning that medieval images often self-consciously promote their own conditions as objects in ways that Renaissance images refrain from doing.99 But this opposition of medieval materialism to Renaissance transparency seems too reductive in its implication that all early-modern artists were servile to standards of mimesis and cared little about the physicality of the images they produced. El Greco’s paintings, as we have seen, reveal a subtle negotiation between the self-referential status of the images he made and their task in projecting the viewer’s attention through the image to the represented prototype. Gerhard Wolf theorizes such a status of the image by using Renaissance representations of the Veronica. He does not conceive of them as “copies” intended to serve as surrogates for the original but rather as a new class of pictures articulated as images of images.100 El Greco’s own paintings of St. Veronica’s veil corroborate this hypothetical shift in status by calling attention to the artificial origins that distance his paintings from the original cloth. Whereas Hans Belting argues that “art” replaced the “image,” the aggressiveness of the self-reflexivity incorporated into El Greco’s works plays an important role in their own function as devotional images. El Greco’s celebration of conspicuous artistry, of the imageness of an image, endorses the act of creating as an authorized means of providing the visual stimuli for the faithful to engage in acts of reverence.

the divinity of painting

El Greco’s paintings thus operate as a class of icons generated out of the requirements for religious images current at the time he made them. The conception of the artful icon finds itself entrenched in the very icon-idol polemic that prompted the need to reconfirm the status and definition of religious images in the Counter-Reformation. The 1563 decree on sacred art from the Council of Trent did not address directly the proper appearance of images, nor did it advise artists on how to form their works in a way that would avoid charges of impropriety. Even Gabriele Paleotti’s Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (1582), which imposed much wider criteria for defining a religious image, fails to identify anything intrinsic to a painting’s physical or formal properties as being decisive to its status as a sacred object.101 After listing seven specific types of holy images (of which the Veronica represents the second by virtue of having come in direct physical contact with Christ’s body), the author concludes his discussion of the eighth and final type with accommodating elasticity. He declares that the category “sacred image” includes every image “that represents some religious thing . . . for the subject that it contains, which is a sacred thing, for the faith of him who formed it, and for the end for which it is destined, immediately acquires a certain sanctity and separation from merely profane things.”102 While this allows for any work depicting any religious theme to fulfill Tridentine demands for the utility of sacred art, it is the viewer who is burdened with the responsibility of determining when a work of art functions accordingly. The Tridentine decree and Paleotti’s treatise both ratify the key justification of images raised first at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 against the protests of eighth-century iconoclasts, which in effect provided the original definition

for the Byzantine icon.103 This decree stated that sacred images fall into misuse when they are thought of as idols whose physical properties are believed worthy of veneration. Sacred images, by contrast, invite veneration because, echoing the famous assertion by St. Basil the Great from his late fourthcentury treatise On the Holy Spirit, “the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which they represent.”104 Furthermore, Paleotti remarks that “[some things] are also called sacred because of what they represent and the purpose for which they are ordained or made, since images are not anything in themselves, but are signs of things, so that they take their status from what they represent, such that all signs are considered according to what they signify.”105 These declarations effectively reframe the question regarding the status of images as one of semiotics. Religious images are deemed acceptable not because of their physical or material qualities, or even their subject matter, but rather because of the way artist and viewer alike envision or perceive the signifying relationship between painting and prototype. The image in this kind of exchange is only a conduit to the figure it represents. While the eyes fall on a material image, the mind comprehends the prototype whose likeness it conveys. All of this is just to say that the ultimate determination between “icon” and “idol” resides in the mind of the beholder, not in the physical properties of the image itself.106 Paleotti also discusses the act of venerating an image and the necessary distinction between sacred images and idols, and in so doing invokes the Old Testament story of the Brazen Serpent (Numbers 21:6): Now we should advise the reader that these differences mentioned above, those between sacred and profane

39

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

images, can be considered in two ways: one as regards the figure itself, the other the person who looks at them because it shall be that an image by way of its nature and according to its form should justly be replaced among sacred things, even though he who looks at it will place it in another order. This happens because the spectator will have a very different concept in his imagination than what the artist had in his, as in the past when the metal serpent, which was made by Moses by order of God, to some occupied the place of something sacred and mysterious, yet to others [the place] of something idolatrous. So, among these images, one of them, with respect to its exterior surface, shall be regarded by someone as something religious and sacred, which by other perverse and wicked people will be held as an idol, and by other stupid people as a profane picture, useful only for pastime.107

Therefore, the Counter-Reformation prescriptions concerning sacred art encouraged artists and viewers to be vigilant about the ways in which they conceived of images. A proper mind-set by the viewer restored the potential for sacred pictures to serve the purpose for which they were originally intended, just as the Council of Trent revived the church’s early defense of the devotional value of icons. The implication, of course, was that the introduction of visible artistic qualities, such as stylistic embellishments and artists’ signatures, should not limit an image’s function as an artistic artifact only. Rather, any religious image, regardless of outward appearance or material essence, could and should be an icon if treated like one. The polarity between the conceptual categories of “icon” as a referent to something else and “idol” as an object that merits adoration for its own sake essentially allows for an image’s artificial qualities to declare its proper role. Stephen Campbell

40

intriguingly suggests that Belting’s division of art and image leaves room for a hybrid category in which “self-consciously artistic means claim to enact a metamorphosis from representation into presence itself.”108 He cites Nagel’s treatment of Leonardo’s sfumato as one instance in which supreme artistry manifests the power of art to simulate divine presence by creating the psychological sensation (or illusion) that what is artificially feigned is actually present.109 Yet I argue that this does not in fact fully mitigate the key problem at hand concerning the proper conception of religious images as icons. An illusion that is too convincing would undermine the image’s functional requirement to be a thing merely resembling—and still separate from—the original. An icon should not and cannot be equivalent to Jean Baudrillard’s true simulacrum because it would then be seamlessly substitutable for a reality that it is unauthorized to signify, that it usurps, or that does not exist at all.110 In other words, artistry that blurs the boundary between image and prototype does not make the painted picture a proper icon but instead risks making it an idol. Therefore, El Greco’s insistence on broadcasting the generative powers of his hand and brush through the visible signs of his artistic agency in his paintings of St. Luke and the Veronica guaranteed that his artistry would not be seen as a simulation of the processes that brought the actual relics into being. An artful icon exhibits human artifice as a parallel to (not a reenactment of) divine making so that the man-made object does not get conflated with the original. Images fall into abuse when they are misconstrued to be the very things they merely represent instead of acknowledged as signs that signify a prototype lying outside of the inherent

the divinity of painting

material properties of the image itself. Prominent examples of the theology and philosophy of art in the second half of the sixteenth century sanction this artificial insertion between prototype and observer.111 For Paleotti, the label “image” signifies “every material figure produced by that arte called disegno and derived from another form in order to resemble it.”112 If material representations have no other purpose than to represent something outside of themselves, it follows that each must be in some way artificial and thus must have an author or artificer, a material out of which it is composed, an instrument that forms it, the form that names it, and finally the purpose for which it was created.113 Nothing, as Paleotti stated, is in itself an inherently divine thing. Rather, all images are ordinary things “made to represent another truth.”114 Even if images do partake of some special measure of sanctity, this quality does not affect the material essence of the substance out of which it was crafted. Thus it follows that in order to ensure proper use religious images should clearly obey their status as pictures, not as objects that contain any form or spirit of the actual thing whose image they convey. Put another way, this artificial self-referentiality counteracted the tendency among the faithful to conflate signifier and signified, which stood too close to idolatry.115 It was expedient of El Greco to emphasize the artificiality of his images in order to ensure that

they not be mistaken for the things they merely represent—in other words, to demarcate the boundaries that separate an icon from an idol through the conception of the “artful icon.” It is for this reason that he crafted his icon of St. Luke in the way he did. This image emphasizes his role as creator, conferring divinity not upon himself or the material image he makes but on the artistic act that brings that image into being. To do otherwise might promote a different role accorded to the artist as a maker of religious works. Similarly, it was essential that El Greco’s images of the Veronica be unmistakably pictures of things, with a fastidious attention to rendering the relic as something represented by the object and not synonymous with it. That the artist signed examples of both subjects cannot be overemphasized. These signatures contribute to the totality of his conceptions of the art of religious painting—first fashioning himself as an heir to St. Luke and then providing iconic images for the faithful that reveal the responsibilities of that role. In the end, El Greco’s paintings aptly demonstrate the ties between his own conceptions of the production of religious art and the theoretical nature of the religious image dictated in the second half of the sixteenth century. By painting pictures with these direct references to his creative powers as an artist, his works epitomize the conception, and requirements, of the art of icon painting.

41

chapter two

The Devotional Image

The majority of paintings that El Greco produced in Italy were small in scale and featured standard subjects created expressly to meet the needs of private devotion. They took shape either as multipanel ensembles or as independent pictures whose small size facilitated easy transport. Because of El Greco’s lack of acclaim as a painter at that time, they were likely produced cheaply for the open market. The 2003 discovery of one such painting, the Baptism of Christ that is now at the Historical Museum of Crete in Heraklion (fig. 21), was enthusiastically trumpeted as the latest recovery of one of El Greco’s hitherto unknown devotional paintings.1 This

Detail of figure 41

work’s formal traits further mark the artist’s transition from Cretan icons painted in a predominantly post-Byzantine style to his developing confidence in handling a new form of painting while working in Venice and Rome. He incorporated a range of Italian pictorial motifs gathered from a studious survey of prints and original works of art available at the time. Consequently, this panel offers a new insightful glimpse into his practice as a painter and his methods for marketing himself in his cultural and artistic environment. This chapter will consider what additional evidence for El Greco’s practical conception of the

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

artful icon this new work provides and what the stylistic and compositional advancements seen in this work and others have to do with their designated function as devotional images. Two components of this newly recovered Baptism of Christ—its style and its original provenance as part of a portable triptych ensemble—provide further confirmation of El Greco’s goal to unite art and

devotion in his initial years in Italy. His preference for incorporating Italian models into even his earliest works must be seen in light of his concession that pictorial artifice is a requisite feature of the artful icon. Regardless of format, whether appearing as part of an ensemble or as an independent panel, many of his early works either repeat compositions that he had created earlier or serve as

Figure 21 El Greco, Baptism of Christ, ca. 1567–70. Historical Museum of Crete, Heraklion. Photo © Municipality of Heraklion.

44

the devotional image

the original forms for later copies and variants. By consequence, these paintings embody the aesthetic concerns of the religious image through the perpetuation of the artist’s own artistic authority, while the persistent repetition of prototypes signifies his continuing reliance on an icon-like method of production derived from Byzantine practices. In the end, however, we will see how the style of these images may have affected their devotional power for an audience sensitive to the relative appeal and effectiveness of different artistic manners in the context of private piety.

The Triptych as Transitional Form The most direct basis for attributing the Heraklion Baptism of Christ to El Greco is its resemblance to a nearly identical work appearing in the inside of the right wing of the Modena Triptych, the only other surviving example of this subject from the first decade of his career (figs. 22 and 24). The Heraklion panel was originally cut with the same rounded top as its counterpart in Modena, and the dimensions of the two are nearly the same. For both paintings El Greco relied on a print by Giovanni Battista d’Angeli (del Moro) that displays, in reverse, John the Baptist standing on the bank of the River Jordan and Christ, ankle-deep in the running waters, facing him with his hands clasped together and his head bowed forward (fig. 25).2 Trees on both sides of the river frame these figures, while a group of angels holding open a sheet stand behind Christ. In place of this print’s representation of God the Father above the outstretched hand of the Baptist, El Greco inserted the white dove of the Holy Spirit against the backdrop of a luminous patch of sky.

Compositional similarities indicate that El Greco’s two paintings of the Baptism of Christ were created around the same time. Robin Cormack and Maria Vassilaki convincingly insist that the more fluid qualities and more refined portrayal of figures in the Heraklion version are evidence for a later date of execution than the more rigidly composed Modena counterpart.3 Calibrating these formal differences to notions of their order of creation underlines a few oddities in El Greco’s compositional development. First of all, the two paintings exhibit striking differences in color palette. While yellows and greens dominate the Modena Baptism, the Heraklion painting differs considerably. Highlights of icy blue piercing the cloudy sky and sparkling on the rippling, reflective surface of the water are offset by the vibrant red of the Baptist’s garment and the sheet held aloft by the angels behind Christ. These areas are more orange and olive, respectively, in the Modena work and thus harmonize differently with the overall tonal mood. The looser, more “Venetian” handling of paint and more vibrant use of color evident in the Heraklion panel compared to the monochromatic tone of the Modena Triptych do suggest a later date. However, traces of gold leaf in the highlights of the garments in this same work denote an earlier form of Byzantine-style icon painting that would seem to place its execution closer to the artist’s Cretan period. Instead of actual gold leaf on the Modena Triptych, the artist has resorted to the use of colored pigment to evoke via illusionistic means the luster and luminosity of a gilded panel.4 Additionally, an analysis of these two paintings’ common iconographic source reveals further complications to their relative dating. The positioning of some of the figures in the later Heraklion

45

46

the devotional image

Baptism is closer to Battista d’Angeli’s print than are the figures in the Modena version. The pose of the Baptist, with his left hand raised upward, his bare torso swung outward with the opposite leg positioned a step forward while cradling the staff against the side of his body, as well as the group of figures before a distant cityscape, all indicate that the composition for the Heraklion Baptism of Christ was based almost entirely on the archetype print directly, not on the Modena composition that preceded it.5 This means that El Greco was more dependent on the original source after he had already painted his first derivative version of the subject. Cormack and Vassilaki have convincingly matched the Heraklion Baptism to a panel of a similar size and shape showing the Adoration of the Shepherds at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Figure 22 El Greco, Modena Triptych, showing Adoration of the Shepherds (left), Christ Crowning the Christian Solider (center), and Baptism of Christ (right), ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario (fig. 26).6 Similarities between some figures—including the angel farthest to the right in the Baptism and the standing figure at the extreme right in the Adoration, who share similar postures—corroborate the hypothesis that the same hand was responsible for both pictures. Moreover, the painting style, and especially the chromatic range of cool blues and radiant pinks seen in the Adoration, are similar enough to the Heraklion Baptism to suggest that they formed part of the same ensemble. These recently discovered companion paintings thus constitute the remaining elements of the third multipanel portable altarpiece that scholars have attributed to the young El Greco. As a group, the Heraklion Baptism of Christ and Kingston Adoration of the Shepherds, the complete Modena Triptych, and the four surviving

Figure 23 El Greco, Modena Triptych, showing the Annunciation (left), View of Mount Sinai (center), and Expulsion from Paradise (right), ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

Figure 24 El Greco, Baptism of Christ from Modena Triptych, ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York. Figure 25 Giovanni Battista d’Angeli (del Moro), Baptism of Christ, mid-sixteenth century. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

47

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

panels of the Ferrara Triptych (to be discussed later; see figs. 33–36) all testify to the privileged importance of the multipanel altarpiece in the years of El Greco’s transition from Crete to Venice. At no other time in his career do such small-scale ensembles appear in his body of work, thus establishing the triptych as the dominant format in the artist’s earliest Italian phase. Each of the three triptychs as originally constituted featured two lateral wings attached to a central

framed panel into which the sides could be folded. The Kingston Adoration was likely on the left, opposite the Heraklion Baptism in their ensemble; marks on the edges of the wood near the hinges attaching the panel to the central box frame are still visible on the Baptism’s left. The same scenes appear in analogous positions in the Modena Triptych. While neither the Heraklion Baptism of Christ nor the Kingston Adoration of the Shepherds has a

Figure 26 Domenikos Theotokopoulos, called El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1567. Oil on panel. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 1991 (34-011). Photo: Cheryl O’Brien.

48

the devotional image

painting on its reverse, the relative thinness of both wooden boards suggests that each was once part of a thicker wing that was later sliced and separated. Like the two Baptism paintings, the Kingston Adoration of the Shepherds closely resembles its counterpart in the Modena Triptych (fig. 27). Both compositions derive in large part from a print by Giovanni Britto after a painting by Titian.7 The Holy Family welcomes the arrival of three shepherds beneath a tattered wooden stable. However, while the Kingston Adoration is a close variation of the Modena composition, differing treatments of Mary show that it is not an exact copy. Whereas the Modena panel depicts the Virgin kneeling down to swaddle the newborn Christ, the Kingston painting shows her looking out toward the viewer with her hands delicately cupped together. Furthermore, while both panels include angels in the upper register, the row of five clothed figures sitting on a solid bank of clouds in the Modena scene gives way to a livelier ensemble of three tumbling putti accompanying the entrance of a divine bolt of golden light in the Kingston panel. The Kingston picture was also the model for other independent panels El Greco painted that feature the same subject and composition. The most prominent example is in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Boughton House in Kettering, England (fig. 28).8 The general arrangement of the figures has been repeated in these works, but El Greco rendered the composition so that only the interior of the stable is visible and he excluded the angels occupying the area above it. The Modena Triptych may be the model for the other paintings that formed part of the same ensemble as the Heraklion Baptism and the Kingston Adoration. Its central panel shows Christ Figure 27 El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds from Modena Triptych, ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

Figure 28 El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1572–76. Private collection. Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library.

49

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

Crowning the Christian Soldier, an allegorical scene adapted from an anonymous woodcut after a drawing by Giovanni Battista Franco.9 In the center, Christ stands atop symbols of hell and the attributes of the Evangelists while wielding a staff, his head framed by the golden glow of heaven. He leans forward to crown a knight kneeling to the left. Surrounding this pair are angels in glory who hold the instruments of the Passion.10 The lower register features an eclectic array of symbols, including the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity in the center, the institution of Communion on the left, and the open mouth of a beast forming the gateway to hell on the right.11 The outsides of the left and right wings of the Modena Triptych constitute El Greco’s only known depiction of the expulsion from paradise and his

earliest known picture of the Annunciation, a subject to which he would return many times in Italy and Spain (see fig. 23). He borrowed from a wide variety of sources for these scenes as well.12 The former, showing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (fig. 29), exhibits some surface damage, though we can see that the scene takes place against dense vegetation and is presided over by a figure of God the Father who resembles standard depictions of Jesus Christ. The artist based this composition either on drawings of the same subject by Paris Bordone, engravings of Hermes and Ariadne by Jacopo Caraglio based on drawings by Rosso Fiorentino, or even Albrecht Dürer’s print of Adam and Eve.13 The Annunciation (fig. 30) exhibits a mystical entrance of angels surrounded by a golden glory offset by gray clouds that accompany the appearance of the

Figure 29 El Greco, Expulsion from Paradise from Modena Triptych, ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

50

Figure 30 El Greco, Annunciation from Modena Triptych, ca. 1567. Galleria Estense, Modena. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

the devotional image

archangel Gabriel and the dove of the Holy Spirit. These features recall the same scene in various paintings by Titian, such as the one at San Salvador in Venice (see fig. 48 in chapter 3), and in particular a Caraglio Annunciation print based on Titian’s painting for Santa Maria degli Angeli in Murano, which is now lost (fig. 31).14 The quality of El Greco’s work is the highest of any of his other paintings on the lateral wings, marked by billowing clouds and animated angels in the upper register, in contrast to the stiffer postures of their counterparts in the Adoration on the other side. The reverse of the carved and gilded central frame shows View of Mount Sinai, a subject that El Greco also painted as an independent panel, now located at the Historical Museum of Crete in Heraklion alongside the Baptism (fig. 32). This scene

in the Modena Triptych, on which appear the artist’s signature and an inscription reading “ΤΟ ΑΓΙΟΝ ΚΑΙ ΘΕΟΒΑΔΙΣΤΟΝ ΟΡΟΣ ΤΟ ΣΙΝΕΟΝ” (The Holy and God-trodden Mount Sinai), features an abstracted topographical view of three steep hills representing Mount St. Episteme, Mount Horeb, and Mount St. Catherine. Below we see the monastery of St. Catherine, one of the most sacred shrines in Orthodox Christianity. The depiction of the walled monastery exhibits some familiarity with the layout of the actual site.15 On the peak of Mount Horeb, Moses receives the tablets of the law through a yellow bolt-like rupture in the sky. The scene on the Modena panel as a whole is loosely painted, with figures rendered with little more than a few quickly executed loops of paint. The single-panel version of this subject adopts a horizontal orientation and is thus formatted with different dimensions than its Modena counterpart. It also exhibits a much tighter application of paint, and the scene with Moses receiving the tablets has been curiously omitted. The meaning of this scene to the overall Modena Triptych has not been adequately identified, but it must not have been an unusual subject to include in such multipaneled works around this time. A similar triptych painted by Georgios Klontzas, probably dating a bit later than El Greco’s ensemble, also features a similar yet clearly derivative composition of this scene on the reverse of its central panel.16 This View of Mount Sinai complicates the dating of the Modena Triptych. The scene is nearly identical to a print by the Veronese printmaker Giovanni Battista Fontana.17 While scholars often assume that El Greco’s painting copies this composition, the year 1569 inscribed on Fontana’s print surely postdates at least El Greco’s first version. By that time, having been in Venice for two years, El Greco was producing

Figure 31 Jacopo Caraglio, after Titian, Annunciation, ca. 1527–37. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

51

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

works more advanced in style. However, the misguided assumption that the artist of the Modena Triptych had to have followed this particular composition should not lead observers to dismiss the attribution of the work to the young Domenikos Theotokopoulos. Fontana’s print need not present any chronological discrepancy, especially if his was not the original version of this composition. An identical illustration in a pilgrimage book by Christoph Fürer von Haimendorf, who traveled eastward between 1565 and 1566, some years prior to El Greco’s arrival in Italy, proves that neither artist had to have depended on the other when copying this composition. Instead, they must have relied on a common prototype yet to be identified.18

A third multipanel portable altarpiece attributed to El Greco’s Italian period is commonly called the Ferrara Triptych. It consists today of four separate panels that at one time formed the lateral wings of a larger ensemble and are presently at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Ferrara (figs. 33–36).19 The scenes depicted on the four surviving panels differ in theme from the other examples of portable triptychs datable to El Greco’s early career. Whereas the Modena Triptych displays a variety of both Old and New Testament events, the scenes making up the Ferrara Triptych show only episodes from Christ’s Passion: Washing of the Feet, Agony in the Garden, Christ Before Pilate, and the Crucifixion. These four scenes originally constituted two panels that, like the

Figure 32 El Greco, View of Mount Sinai, ca. 1570. Historical Museum of Crete, Heraklion. Photo © Society of Cretan Historical Studies.

52

the devotional image

Heraklion Baptism and Kingston Adoration, have been divided into separate paintings. Many prints have come to light that reveal the breadth of iconographic sources that El Greco relied on for these compositions. For the Washing of the Feet panel (fig. 33), El Greco pulled elements from the corresponding theme in Albrecht Dürer’s Small Passion series, which shows Christ and one of his disciples in a small vaulted room engaged in this symbolic act of cleansing. Agony in the Garden (fig. 34) borrows features from prints of the same subject by Dürer, Benedetto Montagna, and Lucas van Leyden. Christ, appearing in the center of the composition, prays at the foot of a rocky hill above Figure 33 El Greco, Washing of the Feet from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara. Photo: La Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara.

his sleeping disciples as an angel surrounded by an aureole of divine light emerges to present the chalice of the Sacrament. Christ Before Pilate (fig. 35) further demonstrates the artist’s dependence on prints of the same subject from Dürer’s Small and Large Passion and various engravings by Enea Vico. Here Christ is displaced from the center toward the left while Pilate, perched on a raised throne, receives a washbasin from a servant. A disjointed perspective tentatively defines the space. Finally, the scene of the Crucifixion (fig. 36) rather uniquely derives from a single print by Giovanni Battista d’Angeli (del Moro) (fig. 37).20 The composition—which includes the crucifixion of two

Figure 34 El Greco, Agony in the Garden from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara. Photo: La Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara.

53

Figure 35 El Greco, Christ Before Pilate from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara. Photo: La Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara. Figure 36 El Greco, Crucifixion from Ferrara Triptych, ca. 1567–68. Collezione Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, on deposit at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara. Photo: La Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara. Figure 37 Giovanni Battista d’Angeli (del Moro), Crucifixion, mid-sixteenth century. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

54

the devotional image

thieves alongside Christ—is among the most crowded of any that El Greco painted at that time, certainly more complex than later Christ Crucified compositions that some attribute to the artist’s Italian phase.21 The form these works adopt reflects the varied cultural circumstances in which El Greco worked during his first years in Italy. The portable triptych is not one that native Venetian artists used much at all but is commonly found in works by other Cretan icon painters working in Candia and Venice. Georgios Klontzas painted a number of such ensembles, some of which are housed in

elaborate gold frames nearly identical to that which surrounds the panels making up El Greco’s Modena Triptych.22 The surviving panels of the Ferrara Triptych resemble another fragmented group with scenes of the Passion painted by Klontzas, now at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, that dates to approximately the same years of the late 1560s (fig. 38). Though missing one wing, the remaining scenes of the Crucifixion in the central panel, Christ carrying the Cross on the inside, and a composite of Christ before Pilate and ecce homo on the exterior of the one remaining wing suggest a devotional function similar to El

Figure 38 Georgios Klontzas, Scenes of Christ’s Passion, ca. 1550–1600. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo © The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

55

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

Greco’s, intended to accompany meditational manuals on the Passion (to be discussed in more detail below).23 The central Crucifixion is almost identical to El Greco’s own version in the Ferrara Triptych, suggesting a close working proximity that fostered reliance on the same print by Battista d’Angeli. Another panel by Klontzas at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva from a triptych with scenes from the life of Christ utilizes the exact same print for the composition that El Greco used in his own work.24 There has been some question about where El Greco created these ensembles. The more advanced style of the Heraklion Baptism has forced some to move the Modena Triptych into the artist’s Cretan period.25 However, the best support for the Modena ensemble having been painted in Venice lies in its technical and stylistic characteristics. The handling of the paint and depiction of the figures could only have been developed through direct contact with a Venetian workshop, or at least through firsthand study after Venetian artists and their working methods.26 The fluidity of the brushwork and sculptural plasticity of the figures, as will be explored in the following chapter, are both hallmarks of Italian painting that El Greco infused into his own working practice starting in Venice. None of the icons he or anyone else painted on Crete can claim anything close to this level of dependence on Italian painting styles. We would be remiss, in other words, to date these portable triptychs to any period other than El Greco’s first years in Venice in the late 1560s. Together as a group, the Heraklion Baptism of Christ, Kingston Adoration, Ferrara Triptych, and Modena Triptych represent El Greco’s earliest endeavors to create religious images that address a Venetian audience.

56

Invention and Repetition The iconographic and compositional brethren of the newly discovered Heraklion Baptism of Christ and the accompanying Kingston Adoration of the Shepherds substantiate a practice of compositional repetition that remained a constant method of production throughout El Greco’s career.27 The total number of works he produced in Italy amounts to only a few dozen separate paintings in the most generous count; however, the number of distinct compositions is much smaller because he rarely painted a single version of any given theme. Besides the multiple copies of Adoration of the Magi and Adoration of the Shepherds, groups of independent paintings deriving from a common prototype include two versions of a second Adoration of the Magi that situates the scene in an architectural setting (one is now at the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid),28 three independent Annunciation panels derived from the Modena version (see figs. 49–51 in chapter 3), two identical compositions of St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata (figs. 39 and 40),29 three versions of Christ Healing the Blind (see figs. 54–56 in chapter 4), two early editions of Cleansing of the Temple (see figs. 52 and 53 in chapter 4), and two Pietà paintings (see figs. 44 and 45 in chapter 3). The individual works in each subject group display enough varying details to resist their classification as “copies” in the strictest sense, but the basic compositional features exhibit only minor variations. The repetition of compositional prototypes aided El Greco in the rapid dissemination of his work. The seventeenth-century Spanish theorist Francisco Pacheco observed that the artist kept an inventory in a small room in his studio consisting of miniature originals of every painting he had created.30 From

Figure 39 El Greco, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, ca. 1570. Istituto Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples. Photo © Archivio dell’Arte–Luciano Pedicini.

Figure 40 El Greco, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, ca. 1570. Private collection, Madrid. Photo: Oronoz Archivo Fotográfico.

57

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

this insight into El Greco’s archival practices, it is clear that the painter produced models serving as official versions to be reused and copied on demand—something akin to a factory showroom. Other artists are known to have engaged in such practices. Though precise information on such collections is scarce, Giovanni Bellini’s large workshop provides one appropriate comparison.31 Later in his career, Titian also kept such a collection of models—called ricordi—in the form of stock paintings and drawings.32 Clearly this practice required assistance from a studio of apprentices capable of carrying out requests to copy the master’s style and composition. Yet it is uncertain if El Greco had a network of assistants for much of his early years spent in Italy. Giulio Mancini might be trusted when he mentions a certain Lattanzio Bonastri as El Greco’s assistant in the 1570s.33 However, based on what is known about Bonastri’s output—for example, his fresco decoration of the Palazzo Altemps in Rome—this painter does not appear to have enough in common with El Greco to suggest that they worked together in any capacity. Documents dating from 1580 to 1583 for El Greco’s commission to paint the Martyrdom of St. Maurice for Philip II at the Escorial refer to an assistant named Francisco Preboste, presumably an Italian painter who accompanied El Greco to Spain, but it is not known how far back their professional relationship actually dates.34 It is more likely that El Greco worked independently in his Italian phase, when his middling career would not have offered him the luxury of employing assistants or attracting students. The signatures on some of these early paintings do shed some light on El Greco’s role in devising multiple versions of the same composition. We have seen that signatures on St. Luke Painting the

58

Virgin and Child and on various editions of the Veronica, discussed in the previous chapter, announce the painter’s hand as creative agent. Other signatures, however, do more than just identify their maker. In the context of duplicate and sometimes triplicate compositions, the signature “ΔΟΜΉΝΙΚΟC ΘΕΟΤΟΚΌΠΟΥΛΟC EΠΟΙΕΙ” (Domenikos Theotokopoulos made it) or the close variations that appear on the Philadelphia Pietà (see fig. 44 in chapter 3), the Naples St. Francis (see fig. 39), the Parma Christ Healing the Blind (see fig. 56 in chapter 4), and the Minneapolis Cleansing of the Temple (see fig. 43 in chapter 3) also authorize the invention of a particular compositional format to be used for subsequent variants or copies.35 Later, when the artist did organize a professional workshop, this method of mass production would foster a regular process of creating standardized prototypes to serve as models for future versions.36 In these cases, his signatures sanction his authority to create works worthy of being copied and disseminated to a broad audience on account of the skill with which they were made and the devotional richness they imparted to their viewers. It is undeniable that El Greco’s reliance on compositional repetition fulfilled a pervasive and practical concern for capital gain. In order to meet the rising demand for his distinctive pictures with utmost efficiency, the artist employed a strategy that minimized the need for inventing new types by repeating those that were already proven to be marketable and, presumably, economically profitable.37 However, this practice signifies much more than the artist’s business acumen. By consistently maintaining a production of pictures based on the repetition of approved prototypes, El Greco adopted a working practice reminiscent of tradi-

the devotional image

tional icon production. Byzantine icon makers frequently repeated compositions in an effort to preserve authorized forms of Christ, saints, and biblical narratives.38 The advantage of compositional repetition, therefore, was the establishment of standardized portrayals, which for viewers ensured the immediate recognition of the prototypes. This regularized iconography often remained unchanged for centuries. The innumerable versions by the hands of countless iconographers of the Hodegetria, the iconographic and compositional formula of the Virgin and Child supposedly painted first by St. Luke, testify to this trend. The Heraklion Baptism of Christ and Kingston Adoration of the Shepherds bear witness to a moment of El Greco’s early career in which his eager development of a new pictorial style joins procedures for disseminating images that were commonly put into practice by icon painters in Crete. Even as El Greco’s style evolved in accordance with his moves from Greece, to Italy, and finally to Spain, the painter’s consistent repetition of his own compositions reveals that he deliberately chose to produce religious works of art as if he was still painting in the Byzantine icon tradition. But he was not alone in his ideas. In an unpublished treatise written sometime in the 1570s, Pirro Ligorio advocated a return to the same practice of following conventional forms, advising artists to “make one image from another, having already before our eyes the examples which we should assimilate and bring to perfection.”39 But of course, that El Greco repeated his own compositions subverts what Ligorio had in mind. The effort El Greco put into perpetuating his own compositions says much about how highly he regarded his own worth as a producer of devotional images and

about the new acceptance of icons as objects crafted by a discerning and skillful painter in the second half of the sixteenth century. Indeed, this repetition could not have ensured immediate recognition of a standard type for anyone not already familiar with his works. As a young and unknown painter throughout his Italian career, his method of compositional repetition did not disseminate known forms as much as it served to circulate his own artistic originality. Consequently, he conceived the devotional image, not as something copied from an older standardized form, but as an artful icon—something invented, created, and then distributed through the manual duplication of his own compositional formulas.

The Art of Devotion and Devotional Style If El Greco’s procedures for compositional repetition indicate that he employed a Byzantine way of making, then the forms and formats of his multipanel ensembles also invite considerations of how they served devotional needs in sixteenth-century Venice. All of El Greco’s icon ensembles are small and compact, easily folding up into the central frame to allow for effortless transport. Their modest cost likely would have ensured widespread use in private homes.40 The Tridentine prohibition of lay chapels suggests that El Greco’s portable altars would not have adorned consecrated spaces within a domestic setting. Instead they would have facilitated a more individualized form of meditational prayer that was free from much ecclesiastical or liturgical oversight. But even these practices underwent changes by El Greco’s time. Whereas medieval modes of devotion could involve hope for the miraculous, thanks to the legends of supernatural

59

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

intervention that often accompanied attention to the most highly revered icons, the church’s growing anxiety over improper and superstitious practices made Renaissance devotional modes much less fixated on the expectation of such mystical interruptions of earthly experiences.41 This shift, together with the profusion of printed devotional guides in the sixteenth century, requires a consideration of how the partnership between image and text in the devotional practices of El Greco’s viewers may have shaped his design of the works he produced.42 Early-modern devotional practices required the worshipper to engage in instructive visualizations of biblical stories and sacred mysteries. Despite a traditionally established goal of “imageless devotion,” such guidelines were not strictly enforced.43 As a result, Renaissance artists were instead responsible for providing concrete visual expressions of sacred themes in order to enhance meditative absorption in them.44 The modular nature of El Greco’s ensembles allowed for flexible image sequencing, inviting the spectator to interact with the scenes in ways that single-panel works could not. From a devotional standpoint, the triptych as a type enhanced the versatility of both iconic and episodic display; the ability to leave certain wings open or closed allowed for the presentation of a combination of pictures appropriate for a particular holiday, feast, celebration, or prayer. The wings of the Ferrara Triptych were likely arranged in such a way that the scenes could be viewed in the order of their narrative sequencing. When closed, the outside of the right wing would first display Washing of the Feet. With that wing folded open, the viewer would encounter the next scene in the sequence, Agony in the Garden, on the

60

outside of the left wing folded in underneath. Next, the viewer would turn his or her attention back to the right wing, with Christ Before Pilate displayed on its inside face. Then the left wing could be turned outward to reveal the Crucifixion. Finally, the missing central panel into which these wings folded likely would have contained an image that completed the events of Christ’s Passion. This could have been the entombment, perhaps in a composition resembling that seen in a panel now in Athens (fig. 41). Alternatively, an image of the Resurrection would provide the viewer with a complete account of Christ’s sacrificial death and miraculous reappearance. Since the sequence of images in the Ferrara Triptych would have led the viewer to contemplate Christ’s death, the ensemble would have been especially useful as a visual aid to accompany devotional handbooks on the Passion that proliferated in Italy in the sixteenth century. Often these books carry a mild reformist bent, as they aim to guide the reader’s direct engagement with the events of Christ’s life.45 Pietro da Lucca’s Arte del ben pensare e contemplare la Passione del nostro Signor Jesu Christo, first published posthumously in Venice in 1527, was one popular work that is especially useful for gauging the role of text and image in private devotional practices before some works were banned on charges of heresy. The book provides detailed descriptions of all the episodes leading up to and including Christ’s Crucifixion. In order to facilitate the deeply emotional response to the Passion that this text elicited from its readers, the book is interspersed with woodcut images of all four of the episodes that El Greco painted for the Ferrara Triptych. These join additional illustrations featuring the Last Supper, flagellation, arrest,

Figure 41 El Greco, Burial of Christ, ca. 1568–70. National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

61

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

deposition, and Pietà that are not included in El Greco’s ensemble. The role ascribed to images in the text is demonstrated by the frequent exhortations to look, at times instructing viewers to use their mental and bodily eyes to imagine the events pictured before them.46 In this way the images provided the first stimulus to a process of contemplative image making that, differing little from common late-medieval practices, fostered devotional attention to the events described. El Greco’s paintings that make up the Ferrara Triptych came about on the heels of a marked increase, starting around 1560, in demand for and subsequent printing of such devotional texts on the Passion. The majority of these were printed in Venice.47 Various forms of the medieval Meditatione Vitae Christi and Meditatione Passionis Christi experienced revivals as they got translated into the vernacular. The fourteenth-century meditational text by the German mystic Johannes Tauler was republished as the Meditationi pie et divoti sopra la vita et passione di Giesu Christo in Florence in 1561 and again in Venice one year later. A new Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi was also published in Venice in 1568, as I quattri libri della imitatione di Giesu Christo under the (now-disputed) authorship of the fifteenth-century French theologian Jean Gerson, providing yet another text to facilitate devotional meditation. A likely candidate to have served as an accompaniment to El Greco’s ensemble that dates to around this period is Giovanni del Bene’s Passione del nostro signore Iesu Christo, republished in Venice in 1562. The original editions of this book contained no illustrations, and thus the viewer would have needed a visual aid to help fix the images in the mind. Each of the stories that El Greco illustrated would, with the

62

aid of this text, lead the worshipper to a meditational excursus on a range of subjects deriving from the scene itself. This might explain the iconographic program linking the four extant images of the Ferrara Triptych. The section of del Bene’s text devoted to Christ Washing the Feet emphasizes the humility and charity demonstrated by this act.48 Thematically, this scene of washing (denoting purity and cleansing) is linked to Christ Before Pilate, in which we see Pilate washing his hands as a way of absolving himself of the guilt of condemning Christ to death. The links to Agony in the Garden and Crucifixion are even more emphatic. The text encourages the reader to contemplate the original sin and the Eucharistic prefiguration of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That way, the contemplation of events from the end of Christ’s life focus on the benefits of the remission of sins brought on by his death. Since the function of such texts was to encourage a meditative imitation of Christ’s Passion, El Greco supplied images that might have been especially conducive to the worshipper’s imaginative reconstruction of those scenes. The iconographic program of the Modena Triptych is appreciably more difficult to discern because its wide range of imagery spanning both the Old and New Testaments does not readily suggest a single companion text. Nonetheless, the enactment of the program’s chronological progression requires an interactive participation on the part of the viewer similar to what we would see with the Ferrara panels. The ensuing narrative sequence constitutes an itinerary based on ideas of spiritual rebirth and thus forms part of the Counter-Reformation charge to create works of art that lift the spirit to the moral and ethical standards of Christian teachings. When closed, the viewer first encounters the Expulsion from

the devotional image

Paradise on the outside of the left wing as it is folded into the central panel. This presents the theme of original sin. It is presided over by Christ and therefore shows the event that necessitated his Incarnation for the remission of sin, as illustrated by the progression of episodes to follow. When opened, the Annunciation, on the exterior of the right panel, and the Adoration opposite it show the events that initiated Christ’s life on earth and his status as the delivered promise of salvation from original sin. It is through baptism, the subject of the next scene in the sequence on the inside right wing when opened, that one receives the benefits of that salvation. This leads directly to the central scene, Christ Crowning the Christian Soldier, on the inside of the central panel, which serves as a metaphor for the heavenly reward of good works on earth or, more precisely, for the active participation in the church militant in defending the faith against evil and heresy.49 The direct correlation between Baptism of Christ and Christ Crowning the Christian Soldier is underscored by the similar pose Jesus adopts in both—first appearing as the recipient of divine grace and then as its primary agent of distribution. While the thematic sequencing and pairing of narrative episodes could foster exegetical connections in consort with sacred texts, the devotional potential of El Greco’s images to inspire prayer also lies in their style. The paintings exhibit an immediately noticeable departure from the style in which he had originally trained as an artist. Why would he have undergone such a radical transformation? What value did this new Italian style possess that motivated him to reject the Greek manner so easily? The Council of Trent did not offer any guidance on how religious works of art should look nor on how an image’s style might affect its

imperative to instill pious reverence. Nevertheless, despite a lack of any unified response by sixteenthcentury artists to Tridentine dictates, we see in El Greco’s Italy an increased concern with how an image’s manner of appearance might affect its devotional power.50 It was not an inherently “styleless” mimetic naturalism that was understood to be the most effective means for stimulating religious contemplation. El Greco’s distribution of his own pictorial compositions was motivated less by self-promotion than by a belief that the style he devised for them was best suited to their purpose as devotional stimuli to the audience he addressed.51 Indeed, this examination of the role of style in devotional practices should consider that El Greco must have been concerned with the religious impact of his works and not just with his development as an Italian painter. He departed from the style of painting in which he was originally trained as a Cretan icon painter because he found himself working in a context in which the brand of artistic portrayal that he adopted was believed to enhance rather than supplant the devotional potency of religious images. Complicating this issue is that the idea of a nonfixed style in devotional literature was deemed suspect in the Counter-Reformation because of the potential for translations and prose paraphrases of sacred texts to yield unauthorized interpretations.52 El Greco’s paintings show a more accepting attitude regarding varieties of personal expression. The artist refined his style according to predominant conceptions of how religious works of art functioned in their cultural and societal contexts and also according to how critics, theologians, and artists negotiated the relationship between aesthetic

63

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

appearance and devotional power. El Greco was surely aware of the reception of the manners of esteemed Italian artists around him in the second half of the sixteenth century. The critical treatment of style, which permeated both theological and theoretical discussions of painting, fostered a broad belief that the Italian manner was both artistically superior and more devotionally effective for the modern viewer. It would be naïve to assume that his youth, foreignness, or lack of widespread acclaim would have detached him from the discourses that essentially determined the status of the things he made. Indeed, when we consider more closely how style plays a part in the devotional function El Greco intended his paintings to have, we come to realize how they depart from traditional notions regarding the inherent transparency of the icon. Icons were typically regarded as conduits to the prototype whose true likenesses they displayed. This in turn guaranteed that the prototype could act through its image by recognizing and responding to the prayers of the faithful. By consequence, traditional icons were conceived to be stylistically neutral, since any departure from the authorized form of a holy figure might risk interfering with this correspondence between the physical image and its prototype, thus compromising the icon’s authority as an aid to prayer. Since the primary aim was to ensure the conveyance of a standardized likeness, the burden of adhering to a recognized and identifiable form often suppressed the development of a distinct and individualized manner of portrayal. This gets played out in numerous historical records. For example, in 1306 Fra Giordano da Rivalto delivered a sermon on the authenticity that images derived from their

64

similitude to their sitters’ true likeness. He praised the first pictures of holy figures, such as Nicodemus’s sculpture of Christ on the Cross and St. Luke’s icon of the Madonna and Child, for their pictorial fidelity. It was thought that through such images the viewer could envision “how [the figures represented] really appeared and what they were like.” For this reason, Fra Giordano da Rivalto argued, images imported from Greece commanded the highest authority and carried as much weight as the written word.53 The nearly uniform appearance of icons over broad periods of time, even while artists elsewhere experimented with alternate styles, ensured their effectiveness through figural authenticity. The Orthodox authorization of a formal canon of images was brought to critical attention during the Council of Florence-Ferrara in 1438 when the patriarch Gregory of Melissenos remarked that he was unable to pray to the images in Western churches because the forms of the figures represented were unrecognizable to him. Neither could he pray to images of Christ because of his failure to “recognize in what terms [he] is inscribed.”54 Gregory’s confusion speaks directly to the problems involving icons, iconography, style, and recognition prior to El Greco’s career. As Gauvin Alexander Bailey has stated, by the sixteenth century this dilemma evolved into a “crisis in the relationship between artistic style (which was by nature contemporary, cutting-edge, and increasingly secular) and the nature of the sacred icon (which was eternal and unchanging and possessed divine presence).”55 Any stylistic intrusion had the potential to serve as an unwanted obstacle to accessing or even recognizing the prototype. As a result, it was the image maker’s responsibility to

the devotional image

avoid rendering works impotent to the eyes and hearts of the faithful. It might be for this reason that the miniature Hodegetria in El Greco’s icon of St. Luke represents a retrospective Byzantine style that matches the form of nearly every icon of this subject, even while he modified the style of the rest of the image according to Italian artistic standards. It is as if the artist maintains the iconicity of this small icon-within-an-icon by preserving the traditional manner of portrayal that audiences would have most readily associated with it. However, works by El Greco and other contemporary Cretan icon painters show that in actual practice this unspoken adherence to suppressing stylistic experimentation in order to preserve a conventionalized authenticity was not a firm rule. The style of these paintings reflects the expanding market for religious images painted by Greek artists and these artists’ willingness to accommodate the varying tastes of their customers. In some cases this stylistic development follows predictable patterns of patronage, where demographic conditions of the market determined which styles artists used. By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the demand for Cretan icons had expanded to include a sizeable Western (and mostly Catholic) clientele. With this diversified audience came stylistic preferences that obviated rigid rules for the acceptable appearance of these icons. In one famous case in 1499, a Venetian and Greek merchant both commissioned three painters in Candia to create a staggering 700 icons of the Virgin, specifying that 500 of them be created in forma alla latina and the other 200 in forma alla greca.56 The distinction, allegedly, was the style of each image, either conforming to traditional Byzantine manners of painting or reflecting new stylistic

experimentations devised by quattrocento Italian artists. The ability of Cretan workshops to produce mass quantities of devotional images in a short period of time made them especially adept at meeting this expanding demand from outside traditional Orthodox circles.57 These market conditions required that artists exercise stylistic versatility in order to cater to the varied demands that they might face. Works by El Greco’s compatriot Michael Damaskinos reveal how deeply rooted the fluency with both late-­ Byzantine and current Italian styles of painting was at that time. Some works that Damaskinos painted for Orthodox patrons in Crete and Venice are entirely conventional in appearance, while others introduce distinctly Italian elements.58 His Madonna del Rosario painted in 1572 for the Dominican monastery of San Benedetto in Conversano (near Bari) is almost entirely Westernized in style and iconography (fig. 42).59 Even the artist’s signature, which normally appears on his paintings in Greek, has been Latinized as “MICAELUS DAMASCHINUS F[ECIT]” to reflect the pictorial idiom used to create it and, presumably, to address the picture’s primary audience. The apparent need within this market to be capable of working in a variety of artistic styles informed artistic training as well. In his last testament from April 11, 1599, the Cretan painter Tommaso Bathàs bequeathed to his student Emanuele Zanfurnari a cache of drawings in both the maniera greca and the maniera italiana, evidently aware that a successful painter of his class would need to be fluent in both.60 The lack of documents for most of El Greco’s works in Crete and Venice makes it difficult to conclude with precision what the appearance and disappearance of the portable triptych format says

65

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

about the clientele for whom he might have been working. Nonetheless, the characteristics of the market and of the environment in which he operated indicates that he sought clients in Venice who demanded works in the Italian manner. But this in itself raises crucial questions regarding style and function. If taste can dictate the appearance of a religious image, does it also affect its reception and hence its role in its owners’ devotional practices? It is evident that both Greek and Italian viewers in the sixteenth century regarded “style” to be a recognizable pictorial trait that constituted a picture’s affective power. It acted as an important vehicle for an image’s emotional appeal that could

arouse and stimulate piety when done well but limit devotional engagement when poorly conceived or ineffectively executed. A few instances in which Italian painters competed for commissions directly with their Greek counterparts serve as de facto referenda on the devotional value of these two styles around the time of El Greco’s Italian career. The most important took place at San Giorgio dei Greci, the national church of the sizeable Greek community in Venice in the sixteenth century. When officials appointed the Greek painter John Cypriot to decorate the dome (completed 1589–90), they also summoned Jacopo Tintoretto to act as his artistic adviser. The stipulation, however, was that Tintoretto suppress any urge to intervene stylistically, so that the “garments, figures, and expressions will be painted according to the true art of the Greeks.” Similarly, when the Venetian painter Palma Giovane competed with Bathàs at the same church, the jury selected the latter on account of his use of the “divota maniera greca.”61 Not surprisingly, these choices by prominent members of the local Cretan community signal a valorization of the maniera greca as a style especially conducive to the devotional needs of their audiences. El Greco would have been especially well-suited to execute images in the Greek style since it was the manner in which he was originally trained. So why would he not do so? He evidently favored a clientele who did not universally support the premise that the maniera greca would be most effective at stimulating devotion. Of course, the situation regarding the role of styles in private devotional contexts is more complex than merely assigning a distinct manner to one cultural group based on shared cultural origins. Judging from inventories of Venetian households, panels of a more “modern” Figure 42 Michael Damaskinos, Madonna del Rosario, ca. 1572. High altar of the Cappella del SS Rosario, Church of San Benedetto, Conversano, Italy. Courtesy of S. E. Mons. Domenico Padovano Vescovo Diocesi Conversano-Monopoli; Rev.mo Don Felice Di Palma Rettore Chiesa di San Benedetto. Photo: Pina Belli d’Elia, ed., Icone di Puglia e Basilicata: Dal Medioevo al Settecento (Milan: Mazzotta, 1988), 41.

66

the devotional image

Italian style very often coexisted alongside panels made alla greca.62 But these Greek-styled images were often copies of the city’s public cult icons, and so their styles matched those of the originals they referenced. We might posit that El Greco’s decision to paint in a more updated Italian-based style was dictated by the function of his multipaneled ensembles, whose narratives may have been more effectively conveyed through the Italian manner. His stylistic choices are symptomatic of a context in which artist, client, or both found an Italian-based style most suitable for inspiring devotion. Indeed, the many critical responses to Greek painting in the second half of the sixteenth century were especially contentious when it came to evaluating the requirement, reemphasized at the Council of Trent, that art encourage the viewer to cultivate piety. In order to eliminate the offending mannerisms of poorly crafted images, some wished to promote an updated manner of artistic representation as a more powerful stimulus to prayer than older medieval images. In De’ veri precetti della pittura (1587), Giovanni Battista Armenini questioned the devotional intent of what he judged to be badly wrought religious images, “which were for the most part small pictures with certain figures made alla greca, very clumsy, unpleasing, and all smoke-stained.” In an even graver indictment he goes on to say that these pictures “appeared to have been placed there for every purpose but to incite devotion, but rather to ornament such places.”63 Armenini’s defamation of the Greek style as both artistically and devotionally deficient can be attributed to the legacy of Giorgio Vasari’s cult of modern artistry. In his biography of Cimabue, Vasari criticized “that awkward Greek manner” (quel maniera goffa greca) when referring to the

unrefined style of due- and trecento artists who borrowed techniques from Greek masters of painting, sculpture, and mosaic then working in Italy. Vasari identified in these “Greek” works a litany of formal flaws, including “the profile outlining all the figures, the possessed eyes, the feet on the tiptoe, the pointed hands, and absence of shadow”—all denoted, in his words, as “Greek monstrosities.”64 Of course, Vasari’s strategy was to elevate contemporary painting by anchoring the fortunes of his peers inversely to those of their medieval predecessors. He would not have described the Greek style in the way that he did had his words not had the corollary benefit of promoting the aesthetic achievements of painters in his own time. He cited Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’arte in praising Giotto for having translated painting from Greek into Latin, making it a much more beautiful and more perfect pictorial language. In Vasari’s words, Giotto “transformed the art of painting from a manner not understood or known by anyone, save perchance as very rude, to a beautiful, approachable, and very pleasant manner, understood and known as good by all who have judgment and a dash of sense.”65 The “Greek style” was thus both a foil and point of departure for the accomplishments of the first “true lights” of painting, the men who redeemed Italy’s artistic heritage and whose works laid the groundwork for the teleological development toward perfection described in Vasari’s encomiastic history of Italian art. When compared to the more naturalistic achievements of these proto-Renaissance masters, the maniera greca came off as retrograde and badly formed and therefore worthy of being replaced by a more graceful and beautiful modern manner. Yet Vasari’s treatment of the maniera greca as a trait

67

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

chronologically remote from his own time gives the misleading impression that the Greek style was extinct in Italy after the fourteenth century, despite the widespread existence of Greeks and Greek art at the time he was writing. It was this artificial anachronism that ultimately allowed him to write Greek painting out of the Renaissance canon. El Greco’s rebuttal to Vasari scribbled in the margins of his own copy of the Vite complicates our understanding of the painter’s artistic choices.66 While Vasari contrasted the archaisms of medieval art to the progressive accomplishments of Renaissance artists, El Greco was understandably defensive when confronted with these blatant attacks on Greek painting. He challenged Vasari’s libelous accusations against his artistic heritage by saying: “If [Vasari] knew how the Greek manner that he mentions really is, then he would judge it differently, for I am of the opinion that when one compares the two, Giotto’s style is simple with respect to the clever difficulties that the Greek manner teaches us.”67 One might wonder about the apparent contradiction of El Greco defending the manner of his artistic heritage when he was at the same time so intent on dropping it out of his practice in favor of figural examples mined from a broad spectrum of works of which Vasari would more readily approve. Yet Vasari’s agenda for trumpeting the perfection of the styles of sixteenthcentury Italian art required the treatment of the Greek style, however El Greco may have understood it, as its inept opposite. It would have been foolhardy for a young painter striving to make a living working for Italian clients to paint in a manner that had gained the stigma of being at the very least retrograde and at worst malformed and devotionally ineffective.

68

The seemingly incompatible relationship between El Greco’s written statement and his painting practice is thus mitigated by the fact that his paintings reflected the demands of his market, not his own taste. While he may have felt that critics shortchanged what in his own mind was a perfectly viable pictorial style, he worked for a clientele that demanded images that were both artistically accomplished (according to current Italian aesthetic standards) and devotionally potent (as dictated by the Council of Trent). El Greco was sensitive to what was at stake for the appearance of his paintings and drew on what was then a well-established understanding of the connections between style and devotion. Francisco de Hollanda treated style as a vehicle capable of bringing the viewer’s mind to higher states of contemplation in a way that championed the value of a well-crafted manner based on Italian artistic taste over any other. When the queen of Portugal commissioned Francisco to copy the Salvatore icon at the Sancta Sanctorum, one of the most highly venerated miraculous images in Rome, she asked if he had copied it “with the austere simplicity of the original, that severity in the eyes such as would naturally become the Savior?” The author responded, “Even so I copied it, . . . and employed my whole skill not to add or subtract anything as regards that grave austerity.”68 However, while Francisco seemingly defended the archaic style for carrying a more devout aura, he could not justify a wholesale rejection of Italian stylistic advancements when addressing the relative piety of different artistic styles. Michelangelo’s response to Vittoria Colonna’s inquiries into why Flemish painting seemed more pious than the Italian manner betrays the complexity of this issue. At first Michelangelo supported the premise of

the devotional image

Colonna’s assertion: “Flemish painting . . . will, generally speaking, . . . please the devout better than any painting of Italy, which will never cause him to shed a tear, whereas that of Flanders will cause him to shed many.” But, as he later qualified, it was not the quality of the painting that touched the viewer’s spirit but rather the devoutness of the painter. Besides, the Flemish manner was “without reason or art, without symmetry or proportion, without skillful choice or boldness, and, finally, without substance or vigor.”69 It thus seems that one would be forced to choose between two offenses: employing either a style that was devout but inelegant or one that was faithful to the artistic standards of the modern age but devotionally inert. To avoid potentially alienating the modern style from the genuine purpose of serving religious ends, Francisco de Hollanda had Michelangelo argue that it was ultimately God’s desire that artists employ all the resources at their disposal in order to fashion a style that lived up to modern artistic standards: And if it was the will of God the Father that the ark of his law should be skillfully adorned and painted, how much more must it be His will that care and judgment should be bestowed on copying His serene countenance and that of His Son our Lord, and the tranquility, chastity, and beauty of the glorious Virgin Mary, copied by St. Luke the Evangelist; . . . For often badly wrought images distract the attention and prevent devotion, at least with persons who have but little; while those which are divinely fashioned excite even those who have little devotion or sensibility to contemplation and tears and by their austere beauty inspire them with great reverence and fear.70

This passage implicitly upholds Michelangelo’s Italian manner—which El Greco would later follow—as the epitome of aesthetic refinement.

Michelangelo later added that, at its best, no other style was “more noble or more devout, since with discreet persons nothing so calls forth and fosters devotion as the difficulty of perfection which is bound up in union with God.” Not to be outdone, Michelangelo also claimed that Italy was the custodian of divine art, “for this most noble science belongs to no country; it came down from heaven; yet from of old it has remained in our Italy more than in any other kingdom on earth, and so I think it will be to the end.”71 As a result, it was the progressive accomplishments of sixteenth-century Italian painting that made an indiscriminate jettisoning of current modes of representation an unviable solution to the problem of ensuring that works of religious art did not distract from their primary aim of inspiring devotion. Francisco de Hollanda thus conceded to the power of artistic excellence and the notion that a well-crafted image would carry the same power to inspire religious devotion as would a “devout” style such as the maniera greca or the maniera fiamminga. We get a clearer sense of this delicate balance between artistic excellence and devotional engagement in El Greco’s time by looking at Gilio da Fabriano’s Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori de’ pittori circa l’istorie, published in 1564 immediately after the closing of the Council of Trent. Gilio’s bitter invectives against Michelangelo’s Last Judgment reveal a pervasive concern for pictorial decorum among critics and theologians. Not surprisingly, given his vitriolic disdain for the more self-consciously stylized types developed by Michelangelo as representations of sacred figures, Gilio expressed sympathy for the more frontal and decidedly uncomplicated types that appeared in medieval cult images—despite what he admitted to

69

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

be their comparatively “laughable qualities” when measured against current artistic standards.72 Gilio contended that, in contrast to Michelangelo, painters from older epochs “were concerned more with truth and devotion than with virtuosity.”73 What drew the theologian’s ire was the gratuitous ornament present in many works by painters of his time, modern artists having seemingly abused their license to manipulate figures at the expense of the devout message their works were supposed to convey.74 Crucially, even an iconoclast like Gilio could not justify entirely discarding the accomplishments of modern masters. In order to avoid both the crude artificiality of older cult images and the even more offending lascivious excesses of contemporary painters, Gilio advocated a regulated mixture of modern styles with older, more devout forms taken from sacred cult images. These two seemingly competing representational manners worked best in consort with each other.75 Gilio’s encouragement of a tempered hybrid of the “modern” and the “devout” was shared by others who were concerned with the use of religious paintings as sacred images.76 Pietro Aretino, for one, seems to have been an earlier proponent of just this sort of archaizing style in religious imagery.77 We are only now starting to realize the extent to which these ideas about the moderating formal value of archaic icons shaped the practice of painting in the post-Tridentine era. Stuart Lingo has shown how works by Federico Barocci conform to a dual understanding that paintings be both compelling and pious. In order to achieve the latter, the artist committed himself to preserving some compositional traits characteristic of archaic images. But this archaism—aptly termed “retrospection”—must never fail to enrapture viewers

70

and deliver them to states of devotion, and so artists navigated this complex requirement by balancing that which was old with that which was artistically advanced in order to achieve something that was both alluring and devout.78 In a similar vein, the Carracci family’s retrospective reform of painting may also have taken shape with the formal qualities of icons in mind.79 Of course, it is not at all clear that such prescriptions for blending the archaic and the modern guided El Greco’s artistic practice. Any retrospective qualities that may be found in his Italian works are residual and symptomatic of his evolving transition from Cretan and post-Byzantine styles of painting, not necessarily procedural choices to moderate then-current Italian manners. However, Gilio’s statements do highlight a key correspondence between an image’s appearance and its potency as a devotional stimulus that shaped El Greco’s decisions to practice as a painter in the manner that he did. Most importantly, Francisco de Hollanda’s treatise offers the distinct impression that the modern Italian style carried an express devotional prestige because of the artistic accomplishments that sixteenth-century painters had achieved. These attitudes, so central to the sixteenthcentury discourse of art and religious aesthetics, must have informed El Greco’s decision to adorn his icons with all the artistic skill he observed in the works by painters around him.80 The three triptychs that El Greco created during his early Italian years, as well as the many single-panel works that repeat compositions found in those ensembles, thus resonate with the period conceptions of the artful icon. His output reveals an evident concern for creating works that broadcast the Italian style and the compositional

the devotional image

models that he followed—as long as he did not commit errors as offensive and indecorous as what observers perceived in Michelangelo’s supposed transgressions. At the same time, the repetition of a select group of formal compositions aligns these paintings with the procedures used to create icons, a method of artistic production that changed little even while El Greco’s style did. His devotional paintings, then, fulfilled a need for images to accompany spiritual texts in private

devotional practices and embraced a style that discerning Venetian patrons might have regarded as most effective for stimulating spiritual arousal. El Greco chose to avoid the Greek style because he did not want his works to be seen as both artistically and devotionally deficient to those audiences. Instead, he artfully selected a style that placed him in the vanguard of the ever-changing conceptions of the sacred image in the second half of the sixteenth century.

71

chapter three

Synthesis as Artistic Ideal

The celebration of artistic virtuosity that became part of the appeal of what I have called the artful icon permitted—even compelled—artists to use the most advanced styles and techniques when making devotional images. For this reason, El Greco embarked on a course of study after the best masters available to him in order to further develop his mastery of Italian art. The resulting stylistic synthesis generated the insertion of portraits of four Italian artists into the lower right-hand corner of his second version of the Cleansing of the Temple now in Minneapolis (fig. 43).1 The first figure on the left is Titian, whose portrayal here shares features

Detail of figure 51

with the late self-portrait at the Berlin Gemäldegalerie. Next to Titian is Michelangelo, modeled after a portrait by Jacopino del Conte. The third figure is Giulio Clovio, the miniaturist responsible for El Greco’s short tenure at the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, taken from the Cretan’s own portrait from the early 1570s (see fig. 62 in chapter 5).2 The identity of the final bust portrait is not as easily ascertained and has been the subject of considerable discussion. The most common and plausible identification is Raphael, whose works would have been familiar to El Greco during his stay in Rome and who, with Titian and Michelangelo, was part of

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

the triumvirate of the most celebrated sixteenthcentury artists in Italy.3 It is not coincidental that El Greco would choose to portray three of the most celebrated artists of his age. Even Giulio Clovio, who is comparatively unknown today, garnered a reputation at that time that put him in the same class as the other artists pictured around him.4 These figures, who are spatially and thematically removed from the narrative, function collectively as a metapictorial footnote crediting the plurality of artists who contributed foremost to El Greco’s artistic development in Italy. The painting on which they appear similarly exhibits a summa of the artist’s formalistic and stylistic study of the art and artists of sixteenth-century Italy—especially the

plasticity of Michelangelo’s design and that of other central Italian artists and the color and brushwork more commonly associated with artists in Venice, Titian in particular.5 Indeed, this accumulation of disparate stylistic and formal elements from Italian artists is a persistent feature throughout El Greco’s early paintings. The extent of his scavenging is so great that Ellis Waterhouse once dubbed him “an eclectic borrower.”6 However, this characterization risks denying the intentionality of El Greco’s procedural choices and the care with which he studied the art of sixteenth-century masters. The painter’s decision to draw upon a variety of artistic sources when forging his own unique style is symptomatic of his endorsement of stylistic synthesis in both practice and

Figure 43 El Greco, detail of Cleansing of the Temple, ca. 1570. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The William Hood Dunwoody Fund.

74

synthesis as artistic ideal

theory. The four portrait busts adorning his Cleansing of the Temple underline how El Greco exhibited himself as an eager practitioner of and engaged thinker fluent in the critical and philosophical issues central to sixteenth-century art theory and criticism. Ultimately this stylistic synthesis provided a formula by which El Greco could guarantee the artistic excellence of his devotional paintings for an audience able to recognize his achievement in drawing upon the best qualities of the art produced by those who came before him.

The Pantheon of Painters El Greco’s debt to other Italian artists as guiding lights for his stylistic development, as acknowledged in the pictorial footnote in the Minneapolis Cleansing of the Temple, reinforces comments he wrote in two key volumes of sixteenth-century Italian art theory: Daniele Barbaro’s 1556 translation and commentary on Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture and Giorgio Vasari’s 1568 edition of the Vite.7 A long passage in the margins of Barbaro’s proemio summarizes what El Greco further elaborated throughout his notes to Vasari. He first commended the ability of contemporary artists to surpass the achievements of the ancients by doing things that their classical predecessors failed to accomplish. The painter singled out Michelangelo in particular for having “manifested such an admirable taste of the kind that had never before been seen in any other sculptor.” To this he added, With these same words one can describe the loveliness of Titian’s colors with regard to the imitation of nature, and of others who have shown supreme talent. But the lack of grace or order that is present in our own nature, which

does not allow for many such artists to exist, as I have said, ruins them in various ways. This is the case of Jacopo Tintoretto (who lacked the favor of princes), and I understand it is the same with a number of others written about by the ancients. And with the death of Raphael of Urbino, who was among the first to give light to painting, and together with Antonio Correggio, who died at the same age of thirty-eight, I will not omit Parmigiano, I mean Francisco Parmigianino, who appears to have been born only to demonstrate with his drawings and sketches figural agility and grace. I had difficulty coming up with this number [of artists], but Giorgio [Vasari] came up with no less than some three hundred; God willing that he understands them all perfectly.8

Many of the topics touched on in this passage— namely, praise for Michelangelo’s work as a sculptor; a deep appreciation for Titian, Tintoretto, Raphael, Correggio, and Parmigianino for having proffered their own individual contributions to the visual arts; and doubts concerning Giorgio Vasari’s credibility—reappear frequently in El Greco’s annotations to the Vite. No single artist provided El Greco a richer or more enduring source of artistic inspiration and critical antagonism than Michelangelo.9 Rona Goffen has shown the extent to which Michelangelo instigated a network of professional rivalry in Renaissance Italy.10 El Greco’s enmity for the master allows us to consider these complex issues in focus. Importantly, we must consider how religious devotion may have shaped El Greco’s attitudes toward the artistic achievements of his rivals. Giulio Mancini, even despite his unreliability as a historical source, found El Greco’s reactions to Michelangelo’s artistic accomplishments to be generated out of an overriding concern for religious decorum. Mancini reported that the Cretan painter

75

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

offered to rip the Last Judgment off the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel and replace it with one that was better, more decent, and more modest.11 As we will see, there is certainly some truth to the hostility implied in Mancini’s anecdote, but there is also more at stake than the manifestation of El Greco’s arrogance as an upstart artist. Nevertheless, El Greco leveled his notorious antipathy toward Michelangelo on artistic grounds. Francisco Pacheco reports that the Greek painter dismissed Michelangelo in a single utterance by confessing, “He was a great man but did not know how to paint.”12 These words left Pacheco dumbfounded and solidified Michelangelo’s status as El Greco’s most aggravating artistic nemesis. When Vasari flattered both Jacopo Palma and Lorenzo Lotto by comparing them to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, El Greco scribbled a more damaging assessment of the latter two luminaries: “One would never finish anything and the other would not know how to start. Michelangelo did not know how to paint portraits or represent hair nor anything that imitated flesh. Considering all that oil colors contribute you cannot deny that he was lacking and impeded by other similar delicate traits required of portrait painting. It is certainly disgraceful what [Vasari] writes.”13 However, El Greco’s criticisms were far more nuanced and astute than the casual disregard for Michelangelo’s capabilities with a paintbrush that is normally attributed to him. While he occasionally mustered heartfelt praise for aspects of Michelangelo’s work, especially regarding his skill in imitating the human body, even this admiration has to be carefully disentangled from his impassioned critical barbs. This appreciation is noticeably more evident in the formal debt to the grand Italian Renaissance

76

master that El Greco frequently left in his own paintings. He studied Michelangelo’s formal ideas from the prints and drawings that he started collecting in Crete. For example, Michelangelo’s reclining Night, on the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, which the Cretan painter could only have known through secondhand sources, reappears in the form of one of the angels in El Greco’s Dormition of the Virgin (see fig. 1 in the introduction).14 He later proved to be an eager student of Michelangelo’s works immediately upon arriving in Rome. El Greco was privy to drawings that had made their way into the hands of many artists and collectors in the city— especially members of Cardinal Farnese’s court. The cardinal’s collection alone consisted of nineteen drawings by Michelangelo.15 Giulio Clovio owned others.16 Fulvio Orsini, the cardinal’s librarian and art broker, amassed a collection that surpassed them both, owning twenty drawings then attributed to Michelangelo (in addition to sixteen by Raphael).17 El Greco’s first and most deliberate response to the exalted master is found in two nearly identical compositions of what has typically been called the Pietà but might more accurately be identified as the transit of Christ’s body to the tomb (figs. 44 and 45). As a subject rarely seen in Italy prior to Michelangelo’s focused mediation on the theme throughout his career, it would have been difficult for El Greco to disassociate his versions of the Pietà from the master’s artistic legacy. He was undoubtedly aware of the sculpture at St. Peter’s Basilica and had likely seen some of the drawings that became the envy of collectors, critics, and artists alike.18 But El Greco’s paintings in fact respond to one work in particular. The depiction of Christ’s posture in both versions echoes the limp body featured in Michelangelo’s marble Pietà now in Florence (fig. 46). The

synthesis as artistic ideal

painter must have spent time contemplating this masterpiece in Rome, where, according to Vasari, it was kept in Pierantonio Bandini’s garden.19 Alternatively, El Greco could have studied its form in reverse through an engraving by Cherubino Alberti; however, it is not certain that this image, dated to the mid-1570s, would have been available to El Greco when he first painted the subject.20

Though there were surely many reasons for El Greco’s choice of model, referencing the Florence Pietà is suggestive of an intentional artistic confrontation because of the sculpture’s close emblematic alignment with the ambitions and identity of its author. Irving Lavin read the work as Michelangelo’s self-conscious attempt to outdo the ancients by carving a multifigure composition out of a single

Figure 44 El Greco, Pietà, ca. 1570. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo: The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, New York.

77

78

synthesis as artistic ideal

block of stone, a trait Pliny had claimed (wrongly, it turns out) for the then-recently unearthed Laocoön.21 As Goffen remarked, the fact that Michelangelo grafted his own likeness onto that of Nicodemus—himself a sculptor according to legend—as well as the work’s intended function as an adornment to his funerary chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome make the sculpture “inevitably autobiographical.”22 Left in an unfinished state after being violently defaced at the hands of its frustrated, hammer-wielding maker, this sculpture’s abandonment provided an open invitation for subsequent artists to complete and outdo the Figure 45 El Greco, Pietà, ca. 1575. Hispanic Society of America, New York. Photo: Courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America, New York.

achievement of this exalted rival who failed to bring his own work to satisfactory completion. Vasari, after all, had declared the Florence Pietà’s potential to surpass all others in Michelangelo’s body of work in the 1550 edition of the Vite, and in the 1568 edition Vasari eulogized the sculpture as “a demanding work . . . and truly divine” but one that ultimately “remained unfinished and suffered many disgraces.” Benvenuto Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli, and Titian all took Michelangelo’s cue and similarly designed autobiographical funerary monuments on the theme of Christ’s death.23 El Greco borrowed from the sculpture’s form after Tiberio Calcagni’s collaborative effort with Michelangelo in its restoration—which, moreover, itself had received extensive criticism.24 It is essential that we not judge cases in which El Greco incorporated Michelangelo’s figural inventions into his own works as instances of injudicious cut-and-paste pirating by a naïve admirer. Instead, Leo Steinberg suggests (in a study of a different series of paintings) that El Greco treated the picture plane as an arena in which to critique and correct the master’s figures.25 El Greco surely recognized a similar opportunity to outdo Michelangelo in his Pietà paintings and accordingly altered a number of the original sculpture’s features. He twisted Christ’s lower body against the natural fall of his torso in order to gather his legs (replacing the one missing in the sculpture) under the arm of the figure on the left. He also placed Christ’s arm over the shoulder of the figure on the right who is lifting Christ out of his mother’s lap and in the process relinquished some of the weight evoked through the downward slump of the body in the original. In addition, El Greco effectively erased the most visible sign of Michelangelo’s authorship by

Figure 46 Michelangelo, Pietà, ca. 1547–55. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

79

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

substituting the self-portrait-as-Nicodemus solemnly supporting Christ’s shoulders from behind with the Virgin Mary, whose upward-­ gazing profile at the apex of the figural pyramid protrudes against the backdrop of ominous clouds casting shadows on the barren landscape behind. In the earlier version, now in Philadelphia, El Greco had substituted Michelangelo’s figural signature, as it were, with his own literal one by signing his name in the lower left corner. While Steinberg’s notion of corrective alteration might have validity as an interpretive lens for looking at El Greco’s adaptation of Michelangelo’s repertoire in formal terms, it does not put the whole picture in focus. El Greco’s compositional alterations must have been motivated in part by the concerns for religious decorum that Mancini alluded to in his account of the Last Judgment. As seen in the previous chapter, El Greco’s stylistic development emerged from an understanding that artistic form determines an image’s power to stimulate devotion. He might thus have seen his own efforts in painting the Pietà as a quest to do what Michelangelo himself ultimately could not succeed in doing. Alexander Nagel treats the Florence Pietà as “a final testament of [Michelangelo’s] art and piety,” culminating his effort to devise a work with both narrative and iconic functions compatible with the aims of religious imagery. Leaving this work in an unfinished state, still bearing the marks of its maker’s assault, is suggestive of Michelangelo’s ultimate failure to find a satisfactory formula to this problem in the medium of sculpture—a failure later punctuated by the strained contortions and withered forms of the aborted Rondanini Pietà.26 We must therefore not take for granted El Greco’s most drastic alteration

80

of Michelangelo’s sculpture. His revisions involved, not only rearranging figures and poses, but also inserting the figural group into a painted landscape matching the narrative context that would be impossible to convey through free-standing sculpture. This readaptation of the work’s figural form into a painting announces El Greco’s own superiority in recognizing what Michelangelo did not regarding the decorum and limitations of the work’s original medium. Of course, this use of the Pietà constitutes both a criticism of and an admiration for Michelangelo’s artistic example. If El Greco was entirely dismissive of the master’s work and wished to disassociate himself from it, then we might expect him to have ignored it altogether. But his true attitudes about Michelangelo’s art are only revealed if we give equal attention to his paintings and his written comments. El Greco’s assessment of Michelangelo expressed both formally in pictures and textually in writing reveals that the Cretan émigré broke down the master’s artistic output into a set of distinct manners that could be recognized and evaluated individually. For example, in his notes to Barbaro’s edition of Vitruvius, El Greco praised Michelangelo’s perfection in the fields of drawing and sculpture, saying, “And thus one sees in his drawings, especially those of a single figure, as in sculpture, how Michelangelo achieved perfection.” He then concluded his evaluation by scoffing, “But he has not done anything with colors.”27 El Greco thus singled out Michelangelo’s masterful disegno as the single most laudable aspect of his style to the detriment of his abilities as a colorist. El Greco reinforced these attitudes in his commentaries on Vasari. When Vasari complimented Michelangelo’s drawings for Tommaso

synthesis as artistic ideal

Cavalieri, El Greco concurred that disegno “was the thing he knew how to do best, without comparison.”28 El Greco must have comprehended the pictorial qualities made manifest through disegno and its role in defining idealized figural form through the diligent study of anatomy. Later in the margins of the same volume, the artist supported Michelangelo’s famous declaration of disegno as the foundation of good painting and conceded that through the practice of drawing one is able to arrive at a keen comprehension of compositional order and disposition.29 El Greco surely understood disegno in Aristotelian terms as a speculative and epistemic operation through which one can discern universal form, an idea expressed in Vasari’s writings and elsewhere.30 El Greco evidently recognized Michelangelo’s mastery of drawing and the delineation of line and contour as a practice necessary for competent artistry. He admired most especially Michelangelo’s ability to depict a well-proportioned human body in various attitudes on a flat plane. As we have already seen in the Pietà, it is this brand of anatomical rendering that El Greco brings into his own painting style. With that in mind we note the greater mastery of disegno in the second version of the Pietà (see fig. 45). El Greco hardened the outlines of the figures’ contours and also modeled the musculature of Christ’s body and the drapery folds on the flanking figures with greater precision. Unfortunately, El Greco’s surviving output does not offer abundant material from which to gauge his implementation of Michelangelo’s disegno as a preparatory process in the medium of drawing itself. However, one of El Greco’s few surviving graphic works is a study of Day from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, dated to about 1570 (fig. 47). The artist

has taken the figure and rotated it from a reclining position into an upright one, although rendering it with a nervous and agitated line that dissolves its clean contours in contrast to Michelangelo’s emphasis on form and mass.31 This drawing was probably done in preparation for a painting. Indeed, Michelangelo’s sculpture—though in its original pose—was apparently the inspiration for the seated male figure on the step in the middle ground of El Greco’s first version of Christ Healing the Blind (see fig. 54 in chapter 4) and for a similar recumbent figure seen in both early versions of the Cleansing of the Temple (see figs. 52 and 53 in chapter 4).32 Given the prominent change in medium in the Pietà, it is essential to point out that a good number of El Greco’s most revealing formal borrowings do come from Michelangelo’s sculptures, where the

Figure 47 El Greco, study after Michelangelo’s Day, ca. 1570s. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich. Photo: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich.

81

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

formal attributes of the body have the same three-dimensional exactness observable in real life. This solid, volumetric articulation of the body becomes the standard that El Greco aimed to achieve in his paintings. He emulated Michelangelo’s modeling with light and shadow to give his own figures a three-dimensional naturalism akin to the master’s paintings and sculptures alike. For example, this quality is seen in El Greco’s second version of the Cleansing of the Temple (see fig. 53 in chapter 4). He rendered the semiclothed protagonists gesticulating wildly in self-defense in the face of Christ’s whip with a sculptural plasticity superior to and more refined than in the version he had created prior to his firsthand experience observing Michelangelo’s works in Rome (see fig. 52 in chapter 4). Despite the restricted dimensions of the painting and the reduced scale of its characters, one can still see in the later version most especially the vibrant musculature rippling underneath the skin, infusing each figure with an activated kinetic energy tailored to match the intensity of the actions they perform. There is also a more closely studied and more convincing handling of the exposed leg of the elderly man reclining on the step in the center foreground of the second version. Here El Greco concentrated on the figural contours and anatomic mass as guided by Michelangelo’s precedent. This figure exhibits a confident handling of the compressed thigh muscles and the structural armature of the man’s bended knee, as well as a greater command in conveying the weight distributed through his foot and into the joints of his toes. Similar aspects are observable in the figures in the three paintings of Christ Healing the Blind (see figs. 54–56 in chapter 4). The blind youth in the foreground crouches on his knees and raises one

82

muscular arm upward, while the figure immediately behind him bends downward, exposing his flexed shoulders and upper arm. These figures’ twisted, contorted poses exhibit the effects of El Greco’s study after Michelangelo’s disegno, thereby embodying the formal quality that El Greco enthusiastically demonstrated as an integral component of his artistic process. Engravings of Michelangelo’s sculptures and paintings frequently served to provide artists with examples of proficient renderings of anatomy.33 While we can never be sure exactly what El Greco might have seen when preparing his paintings, it is likely that he would have been exposed to Michelangelo’s disegno through diligent study of both originals and reproductions. The fruit of his study is readily apparent, as he reworked single figures to fit new narrative contexts rendered in paint. El Greco’s change in medium, adapting Michelangelo’s Pietà sculpture to his own two paintings of the subject, also entailed adding a confident handling of color to complement the masterful display of disegno. Therefore, it should not be surprising that his enthusiasm for Michelangelo’s evocation of three-dimensional form was matched by unmitigated praise for other artists who demonstrated perfection in the very field where Michelangelo did not impress. For El Greco, color was not only the most difficult component of painting but also the most important with respect to its agenda for conveying naturalism. A passage in the margins of Barbaro’s proemio to Vitruvius asserts that the use of color for painted representations of the natural world is a more difficult and important skill than the rehearsal of the contours of a solid mass in space. As El Greco said, a painting’s most commendable characteristic is the imitative

synthesis as artistic ideal

and illusionary qualities of color and its ability to trick the eye when done correctly and admirably.34 In the two Pietà paintings we see El Greco putting these strengths—and Michelangelo’s deficiencies— to work by enlivening the surface qualities and narrative setting in ways that a monochromatic marble sculpture could not. It is this conception of the painter’s task to obey mimetic naturalism that El Greco admired most especially in the Venetian masters Titian and Tintoretto, whom he upheld as the two greatest painters of all, and also in Antonio Correggio, who received effusive praise in El Greco’s commentaries on Vasari.35 His admiration for these artists and his appreciation for having learned from a pleasing mode of colorire are far less contentious than what is derived from his verbal reactions to Michelangelo. Every word of El Greco’s commentary on Vasari’s biography of Titian is enthusiastic in tone.36 In one passage, he challenges Vasari’s biased antagonism toward Venetian art: “There was not a single painter in Venice who did not recognize Titian as one who possessed a great taste, better than painters in Florence that you [Vasari] write about.”37 El Greco’s notations are full of exuberant praise for the naturalistic potential of color. He was understandably outraged when Vasari suggested that Titian could have profited from enriching his study with more exercises based on drawing after Michelangelo. Vasari recounted how Sebastiano del Piombo told him that Titian’s color should be praised on account of its faithful imitation of nature but that his greatness matched that of Raphael and Michelangelo only after studying proper disegno in Rome. El Greco retorted, “Now somebody concedes that [Titian] is the best imitator of nature, through use of the beautiful

manner of color [colorido]. If he had taken advantage of the Roman [style], he would have suffered. It is certain that having what they had, it would have been more worthwhile for Raphael and Michelangelo to have imitated . . . [Titian].38 In another passage he remarked that it was common in Venice to deride a work as having a “Roman” style when condemning it as crude or unskilled.39 El Greco was no less enthusiastic about the art of Tintoretto, about whom he said “there is no other man in the world that can be called a better painter.”40 Surprisingly, no direct figural reference can be identified that would show that he depended on Tintoretto’s compositions for inspiration.41 Neither is El Greco’s debt to the artist accurately measured by the volume of ink dispensed in the margins of Vasari’s text. But the comments El Greco did make are among the strongest in tone of any.42 For example, he pointed out that “the picture that Tintoretto did for San Rocco is the best painting that exists in the world today, for if Titian’s Battle [of Cadore, or of Chiaraddada] is lost, I say [Tintoretto’s] is the best for many things that occur in it, such as the nudes and the colorito that will not be found elsewhere, except in Titian’s best works.”43 El Greco was acutely aware of Vasari’s unjust treatment of Tintoretto, in that instead of granting him his own biography Vasari merely added a few pages about the painter’s life at the end of the vita of Battista Franco.44 In response, El Greco remarked that even “Tintoretto’s worst painting will have as much painterly grace as the best of Battista the Venetian and [will match what] Giorgio Vasari will have in clumsiness.”45 El Greco’s use of the Italian term colorito and the Castilian equivalent colorido throughout his annotations to Vasari indicates that he understood

83

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

the critical and theoretical nuances of “color” as a technique and formal attribute. The infinitive colorire and its past participle colorito were employed in contemporary theoretical literature just as frequently as the noun form colore. This use of the verb and its variants carries an implication of kinetic action. Therefore, embedded within the semantics of colorito are not just the optical properties and tonal values of color but also the artist’s touch and manipulation of paint.46 This makes the term partly analogous to a modern concept of brushwork; it refers to the meeting of the physical properties of the painting materials and the movement that the artist committed to the act of spreading pigment across the painting surface. Nothing in Vasari’s text directly applies to this aspect of the term, yet on a number of occasions El Greco expressed his understanding of the codependence of tonal hue and active movement in the execution of a painting. A close reading of El Greco’s own use of color affirms this understanding of the kinetics of colorito. While generally “naturalistic” with respect to the imitation of the qualities of natural light and tone, the pigment is often heavily modulated; visible strokes of the brush allow the artist to record the movements of his hand.47 This rapid execution imparts an agitated energy that signals the true influence from Titian and Tintoretto in the absence of any forthright figural quotation. El Greco could not have appreciated Titian’s color and brushwork from prints, and so it is the masterful Annunciation then at Santa Maria degli Angeli in Murano (now lost and known through an engraving by Jacopo Caraglio; see fig. 31 in chapter 2) and its close variant at San Salvador in Venice (fig. 48) that influenced El Greco’s depiction of the same blazing,

heavenly glory that accompanies the entrance of the Holy Spirit in three of his own paintings of this subject (figs. 49–51). Una Roman D’Elia has shown that Titian’s versions embody a painterly expressive force—aptly termed a terribilità of color—that matches the rhetoric of Pietro Aretino’s description of the Annunciation in I quattro libri de la humanità di Christo (1540). Aretino provided Titian with an opportunity to enact a reverse ekphrasis by putting into visual form the verbal description of

Figure 48 Titian, Annunciation, ca. 1559–64. San Salvador, Venice. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

84

Figure 49 El Greco, Annunciation, ca. 1570. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

85

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

the archangel Gabriel’s heavenly intrusion and the bombastic rupture of earthly experience through the invasion of swirling clouds, tumbling putti, and piercing light.48 El Greco’s paintings of the Annunciation achieve a similar result. He evidently followed both Tintoretto’s and Titian’s exemplary colorito when developing a style of painting that puts art in the service of religion, bringing the viewer of the painting into close devotional engagement with the dramatic spectacle portrayed through what Marcia

Hall has described as “an emotionally inciting spontaneity of effect.”49 The modulated and textured use of yellow pigment materializes divine light and the incandescent glow that illuminates Mary’s startled face as she glances up at the radiant angel suddenly appearing before her. Other paintings that put El Greco’s appropriation of Venetian coloring practices on full display include the Flight into Egypt (at the Museo del Prado in Madrid)50 and the numerous versions of St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata (see figs. 39 and 40 in

Figure 50 El Greco, Annunciation, ca. 1570–76. Colección Muñoz, Barcelona. Photo © Fundació Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic / Arxiu Mas.

86

synthesis as artistic ideal

chapter 2). All feature lush landscapes painted with loose, gestural strokes of the brush and in the process document El Greco’s efforts to reject the maniera greca in favor of a more Italian-based style in these small-scale devotional works. The dissolution of material form becomes a sign of the spiritual intensity of the depicted scene and of the artist’s own creative facture, just as it was for Titian when he loosened his handling of pigment in his late paintings in order to assert both a narrative mood and an authorial presence.51 In other words, it was

the styles of these works, and not just their compositional structures, that guided El Greco’s appropriation of Venetian art. What he saw in this manner of painting was the ability to render these images in a way that emphasized the mystical properties of the events portrayed in order to heighten their devotional and emotional impact. This recognition was another sign of El Greco being cognizant of the relationship between an artfully crafted religious image and its devotional value in the age of the artful icon.

Figure 51 El Greco, Annunciation, ca. 1570–76. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Photo: Oronoz Archivo Fotográfico.

87

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

Disegno, Colorito, and the God of Painting Perhaps in El Greco’s eyes the perception of Michelangelo’s deficiencies as a colorist devalued the religious function of his works. El Greco rectified this problem in his own paintings by combining the best qualities of both techniques. Of course, if his Pietà paintings effectively added colorito to Michelangelo’s disegno, then we must also consider how his Annunciations contribute disegno to Titian’s colorito. Though clearly inspired in part by Titian’s new dramatically painterly formulation of the theme, El Greco departed from an extensive reliance on the supernatural to arrive at a rendering that balances the celestial with the earthly. He achieved a comparatively more precise articulation of figural form and a more cohesive three-dimensional space than what we see in Titian’s late work. The results are works that El Greco found conducive to inspiring awe for the divine while also acknowledging the tangible truth of the event as a didactic episode of sacred history. El Greco’s Pietà and Annunciation paintings thus represent a merger of distinct stylistic qualities and as a result reveal a theory-driven motive underlying his practice as a painter in Italy. His acknowledgment of the differing strengths in the works of Michelangelo and Titian engendered a tacit familiarity with the understanding that the principles of painting depended on the mixture of disegno and colorito into a synthetic union. Self-conscious stylistic combination has been regarded as a trope germane to the rhetoric of later baroque art criticism in the generation following El Greco’s stay in Venice and Rome.52 Yet his experience in Italy offered the tools to implement syncretism as a conscious component of his practice even earlier.

88

One source for this idea may have been Girolamo Muziano. The Brescian-born painter trained in Venice and worked in Rome, and so his paintings consequently merge northern and central Italian painting styles. Muziano was instrumental to the foundation of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, having received in 1577 the initial bull for its formation from Pope Gregory XIII.53 El Greco likely met Muziano in Rome through the guild or perhaps even earlier when both painters worked briefly at the Farnese Palace.54 While petitioning Gregory XIII to allow for the formation of the academy, Muziano advocated sending its best students to Venice so they could embellish the styles cultivated from artists observed locally in Rome.55 Muziano’s involvement in the early development of the academy, and especially his ideas concerning the training of its members, might have been an influence on El Greco’s development when he enrolled there in the 1570s. However, the theoretical justification for implementing a synthesis of styles predates even El Greco’s arrival in Italy. Availing oneself of both Michelangelo’s design and Titian’s color rings of a major theme in the art-theoretical literature in the second half of the sixteenth century. In his Dialogo di pittura (1548), the Venetian Paolo Pino laid out the formula for what would become a prominent conceptual ideal when he declared that the painter who could successfully unite the form-defining plasticity of Michelangelo’s disegno with Titian’s sumptuous use of color would qualify as “the god of painting” (lo dio della pittura).56 This “divine” artist would create perfect works of art by combining the best parts culled from the styles of a variety of accomplished masters. Whereas Vasari championed the superiority of disegno over colorito, considering

synthesis as artistic ideal

them mutually exclusive and irreconcilable, Pino, and later Ludovico Dolce, opted to hold these qualities in equal esteem. They considered disegno and colorito to be equally necessary components of the art of painting, for neither one alone, even in its most perfected state, could ever reach the excellence of a painting that incorporated both. This formulaic recipe for the judicious selection of component parts has classical roots, providing a humanist basis for the hypothetical integration of disegno and colorito. As recounted in Cicero’s On Invention (and later in Pliny’s Natural Histories), the Greek painter Zeuxis introduced a pioneering method of synthesis when commissioned to paint a portrait capturing the unmatched beauty of Helen. Instead of crafting his subject after a single model, the artist asked to see the five most beautiful girls available, and from each he would select the best quality to combine into one body.57 Zeuxis thus created a composite of all the best parts that nature could only produce separately, surpassing the beauty bestowed in any one individual. Similarly, Seneca’s letter “On Gathering Ideas” from his Epistulae morales advises one to follow “the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in.”58 It is initially unclear whether honey comes about from the simple gathering and combining of the ingredients or if the collected pollen undergoes a more complex process of transmutation within the bee itself.59 Yet pinpointing the precise moment at which the concoction is thought to become honey is less important than the fact that the gathered elements actually do engender a new product, though one that preserves the integrity of the constituents it combines.60 The

same holds true for painting in that the fusion of styles acts as a testament to the ingegno of the artist and at the same time reveals the original masters from whom he borrowed. The models provided by Zeuxis’s composite of ideal beauty and Seneca’s busy bees were subsumed into Renaissance philosophies of the visual arts.61 Leon Battista Alberti’s advice to painters in On Painting invoked such a formulaic mixture when advising artists to “always take from Nature whatever we are about to paint, and let us always choose those things that are most beautiful and worthy.”62 Vasari referenced the Zeuxinian method in his discussion of disegno in the preface to the third part of the Vite, alerting artists that “the most beautiful style comes from constantly copying the most beautiful things, combining the most beautiful hands, heads, bodies, or legs together to create from all these beautiful qualities the most perfect figure possible.”63 The result was a growing trend of combinatory painting—pictures that featured a variety of figures culled from the works of other painters and sculptors, both ancient and modern—that reflected the varieties of imitation employed in Renaissance literature.64 Paolo Pino’s Dialogo di pittura initiated a new treatment and application of these classical tropes of imitation that fundamentally shaped the artistic thought and technique of El Greco and anyone else who practiced the art of synthesis. Pino was the first to alter the classical formula for compositional mixture by advocating a judicious selection of component styles of pictorial representation, not just figures or parts. In this way he responded to Cennino Cennini’s advice to concentrate on the manner of a single master.65 Neither Pino’s model for self-conscious stylistic fusion nor El Greco’s

89

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

appropriation of it as a guiding principle would have been possible had the theorist not paralleled the Ciceronian division of the art of rhetoric into inventione, dispositio, and elocutio by dividing painting into invenzione, disegno, and colorire.66 Ludovico Dolce subsequently incorporated Pino’s tripartite division of painting into his own treatise in 1557, though he reversed the order of disegno and invenzione.67 This rhetorical model effectively shifted focus from the work of art as a finished product to the sequential procedures undertaken in its making. In so doing this formulation acted as a prism that allowed artists and critics to see paintings refracted and filtered into their component stylistic qualities, not simply as compositions pieced together from disparate parts and figures. Theorists henceforth had the means, structure, and vocabulary with which to break down and categorize aspects of any artist’s manner of painting into a variety of distinct constituents. This was of course contingent upon the recognition, first, that different artists produced unique styles and, second, that these could be selected and combined into a composite. For example, Francisco de Hollanda remarked, But just as Mother Nature produces men and animals in one part and men and animals in another part, all made after one size and pattern but very different from one another, so in the art of painting you will find that many great masters paint men and women and animals almost miraculously each in his own fashion and manner, very differently from one another, although they observe the same proportions and principles; yet all these different manners may be good and deserving of praise in their different ways. For in Rome Polidoro [da Caravaggio] the painter had a manner very different from that of Baldassare [Peruzzi] of Siena, and Messer Perino [del Vaga] differed from Giulio [Romano] of Mantua;

90

Marturino did not resemble Parmigianino, and the Cavalliere Tiziano had a softer manner than Leonardo da Vinci; the soft refinement of Raffaele of Urbino does not resemble the manner of Bastiano [del Piombo] of Venice; and your manner resembles that of no other painter, nor is my own poor talent like any other. And although those I have named differ from one another in general effect, and in shade and drawing and colors, they are nevertheless all great, celebrated, and illustrious men, each in his different style, and their works deserve to be valued almost equally highly, since each of them strove to imitate Nature and to attain perfection in the way that he found most congenial to him and most in accordance with his aim and ideal.68

These texts provided a new way of viewing and understanding a work of art. Instead of thinking in terms of figures, gestures, and compositions, El Greco could now discern, for example, Titian’s use of color and Michelangelo’s proficiency for design and treat these different manners as equally accomplished. Indeed, El Greco’s drive to implement this theoretical formula of syncretic painting into his working practice shows the remarkable aspiration of a young, foreign-born artist to surpass towering luminaries. Whereas Pino presented the union of Florentine disegno and Venetian colorito merely as an unfulfilled hypothesis, less than a decade later Dolce claimed that this artistic goal was already manifest in Titian’s celebrated Assumption of the Virgin at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice and that the war waged between the critical factions over the relative primacy of Florentine and Venetian aesthetics could cease on the grounds of Titian’s pictorial triumph. In Dolce’s words, one could observe in Titian’s work “the grandeur and awesomeness of Michelangelo, the charm and

synthesis as artistic ideal

loveliness of Raphael, and the precise coloring of nature.”69 This was, at least in the Venetian discourse, the quintessence of what could be achieved in the art of painting. Dolce accordingly treated Titian as the embodiment of this brand of combinatory perfection: “Truly it is in Titian alone . . . that one sees gathered together to perfection all of the excellent features which have individually been present in many cases. Both in terms of invention and in terms of draftsmanship, that is, no one ever surpassed him. And again, as regards coloring, there was never anyone who reached his level.”70 However, we must remember that Dolce’s designation of Titian’s masterpiece as the embodiment of stylistic synthesis results from an anachronistic glance cast backward, a later assessment of the painting that might not reflect the artist’s own attitudes and aims at the time he was painting it. Equally, Carlo Ridolfi’s posthumous biography of Tintoretto, published separately in 1642 and again in his collection of biographies of Venetian painters in 1648, famously revealed that the painter hung a sign in his shop proclaiming “the disegno of Michelangelo and the colorito of Titian,”71 but it is uncertain if Tintoretto himself had endorsed such a mantra. This is not to suggest that no other painters before El Greco had consciously combined styles in their works.72 As Maurice Poirier has pointed out, disegno infused many works by Venetians, and colore was a trait of concern to central Italian artists.73 But the difference is that El Greco emerges as one of the first to have his practice guided by theory directly instead of having theorists ascribe a method to his practice. Indeed, the synthetic union of divergent styles so central to the theory of art in sixteenth-century Italy was treated as largely speculative during the

time El Greco spent in Venice and Rome. This concept reached its maturation in Gian Paolo Lomazzo’s Idea del tempio della pittura (1590), where he tantalized his readers with the recipe for a veritable “painting of all painting” (pittura della pittura). He asserted that the two most perfect works of art would be a picture of Adam designed by Michelangelo, colored by Titian, and infused with Raphael’s proportion and sense of decorum, matched with a picture of Eve designed by Raphael and colored by Correggio.74 Charles Dempsey identified the source of these hypothetical paintings in a passage of Lucian’s Eikones that discusses the perfect statue of a woman shaped by the hands of multiple sculptors and painters.75 But this formula must also be seen as symptomatic of emerging sixteenth-century attitudes regarding styles as component parts that can be pieced together to achieve something approximate to an ideal whole. These hypothetical works embody the theories that Lomazzo developed over the course of his treatise, in which he spoke of artistic styles not as competing qualities but rather, according to Martin Kemp, as equally excellent components that together manifest the perfect, Platonic ideal of painting. Lomazzo used the model of a temple in which seven artists (whom he called the governors of painting) represent the seven supporting columns, each one a master in a particular stylistic trait. It is their collective effort to support the structure of the temple that represents ideal perfection in painting.76 El Greco’s implementation of the synthetic ideal into his painting practice by making use of both Michelangelo’s disegno and Titian’s colorito has wide-reaching implications that broach conflicting scholarly viewpoints concerning the relevance of

91

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

theory to practice in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art. In truth, subsequent borrowings of Paolo Pino’s synthetic formula in art-theoretical texts have failed to convince many modern observers that there was much of a direct influence on the practice of painting, regardless of artists confessing to have been moved to practice accordingly or not.77 Therefore, El Greco’s implementation of this theoretical principle in the 1560s and 1570s represents an actual merger of theory and practice that was uncommon at that time—which means that as an artist he was conventional in his thought but tantalizingly unique in his self-consciously theory-based techniques.

Art Theory After Vasari El Greco’s desire to adorn his paintings with the highest achievements of disegno and colorito would be inconsequential to their intended function as devotional images were it not for the fact that what others might regard as ornamental flourishes were viewed by some reform-minded critics as affective and devotionally stimulating characteristics of religious paintings. The sixteenth-century cardinal and theologian Gabriele Paleotti judged artistic qualities as the parts that appeal to the emotions. It is color in particular that carries the potential for a religious work of art to arouse devotion.78 Therefore, it was not just the sensibilities of those who were knowledgeable about art that El Greco aimed to attract. Rather, by borrowing from the best qualities of the artists that came before him he fashioned a manner that could be seen as the one best suited for the aims of his pictures to act as devotional images. It was thus in his effort to become Pino’s “god of painting” that El Greco created images whose goal

92

was to inspire in the viewer a reverence for the creative power of God himself. And yet despite whatever religious motivations might have pushed El Greco to pursue this stylistic merger, it is the broad artistic ramifications of his procedural choices that emerge as the most significant indicators of his engagement with the culture in which he worked. The synthesis of styles is evidence of nascent antagonism across northern Italy toward the subjective and polemical biases of Vasari’s canon. Therefore, underlying El Greco’s technique is a condemnation of Vasari’s role in instigating the disegno versus colorito controversy, a new kind of paragone in which critics debated the relative primacy of central Italian and Venetian modes of painting.79 Venetian critics opposed Vasari’s bias for Tuscan and central Italian disegno as the foundation for all of the visual arts. Vasari attacked the tonalism of Giorgione, Titian, and other Venetian painters for being an index of their resistance to utilize drawing as a formative component of their study.80 Vasari even issued an attack on such a supposed deprivation of disegno through the mouth of Michelangelo in a passage added to his biography of Titian in the 1568 edition of the Vite. After having accompanied the writer to Titian’s studio, where they viewed the painter’s Danaë, Michelangelo allegedly (according to Vasari) opined that it was “a pity [artists] in Venice did not learn to draw well from the beginning and that Venetian painters did not have a better method of study.” Michelangelo reportedly added that “if [Titian] had been assisted by arte and disegno as much as he is by nature, and especially in imitating live subjects, no one could achieve more or paint better.”81 While these statements nearly endorse Pino’s ideas of stylistic synthesis, the implication of this

synthesis as artistic ideal

bitter appraisal was that Venetian artists fell short of perfection because, not having had the privilege to see works by artists in Florence and Rome, they were not able to moderate the inherent error of their own styles with the virtues of sound disegno. To Vasari’s credit he was correctly pointing out that there was a different practice of painting in Italy’s northern regions. It is undeniable that the precision of Michelangelo’s closed contours elicits a different visual effect than Titian’s vivid palette and liberal handling of the brush. However, it is the underlying judgmental subtext of this passage that provoked the ire of his readers. El Greco wrote a long passage in which he vilified the author’s use of Michelangelo as a mouthpiece to broadcast his biased appraisals of Titian and Venetian art in general.82 The notations that El Greco penned in the margins of Vasari’s biographies of Michelangelo, Titian, and others are thus not always aimed at the artists addressed in the texts. They also stand as scathing, quick-triggered assaults on the author’s biased portrayal of the history of Italian art. El Greco did not mince words when criticizing Vasari’s unabashed prejudice against the styles of painters working outside of Tuscany and Rome. A few of El Greco’s more colorful comments suffice to demonstrate the indignation that Vasari drew out of him. El Greco frequently called the biographer “necio” (stupid), or referred to his “necidad” (stupidity), and in other places commented on how the author simply “manifesta la sua ignorancia” (manifests his ignorance).83 On another occasion El Greco sarcastically appealed to a higher power on Vasari’s behalf. Writing, “Forgive him, God, for he knows not what he is saying,” El Greco wittily invoked Luke 23:34, where Christ intervened for those complicit in his Crucifixion to save them from their sins.84

A common refrain in El Greco’s responses to Vasari is the accusation that the writer was figuratively blind and that his ability to recognize and judge good painting was accordingly impaired. Next to an underlined passage in Vasari’s biography of Correggio that credited the artist’s experience in Lombardy for having “opened his eyes, where so many beautiful things are seen in painting,” El Greco bitterly retorted that “the Tuscans never opened theirs.”85 When Vasari praised Pellegrino Tibaldi for deriving a good and gracious style from the nudes of the Sistine Chapel, El Greco launched a more vicious attack on the writer’s aesthetic preferences: “From this you can see that Vasari [has] no taste, because this is the filthiest and most awkward painting that can be seen in public. And so you can see that the praises he makes are completely random and according to passion and bias. Whoever has not seen [this work] will not think it strange [that he extols it in this way] because other similar things they might have seen . . . are treated the same by Giorgio Vasari.”86 Evidently, even other artists who studied Michelangelo were not immune to El Greco’s acerbic commentary. He seemed especially irritated by the Venetian painter Battista Franco, despite his having an artistic pedigree not much different from El Greco’s own. Vasari praised Franco for being one of the first to recognize the genius of Michelangelo’s work at the Sistine Chapel and for becoming one of the first artists to visit it regularly to sketch its scenes. El Greco countered Vasari’s enthusiasm by saying, “And so he became one of the first fools of his time.”87 The candor of El Greco’s commentaries reveals attitudes that put him in good company with others who contributed to an emerging movement of anti-Vasarianism.88 Pino and Dolce similarly attacked Vasari’s treatment of Michelangelo as the

93

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

model exponent of Italian painting. Not surprisingly, given their shared Venetian heritage, both upheld Titian as at least Michelangelo’s equal, if not a superior artist. Dolce even went so far as to claim that Raphael proved more worthy of praise than did Michelangelo. Both authors wrote their respective treatises in part as direct attacks on the first edition of Vasari’s Vite, and these became models for later texts dealing with the subject.89 These writings must have colored El Greco’s own commentaries, for he contended that “Giorgio [Vasari] would not say that there is anything worth seeing in Venice.”90 For example, when Vasari mentioned Paolo Veronese as one of Giovanni Caroto’s disciples, El Greco interjected, “And [Veronese] was better than any of your fellow Florentines.”91 When Vasari praised Francesco Primaticcio for being as excellent in color as he was in drawing, El Greco sarcastically reasoned, “Then he would not be Florentine.”92 Many other comments of this type are scattered throughout El Greco’s marginalia. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of El Greco’s postille is that in tone and content they foreshadow other more famous notations by Federico Zuccaro and the Carracci—artists whose philosophies derive in large part from their interests as academicians.93 They took polemical stances in opposition to Vasari’s bias against painters from the north. Zuccaro’s most famous comments are found in a volume of Vasari’s text kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. (He also made scant notes in the volume he gave to El Greco, but none reveal much about his personal feelings outside of an occasional remark on Vasari’s “partialita e ignorantia.”94) Despite his training in Rome, Zuccaro was critical of many Tuscan artists and expressed notable displeasure with Vasari’s disrespect for Lombard

94

painters and mistreatment of Giorgione. But Zuccaro’s comments did not quite reach the level of scorn expressed by others, and he left the margins of the biographies of Titian, Tintoretto, and other Venetians blank—apparently not viewing Vasari’s judgments sufficiently offensive to elicit a reaction. Indeed, Zuccaro’s contempt pales in comparison to that expressed by Agostino, Annibale, and Ludovico Carracci. Their postille to the third volume of Vasari’s Vite enthusiastically point out biases against northern Italian artists in a way that aligns the Carracci with El Greco.95 One passage in the margins of Vasari’s biography of Titian in particular expresses their outrage at the author’s disregard for non-Florentine art, echoing El Greco’s disdain: “O listen to the malignant Vasari, he says that the rivals of Titian were not men of valor, yet these were Giorgione, Pordenone, Tintoretto, Giuseppe Salviati, Veronese, and Palma Vecchio, all of whom were painters of great importance; yet [Titian] overcame them all, and if he had to compete against the Ghirlandaios, Bronzinos, Lippis, Soggis, Lappos, Gengas, Bugiardinis, and others of those Florentines of his with names as obscure as their works, he could easily have beat them painting with his feet, excepting, however, the divine Michelangelo and Andrea del Sarto.”96 Though we read in these lines a somewhat greater approval for Michelangelo than what El Greco allowed, the indignation over the slanderous misrepresentation of Venetian painters was one major point on which the Cretan and the Carracci family certainly could agree. In an effort to counter Vasari’s treatment of Michelangelo, they hailed Titian as divine on account of having produced paintings that appear “more like things done by the Angels in heaven than by the hand of a mortal man.”97 The

synthesis as artistic ideal

Carracci later argued for Titian’s supremacy over both of his central Italian rivals, Michelangelo and Raphael.98 Furthermore, their defense of Veronese echoes the lofty sentiments El Greco reserved for Tintoretto as “an artist second to none.” They expose Vasari’s bias and his having paid little attention to Veronese simply because of the geographical borders within which he was working: “This Paolo Veronese, whom I met and whose beautiful works I have seen, was worthy of writing an entire volume of his praises, being that his paintings show that he was second to no other painter; yet this ignorant [Vasari] passes over him in four lines just because he was not Florentine.”99 Even more telling of the similarities shared between El Greco and the Carracci are the passages indicating staggered disbelief in Vasari’s high regard for Battista Franco. At one point the Carracci accuse Vasari of having been bribed to acclaim such an unworthy painter.100 Although Federico Zuccaro and the Carracci drafted their respective annotations sometime after El Greco’s departure to Spain, these magrinalia prove that the young Cretan was not alone in his sentiments. He was as self-conscious about his place in the tradition of Italian art as these other artists were, and so their writings share much in common. The vitriolic responses to Vasari expressed separately by El Greco and the Carracci are so similar, in fact, that one of the few things that sets them apart is that the former come from the pen of a foreigner, so his outcries were not motivated by a desire to defend the artistic lineage of his ancestors.

In the end, El Greco’s theory of art must have been forged by his early career, when he was most engaged in exploring the form and function of religious images and the best style suited to move their viewers. Though this is not the place to cease long-waged debates concerning the impact of theory and criticism on the working practice of sixteenthcentury artists, it is difficult in light of the present discussion to substantiate Harold Wethey’s claim that El Greco did not knowingly put theory into practice.101 He very much did conceive of theoretical speculation on the visual arts and the actual making of paintings to be joint pursuits in achieving perfection by merging the best stylistic qualities that painting had yet provided. The portrait busts of Titian, Michelangelo, Giulio Clovio, and Raphael that appear in the Minneapolis Cleansing of the Temple give concrete expression to an underlying trait that El Greco followed throughout his time in Venice and Rome. Perhaps most important is the notion that the very ideas behind this method of artistic production were also picked up from outside sources. This time it was contemporary writers who left their marks on El Greco’s paintings, not just artists. His quest for his own art to embody the formulaic canon of Pino’s “god of painting” sets him apart from the portrayal of him as an outsider that colors much of the scholarship on the artist. By applying his critical opinions on the visual arts to his practice as a painter in Italy, El Greco revealed how firmly, and perhaps even surprisingly, entrenched he was in his adopted artistic culture.

95

chapter four

The Theatrics of the Counter-Reformation Narrative

El Greco’s penchant for compositional repetition shaped his production of two narrative subjects that appear prominently early in his career. His first two versions of the Cleansing of the Temple (see figs. 52 and 53) served as the basis for no less than six editions that all repeat the same basic structure and format.1 He also painted three similar editions of Christ Healing the Blind, probably completing the first near the end of his stay in Venice and the other two by the early 1570s in Rome (see figs. 54–56). Together these five paintings constitute the most ambitious and dynamic compositions of El Greco’s Italian phase. We see in

Detail of figure 53

them a repertoire of figures, motifs, spatial effects, and chromatic nuances that are largely underdeveloped or conspicuously absent from his earlier devotional panels. However, these paintings signal more than just the rapid stylistic advancements of an ambitious young master hoping to ascend to the ranks of the artistic elite. They represent a new category of images that the former Cretan icon painter conceived while working in Italy. As narratives they provide key material from which to examine the form and function of this genre in the context of contemporary concerns over devotional imagery.

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

Each of these works exhibits El Greco’s use of a painted history to meet Tridentine demands for the didactic utility of sacred art: “by means of the histories of the mysteries of our Redemption . . . the people are instructed, and confirmed in (the habit of) remembering . . . the articles of faith.”2 In order to meet this goal of instructing the faithful in sacred history, El Greco selected two subjects that embodied the church’s self-conscious and often militant attitudes regarding reform and the tenets of the true faith. The episode of Christ expelling the vendors and money changers from the Temple in Jerusalem was not commonly painted as an independent subject before the mid-sixteenth century. In fact, El Greco appears to be one of the first painters to realize the subject’s relevance to the prevailing Catholic stance against Protestant upheaval.3 By the time he arrived in Venice, Popes Paul IV and Pius IV had used the subject on medals commemorating their consecutive papacies (1555–59 and 1559–65, respectively). Pope Gregory XIII would use it again shortly thereafter for his own (1572–85). This theme potently symbolized the newly combative church eradicating corrupt impurities that had come under attack since the second decade of the century.4 The subject of Christ Healing the Blind, one of Christ’s most celebrated miracles, had similarly scant pictorial precedence before El Greco embarked on his own painted trio. Despite their prominence in his early body of work, these paintings have received relatively little attention with regard to his place within this historical climate beyond a few suggestions of the subject’s reinforcement of Catholic attitudes of spiritual renewal.5 But their sudden appearance in El Greco’s corpus is a measure of how the environment in which he

98

worked informed his practice. A sixteenth-century viewer may have comprehended the subject as a theological metaphor rife with Counter-Reformation connotations more easily than we do today. An examination of these two sets of narrative paintings must work around a dearth of information on how and why El Greco might have made them—no contracts, scant information on possible patrons, not a single preparatory study, and very little about the works’ provenance. Though larger than most of his other devotional panels previously examined, they were still modest in scale, which means that he likely intended them for private use. They may have accompanied devotional texts supplying referential commentary on the significance of the stories they narrate. One tract of particular relevance to both subjects is Angelico Buonriccio’s Le pie, et christiane parafrasi sopra l’Evangelio di San Matteo, et di San Giovanni, published twice in Venice, in 1568 and 1569— around the same time El Greco completed the first versions of both narratives. Buonriccio’s New Testament excursus emphasized a number of stories from Matthew’s and John’s accounts of Christ’s life that El Greco may very well have consulted when devising his scenes. One of the most prominent recounts Christ driving the money changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem, which received its most detailed treatment in Matthew 21:12–17. Significantly, this passage also mentions that Christ healed individuals afflicted with blindness at this same time.6 This interweaving of Christ’s purification of the Temple and his healing of the blind may have pushed El Greco to forge thematic and symbolic ties between these two subjects, even if he did not produce his paintings as pendants. The exposition of the Gospels found in

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

Buonriccio’s book thus provided the impetus for the creation of an important cluster of theologically charged paintings by a young, foreign-born artist whose response to the religious tenor of his age has never been clearly elucidated. El Greco’s development of religious narratives in the late 1560s and 1570s marked a new entry in his artistic repertoire. This chapter uses these paintings to explore how his construction of such narratives as a type embodies another facet of his status as a painter of religious images during this period of heightened sensitivity to the role, function, and devotional impact of sacred works of art. The compositional techniques model components of religious and liturgical theater, which El Greco absorbed through artistic sources.7 We see in these works the artist’s concerns for the pictorial dramatization of religious narratives by way of the visual rhetoric of gestures and the integration of figures into a scenographic background intended to correspond to the viewer’s visual experience of the scene. By thus exploring the artistic features of his painted histories, we see how El Greco understood the religious narrative as a new form of artful icon.

The Religious Istoria Both subjects challenged El Greco to translate text into image without the guidance of artistic precedence. In so doing, he implemented a more daring and more complex setting than most anything he had yet attempted. He may have adapted his Cleansing of the Temple composition from drawings by Michelangelo.8 El Greco situated the event in what looks like the court of a Renaissance palace, with a screen of figures occupying a section of terraced steps in the front of the scenographic

space. Behind them we see an archway, flanked by sculptures of Minerva and Apollo set atop a cornice in the Washington, DC, painting (fig. 52) and by polished Corinthian columns in the Minneapolis version (fig. 53). This opening gives way to a contemporary cityscape consisting of buildings inspired by the urban environment of sixteenthcentury Venice—a setting not unlike other largescale paintings from around that time. The earliest versions of this subject stand out in El Greco’s corpus as the compositions in which he most emphatically exhibited the human body enacting a dramatic event—a characteristic enhanced by the stagelike space against which they perform. They conform to the category of history painting (or istoria) that Leon Battista Alberti called a painter’s most important undertaking.9 Since Alberti’s fifteenth-century treatise On Painting did not appear in the Italian vernacular until the 1547 edition by Lodovico Domenichi, his text played an integral role in the development of the religious narrative much later than when it was first written. We see its effects on the development of increasingly theatrical religious narratives by Tintoretto and other Venetians around midcentury.10 The fact that Alberti’s treatise was still relatively novel at the time El Greco arrived in the city in 1567—it was even reprinted twice in Venice in 1568—means that the young painter likely consulted it when embarking on his self-guided tutorial of Italian art. Painters in the second half of the sixteenth century were charged with the responsibility of following textual sources in order to ensure obedient and nondigressive attention to accuracy, lest their works get censored like Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Gilio da Fabriano’s Dialogo nel quale

99

Figure 52 El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), Christ Cleansing the Temple, before 1570. Samuel H. Kress Collection 1957.14.4. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

100

Figure 53 El Greco, Cleansing of the Temple, ca. 1570. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The William Hood Dunwoody Fund.

101

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

si ragiona degli errori e degli abusi de’ pittori circa l’istorie (1564) famously invoked St. Gregory the Great’s justification for religious art to serve as the istoria of the ignorant. This mixing of Alberti’s regulations for painted histories and the Gregorian designation of images as didactic displays of sacred stories posited images and textual descriptions in direct relationship with each other. Gilio ultimately declared that painters are just as responsible for conveying truth as are writers of history.11 After describing some of the many errors committed by painters in his own day, he admonished artists for not being letterati (scholars); had they not been ignorant then they would not have fallen into such transgressions of historical and religious accuracy.12 In the end, Gilio’s words classified the painter of sacred histories as “a translator, one who brings the istoria from one language to another, from pen to paintbrush, from writing to painting.”13 El Greco embraced his role as a translator of text to image and took cues for his manner of portrayal from literary treatments of Christ cleansing the temple that he must have trusted to be sufficiently accurate. In particular, the mood of his composition matches Buonriccio’s lengthy “paraphrase” of the event described in Matthew 21:12–17. This explanatory passage emphasizes the scene’s unrestrained drama even more forcefully than the original Gospel account itself. Buonriccio alerts the reader most especially to Christ’s extreme anger (“all full of rage and fury over the indignity of the thing [seen]”) upon entering the temple and seeing merchants and money changers desecrating the sacred ground by practicing secular trades. Announcing, “My house is a house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves,” Christ brandished a whip and proceeded to wreak havoc by

102

“overturn[ing] the money changers’ tables, throw[ing] their coins to the ground, and trash[ing] the places where people sold doves and other animals for sacrifice.” Buonriccio’s description of the same scene recounted in John 2:13–16 focuses on how Christ’s rage, “inflamed by the ardor of the spirit and by the zeal of his father’s honor,” frightened the crowd with the force of an armed brigade in a way that was unbecoming of a man who was by nature sweet, kind, and gentle.14 El Greco’s painted reenactments of this scene translate Buonriccio’s gripping literary treatment into visual form while maintaining its dramatic intensity. Matching the standard of painterly drama set out by his Venetian and Roman peers, both compositions fill the stately confines of the Temple court with crowds of figures whose palpable energy and fury surpass in visual force the other more static compositions El Greco had designed up to that time. He placed Christ in the center with a knot of cords clenched in his hand at the moment before he uncoils his tightly wound body to strike the offending vendors.15 This catalyzes a tumultuous wave of movement radiating outward as those closest to the path of Christ’s whip react by wheeling backward and by covering their faces. While El Greco’s emphasis on Christ’s forceful action parallels the histrionic display of gestural rhetoric employed in theatrical performances, the artist found the most useful and most direct compositional strategies in Alberti’s treatise. For example, Alberti identified gesture as one of the primary ways for artists to convey the actions of a story as directly and clearly as possible. When describing the second-century Meleager relief as a consummate example of the properly composed istoria, he advised artists that “all the members

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

should fulfill their function according to the action performed, in such a way that not even the smallest limb fails to play its appropriate part.”16 El Greco paid similar attention to these effects when composing his scene. The Cleansing of the Temple composition displays figures with poses carefully designed to reflect their states of mind, with some reacting to the movements of Christ’s whip and others more calmly appraising the turmoil around them. Though the total number of figures exceeds the “nine or ten” that Alberti deemed sufficient for portraying a story, it is in fact this sort of variety of gestures exhibited by the protagonists within one scene that makes an istoria most visually pleasing. Indeed, Alberti’s advice to painters reads as if he had El Greco’s work in mind: A picture in which the attitudes and movements of the bodies differ very much among themselves is most pleasing of all. So let there be some visible full-face, with their hands turned upward and fingers raised, and resting on one foot; others should have their faces turned away, their arms by their sides, and feet together, and each one of them should have his own particular flexions and movements. Others should be seated, or resting on bended knee, or almost lying down. If suitable, let some be naked, and let others stand around, who are half-way between the two, part clothed and part naked.17

This preference for pictorial variety necessitated a multiplicity not just of gestures but of types of figures as well. Alberti found that “a picture was richly varied if it contained a properly arranged mixture of old men, youths, boys, matrons, maidens, children, domestic animals, dogs, horses, sheep, buildings and provinces.”18 El Greco cer-

tainly valued this kind of variety when populating his setting with figures representing a range of ages, genders, and class types, as well as the panoply of objects and animals that accompany this crowd in the Temple.19 Of course, a pleasurable variety ensures that a story is conveyed as effectively as a painted picture allows. An istoria is visually captivating when it scatters the eye around the painted scene. For Alberti, such a composition triggers an emotional identification between the viewers and the painted characters. In his words, it “will move spectators when the men painted in the picture outwardly demonstrate their own feelings as clearly as possible. Nature provides . . . that we mourn with the mourners, laugh with those who laugh, and grieve with the grief-stricken. Yet these feelings are known from movements of the body.”20 The painter of histories, therefore, must be aware of the physiognomic potential of the human body, for one’s movements are outward manifestations of the soul’s disposition. In order to properly convey a figure’s state of mind, an artist has to show the visible signs of an emotional condition through the framework of the body itself and do so by accentuating emotions that effect exaggerated histrionics and dramatic physical gestures to heighten the picture’s visual impact.21 Alberti’s text highlights the same emotions that El Greco emphasizes above all else in his Cleansing of the Temple: “But in those who are angry, their passions aflame with ire, face and eyes will become swollen and red, and the movements of all their limbs are violent and agitated according to the fury of their wrath.”22 In other words, Alberti’s treatise provided guidance for El Greco’s use of a pictorial medium to express the elements of the story that

103

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

Buonriccio’s text emphasizes most: Christ’s raging anger upon seeing the activities taking place in the Temple court and the fear stricken in those whom he admonishes. Consequently, El Greco followed one facet of the role of art as prescribed by the Council of Trent, which advises artists to address the viewer’s emotions.23 Even Gilio, despite all of his emphasis on limiting painters’ artistic freedom so that they obey the authority of textual precedence, recognized the importance of expressing accurately and appropriately the passions of figures through bodily gestures. These were qualities that he especially revered in works by Michelangelo and Raphael, both of whom El Greco greatly admired.24 Taking these cues, El Greco painted a composition

that confidently and effectively conveys the emotional impact of Christ’s purification of the Temple’s holy ground. The end result, of course, is a set of pictures that at the same time expresses the contemporary attitudes of the church by adopting a mood reflecting the militant efforts at reform in response to Protestant charges of corruption. El Greco’s compositions of Christ Healing the Blind (figs. 54–56) relied on the visible display of dramatic actions in a way that established more complex connections to Buonriccio’s text than what we see with the Cleansing of the Temple paintings. Since Buonriccio’s book lacks woodcuts of the numerous episodes involving the healing of persons afflicted with blindness, El Greco provided

Figure 54 El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1570. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden. Photo: bpk, Berlin / Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany / Hans-Peter Klut / Art Resource, New York.

104

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

the sole visual aid to help the viewer fix the lessons in his mind with maximum impact. In so devising compositions showing Christ healing blindness, which El Greco first painted around the same time as his earliest version of the Cleansing of the Temple, the painter similarly confronted a subject that had scant artistic representation but was described in all four of the Gospels. His pictures best match the account of this episode offered in John 9:1–41, when Christ encounters a blind beggar in a street just outside of the Temple in Jerusalem—the same setting as the subject previously described. In all three paintings El Greco collapsed various episodes into one composition, which requires an understanding of the entire story in order to read the composition properly. These figures’ postures emphasize the roles played by sight and blindness. El Greco positioned Christ to the left of center, holding the arm of a figure squatting on his knee. Christ reciprocates this figure’s upward gaze not by looking but by touching as he smears the man’s eyes with a paste formed by mixing his saliva with dirt. He then instructs him to wash in the nearby pool of Siloam. Immediately upon doing so, the formerly sightless man realizes his newfound ability to see (John 9:1–7). To the left of this pair is a group acting out the next verses in John’s account. The boy’s neighbors question whether or not he is the same person they were accustomed to seeing begging in the street. He insists that he is indeed who he claims to be but that Christ healed him in the manner described above (John 9:8–12). It is presumably the same semiclothed figure, now excitedly exhibiting his newly acquired visual acuity, who faces this motley group of figures in El Greco’s New York and Parma versions of this narrative (figs. 55 and 56). This man gestures to identify a distant sight to prove

to the doubters in front of him that he has attained the ability to see (John 9:25). On the right, separated from the other protagonists by the chasm of the picture’s intrusive one-point perspective, disapproving Pharisees rebuke Christ’s violation of the Sabbath by having performed a miracle on a day set aside for rest (John 9:13–17). By stumbling awkwardly with eyes closed or staring blankly, and with arms outstretched to feel around for obstacles, this figure exhibits the effects of an apparent physical blindness. The man turned backward in the right foreground of the New York and Parma paintings gestures toward Christ and the blind man but turns away so as not to acknowledge the miracle taking place before him.25 These postures serve as dramatic bodily manifestations of what Christ would later regard as these people’s spiritual blindness and consequent denial of the significance of this miracle: “Some Pharisees who were with him . . . asked, ‘What? Are we blind too?’ Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains’” (John 9:40–41). Like the Cleansing of the Temple , El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind paintings also demonstrate how thoroughly the young painter took to heart Alberti’s suggestions on how to compose an istoria to emphasize the figures’ dramatic postures as manifestations of their psychological states. To do so, El Greco borrowed key figures from compositions by Raphael, who is also known to have paid careful attention to Alberti’s call for a variety of figural types and gestures in order to convey a narrative with utmost clarity.26 El Greco adapted the two primary protagonists in Christ Healing the Blind from those found in an earlier illustration of a miraculous healing—Raphael’s Peter Healing the Lame tapestry design. El Greco likely borrowed

105

Figure 55 El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1570. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1978 (1978.416). Photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

106

Figure 56 El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1572. Galleria Nazionale, Parma. Photo: George Tatge, 2000 / Alinari / Art Resource, New York.

107

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

these figures from a print after Battista Franco (published by Domenico Vito) that features Peter on the right and the squatting paralytic on the left, the reverse of what we see in the completed tapestry, as in El Greco’s painting (fig. 57). The Pharisee in the foreground with his arms outstretched in front of him derives from the main actor in another of Raphael’s Sistine tapestries, Blinding of Elymas. El Greco may have known this work either through an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi or from Giulio Clovio’s adaptation of the tapestry scene in an illuminated miniature that preserves the orientation of the figures that we see in El Greco’s composition, though rotated approximately forty-five degrees (fig. 58). El Greco cleverly marshaled the most prominent figures in two of Raphael’s most celebrated narrative compositions because their themes directly link to his own portrayal of the act of healing. The shared postures of the corresponding figures establish thematic continuities between El

Greco’s and Raphael’s scenes. Both emphasize physical impairments that prevent the inflicted from recognizing the truth of Christ’s divinity. Peter Healing the Lame, which illustrates events told in Acts 3:1–10, shows Peter and John encountering a crippled beggar on their way to the Temple. Instead of giving the man the money that he wants, Peter heals him with the power of the Holy Spirit by taking his right hand and announcing, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!” Immediately upon hearing these words the man stands up, walks, and praises God for granting him this miracle. The Blinding of Elymas narrates an episode told in Acts 13:4–12, when Saul, Barnabas, and John encounter the sorcerer Elymas while on a preaching campaign in Cyprus. Elymas attempts to intervene and prevent the proconsul Sergius Paulus from letting them deliver their sermons. Saul announces, “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all

Figure 57 Battista Franco, after Raphael, Peter Healing the Lame, ca. 1554–61. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

108

Figure 58 Giulio Clovio, Blinding of Elymas, ca. 1528–34. Louvre, Paris. Photo: Thierry Le Mage / Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, New York.

109

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun.” The uttering of these words enacts their inherent performativity, striking Elymas blind and reducing him to groping about in desperate search for someone to help guide him. Only then does the proconsul believe in the truth of the Lord’s teachings. El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind equates the spiritual blindness of the Pharisee(s) with that of the sorcerer Elymas rendered blind by the Holy Spirit through Saul. In both subjects it is the inability to witness divine truth that risks eternal damnation, and this impairment is made manifest by an awkward, stumbling posture.27

Light and the Autonomy of Perspective The subject of Christ Healing the Blind presented narrative challenges that El Greco had not faced when composing his Cleansing of the Temple. The theme of the latter concerns the purification of the church in a way that symbolizes its unified mission in combating Protestant upheaval. The former, however, focuses on the individual’s own faith and therefore necessitated a more directly engaging composition that would empower the spectator to experience the miracle portrayed when using these images for devotional contemplation. We have seen that blindness signified not just a physical condition but also an external manifestation of a spiritual impairment to witnessing divine Christian truth. The theological basis for this use of ocular vision to stand for the reception of spiritual knowledge must have been widely understood. It stems from the prophecy of Isaiah 35:5, which

110

announced, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.” The early medieval theologian Isidore of Seville interpreted this prophecy by saying, “We are called from the darkness into the light.” Christ’s installation of sight acts as a metaphor for the reception of divine grace.28 Therefore, it is not the occluding blindness that becomes the primary theme of El Greco’s paintings but rather that which Christ installed to replace it: the physical sensation of vision and its symbolic enactment of spiritual seeing. El Greco thus recasts this mundane sensory experience as a spiritually charged ecstatic one that derives from the eye’s reception of light. As with his Cleansing of the Temple composition, El Greco responded most directly to Buonriccio’s treatment of the narrative of Christ’s miracle. Buonriccio’s paraphrase of the episode of Christ healing two blind men in Matthew 20:27–34 equates the act of vision with divine illumination: “Lord,” they responded, “we want you, the true light that illuminates the world, to open and illuminate these eyes of ours, so that even while seeing the beauty of these created things, we shall admire and praise the wisdom and power of their creator.” At that time Jesus, having mercy on these poor souls and wanting to show that the divine virtue hidden inside him operated by way of his holy body like a living instrument joined to him, touched their eyes, and suddenly they started to see clearly. Henceforth, spiritually illuminated and grateful for such a remarkable benefit, they, together with the others, set forth to follow Christ, not just physically with their feet, but also in imitation of his virtues.29

Even more emphatic is Buonriccio’s long discussion of similar references to blindness as a metaphor for a lack of spiritual vision from John 9:1–41—the

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

passages that El Greco’s paintings most closely follow. Buonriccio opens the episode by saying, “Jesus Christ, being the true light that illuminates all the men of this world . . . having left the Temple, performed such a work, such a miracle in which he openly demonstrated, having left the Jews (who closed their eyes so as not to see the light) in darkness, that he had to turn to the people and illuminate them.”30 He then proceeds to explain the rest of John’s account of this event that appears in El Greco’s composition, including the Pharisees’ reproach to Christ’s violation of the Sabbath, their inability to realize the marvel transpiring before them, and the summoning of the blind boy’s parents to testify that he was indeed born blind and that Christ had in fact performed a miracle. At the end the author delivers a pointed admonition to those who, like the Pharisees, do not recognize God as the true light, a narrative that again uses physical blindness to illustrate spiritual damnation.31 Buonriccio’s text provided El Greco with a description of physical sight and blindness crafted around the concept of spiritual illumination. It describes Christ’s miracle as an act that restored the eye’s ability to receive light and, by extension, the soul’s capacity to understand divine truth. By working in concert with this text, El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind paintings visually reinforce a theme that carries profound Counter-Reformation significance while enhancing their didactic and inspirational qualities. When contemplating such passages, the beholder would have had his or her supplications addressed through El Greco’s paintings because of the works’ use of one-point perspective to broadcast the visual experience of Christ’s illumination. How did El Greco translate textual references to seeing into a visual excursus that provides a visually

stimulating inducement to prayer? What did El Greco do to craft a visual manifestation of Buonriccio’s text that emphasizes the optical and spiritual characteristics of sight and light? We cannot understand the fullest extent of El Greco’s conception of light and vision as visual metaphors without a thorough examination of the pictures’ formal construction. A deep perspectival view of a receding city street lined on one side with buildings reminiscent of ancient and Renaissance Rome splits the main sets of figures in all three Christ Healing the Blind paintings. Indeed, the background scenography is every bit as theatrical in character as the setting in the Cleansing of the Temple, due in large part to the prominence of the background’s illusionistic depth. In fact, scholars have suggested that El Greco found a direct visual source for the rendering of a three-dimensional urban space in the designs for the three types of theater sets first published in Sebastiano Serlio’s Il secondo libro di prospettiva (1545), which El Greco owned.32 Serlio’s three scenographic illustrations provided a convenient visual codification of the tragic, comic, and satiric types described in Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture. For this reason it is not surprising that Serlio’s illustrations influenced and were voraciously copied by artists and stage designers alike.33 His visual and textual descriptions of the scena tragica in particular (fig. 59), with its elegant palace façades, stately porticoes, monumental archways adorned by statuary, even small Roman temples—in other words, “no building lacking nobility”—provided an architectural setting suitable for the actions of “lords, dukes, great princes, and even kings.”34 El Greco evidently found the setting suggested by Serlio for the works of kings to be equally

111

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

appropriate for staging the miracles of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the influence of Serlio’s theatrical mock-up of a receding city street rendered in perspective is unmistakable. It is difficult to look at El Greco’s pictures and not find in them the manifestations of Serlio’s statement on the virtues of scenography for providing a seemingly limitless copia of visual material.35 Despite their small size, El Greco’s perspectival backgrounds lend their compositions a theatrical dynamism that sets the stage for the heroic depiction of one of Christ’s most celebrated miracles. The viewer could thus imagine the costumed, gesticulating protagonists performing before a Renaissance street scene. The conceptualization of these backgrounds entailed a concerted manipulation of theatrical

stagecraft to convey meaning in ways that the protagonists alone could not. To emphasize vision as the central focus of Christ Healing the Blind, the perspective background takes on the task of elevating the act of sight as subject and symbol through a variety of formal effects. El Greco exploited Buonriccio’s emphasis on light as the medium through which Christ performs his miracle first by casting Jesus in his metaphorical role as light of the world and then by orchestrating a composition whose background duplicates the visual effects of the healing. The precise episode from the Gospel of John that this painting illustrates reminds the viewer of Christ’s status as light personified: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). Nothing is seen

Figure 59 Scena tragica, from Sebastiano Serlio, Il secondo libro di perspettiva (Paris: Iehan Barbé, 1545), 69r. Photo: author.

112

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

without this medium of light, and thus Christ is the cause of the act of vision. The Parma Christ Healing the Blind most emphatically dramatizes light as the medium of seeing. El Greco fashioned for Christ a luminous halo that grants him the status as the scene’s radiant agent. The painter then integrated the principal figures into the backdrop so that their gestures appear formally bonded to the perspective construction itself. Christ’s right arm, the one extending forward to touch the blind man’s unseeing eyes, aligns almost exactly along the orthogonals marked in the pavement that define the three-dimensional plunge of the urban street receding behind them. Consequently, the primary actions of these protagonists cannot be separated from the formal apparatus that brings them into view. This binds the narrative performance of gestures to the visual effects of the perspective itself. Gilio da Fabriano had already recognized the importance of mastering such illusionistic effects as perspective for the proper construction of a religious narrative.36 Similarly, El Greco’s delineation of fictive space ratifies his paintings’ authority as visual texts. Yet there is more to the artist’s use of perspective in this narrative and compositional context. Perspective is unquestionably the composition’s most recognizable feature. It gets deeper and more conspicuously articulated with each successive version, starting out as a shallow stage in the Dresden Christ Healing the Blind (see fig. 54), deepening in the New York version through the insertion of additional buildings (see fig. 55), until finally reaching its most heightened intensification in the Parma variant’s exaggerated reduction of figures in space (see fig. 56).37 In fact, its conspicuousness in the Parma painting most especially

allows us to identify this work as the very picture mentioned in the Farnese inventories from 1644 and 1653 that describe “a painting on canvas with a walnut frame picturing Christ illuminating a boy blind from birth in a perspective fatta a portico with Apostles and other figures, by an accomplished old hand.”38 Though these inventories are not exactly contemporary with when El Greco painted the picture, they still provide the only known account of how his viewers articulated what they saw in it. As the picture’s defining feature for the earlymodern viewer, perspective functions as an autonomous and meaningful characteristic within the domain of the composition, not as the spatial ordering agent of the composition. The artist’s fastidious attention to the background indicates the importance and significance that he envisioned it to carry. The background enhances the viewer’s devotional engagement with the subject and exploits the metaphorical potential for such perspective constructions to carry meanings pertinent to the proper religious impact that these pictures were intended to exert. By incorporating a conspicuous, even exaggerated perspective, El Greco allows the theme of sight emphasized in Buonriccio’s account to affect the viewer directly through the act of witnessing the work’s illusion of spatial regression. The result is a scene that delivers light (embodied by Christ) toward the eyes of the individuals who pray before it.

The Theater of Vision El Greco’s main achievement in Christ Healing the Blind was fashioning an architectural backdrop that plays an active part in the overall theme of vision. It

113

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

is primarily for the visual effect on the viewer that the buildings appear angled back into depth, acting as geometric solids in a clearly ordered threedimensional space. Since El Greco paid careful attention to the formal construction of his narrative istoria, he was surely familiar with Alberti’s writings on perspective and optics in On Painting. The pattern of pavement lines in the streets of all three paintings recalls the costruzione legittima that Alberti devised as a method for showing spatial depth on a flat plane through the rendering of a checkered floor viewed from an oblique angle. Alberti’s method calls for an array of lines extending into space that appear to merge together, eventually meeting at a vanishing point on the distant horizon.39 This geometrically rational formula for the delineation of fictive space implements basic optical theories.40 Its use in El Greco’s paintings exemplifies what perspective, as a codification of optical vision, aims to accomplish, operating as a carrier of meaning in pictures whose subject is the act of sight itself. The sudden appearance and skillful mastery of complex linear perspective schemes in El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind paintings coincided with a period of heightened sensitivity to the optical properties of three-dimensional space after Serlio’s publication of Il secondo libro di prospettiva (1545). True to Erwin Panofsky’s treatment of “perspective as symbolic form,” El Greco engaged a culturally relative moment in the evocation of artificial three-dimensionality when it is treated as a graphic demonstration of the mechanical process of vision.41 Daniele Barbaro, who had published an expanded edition of his 1556 translation and commentary on Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture in 1567, the same year El Greco arrived in

114

Venice, issued his own perspective treatise, La pratica della perspettiva, in 1568 and republished it the following year. There is no doubt that El Greco knew Barbaro’s work. Not only does La pratica della perspettiva appear in the 1621 inventory of the painter’s library, but he also annotated a volume of Barbaro’s 1556 edition of Vitruvius.42 The lessons found in these treatments of perspective directly informed the meanings that El Greco intended for the backgrounds of Christ Healing the Blind. The foundation for such analyses is scaenographia, the art of creating theater scenes described by Vitruvius. The Greek and Roman theater was governed by strict rules of geometry and had to comply with the exigencies of threedimensional vision by positioning the recessing contours of buildings along a street so that they corresponded to the audience’s point of view at a fixed position and distance from the stage.43 Barbaro, for his part, advised painters of scenographic stage sets to accommodate the viewer’s line of vision “so that the things drawn do not appear to distort, and so that they serve the site and natural look of things. They will easily do this by placing the eye [viewing point] beyond the plane of the scene and considering the distance of the spectators and size of the buildings.”44 This required that a theater scene correspond to the real viewing experience of the audience in order to create the illusion of a seamless continuity between real and fictive space.45 For El Greco this meant that the background becomes emphatically theatrical in terms of Renaissance concepts of dramatic space, addressing the beholder of the painting and not just the protagonists within it.46 He tailored his composition in a way that makes Christ the source of

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

illumination for both the blind boy and for anyone who gazes upon this scene. While Christ reaches out to touch the eyes of the blind, he also steps forward out of the depths of the perspective background. El Greco oriented this perspective from the point of view of the outside viewer so that it elicits an autonomous experiential phenomenon. By drawing the orthogonal lines outward and without interruption, El Greco enables the viewer to enter into a vicarious engagement with the restored act of vision portrayed within the narrative and to comprehend the illusion of depth as the occurrence of sight itself.47 Serlio’s theater designs later appeared in Barbaro’s text as well, and so it is essential to consider the form in which El Greco had access to this image of the scena tragica and the way this form of access informed his understanding of what he saw. Serlio and Barbaro disagreed about the proper medium of the perspectival stage space and thus employed distinct theoretical frameworks that affected El Greco’s application of the scena tragica and the roles he intended it to carry for his thematization of sight. Serlio followed Vitruvius’s lead in making scenography a part of the architectural design and the construction of theaters as built elements.48 The theater diagrams that accompany Serlio’s text depicting the infrastructure of the scenographic area include a fixed horizon line with the vanishing point positioned behind the scaenae frons (fig. 60). This space accommodates a threedimensional backdrop of built structures arranged on a sloping portion of the floor, whose incline begins in front of the stage wall and ends at the point at which it rises up to meet the horizon line—much like the structural scenography designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi for Andrea

Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (fig. 61). Even though the angled reduction of these buildings’ forms have been exaggerated to fit their shallow space, the perspective here is less a matter of feigned artificial illusion than a natural consequence of viewing geometric solids arranged in a three-dimensional environment.49 Serlio admitted that this type of stage setting required different perspective rules for its construction than one in which actors performed in front of a two-dimensional illusion of spatial depth rendered on a flat screen.50 Consequently, Serlio’s premise that perspectival scenographies be constructed as architectural models might not have seemed terribly relevant to a painter interested in providing a suitable backdrop for his Christ Healing the Blind paintings. Barbaro, by contrast, directly addressed painters who, “otherwise celebrated and famous, let themselves be guided by a simple practice, and on this matter [of perspective] do not demonstrate in their works anything worthy of much praise.”51 In fact, the components of Barbaro’s theater differed from Serlio’s precisely in the medium of scenographic devices. Instead of three-dimensional relief dioramas designed and constructed by builders, Barbaro advocated the employment of periaktoi. These prismatic contraptions, on whose flat faces appear scenes painted to match different types of theatrical performances, are rotated to display out of the openings in the stage’s scaene frons the appropriate scenography for the kind of play performed.52 Barbaro’s and Serlio’s contrasting applications of scaenographia and the different contextual frameworks informing their respective conceptions of “perspective” provide distinct lenses for reading the true significance of El Greco’s adaptation of the

115

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

scena tragica design. The key is recognizing the gradual withdrawal of perspective from architecture into the domain of a two-dimensional graphic medium. Barbaro had already removed scaenographia from Vitruvius’s trio of architectural draftsmanship by replacing it with sciagraphia (profile), thus liberating scenography from the concerns of architects only.53 El Greco responded to

this alteration with a comment scribbled in his copy of Barbaro’s 1556 edition. While questioning this alternate reading of Vitruvius’s text, El Greco nonetheless supported its basic premise: “Skiagraphia is a Greek word composed of two parts, shadow and painting; replacing ‘ski’ with ‘sken’ would render it ‘painting of scenes’ or ‘scenography.’ It is well understood, however, that scenes are

Figure 60 Theater cross-section, from Sebastiano Serlio, Il secondo libro di perspettiva (Paris: Iehan Barbé, 1545), 64r (from the 1618 edition, 43v). Photo: author.

116

Figure 61 Stage scenographies by Vincenzo Scamozzi in Andrea Palladio, Teatro Olimpico, ca. 1585. Vicenza. Photo: author.

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

not normally painted but instead are built in perspective. Nevertheless, to me both words carry the same meaning: in Greek design is called lama skiasma, taken from shadow. This shadow in itself cannot lack perspective, and so there is no doubt that it means perspective just the same.”54 El Greco thus discredited Serlio’s handling of the scena tragica solely as an architectural model. While El Greco acknowledges that stage scenery is normally constructed in three dimensions, he relies on etymology to argue that scenography’s proper domain is in the art of painting. Since in Greek skiagraphia and skenographia are synonymous, both signifying the graphic representation of three-dimensional space, it follows that scenographic perspective must be expressed in two dimensions and articulated through the painting of light and shadows.55 We have seen that El Greco’s use of dramatic gesture and a meticulously drafted scenography show that he conceived his paintings much like scenes that adorn a theater. It is not surprising that El Greco thoroughly incorporated these principles into his paintings, where they would carry Barbaro’s themes of vision. Serlio used the scena tragica illustrations to show the types of structures necessary for the construction of stage sets viewed in perspective.56 In this case the effect of one-point perspective was merely a consequence of seeing. Barbaro, however, borrowed the image because it provided an illusion, a demonstration of vision based on the physiological properties of optics. To him, perspective was not an outcome of threedimensional sight but rather a description of how vision occurs. Liberated from more practical architectural concerns, the images of theater sets that Barbaro borrowed from Serlio’s text were meant

to represent two-dimensional renderings of three-dimensional space via the use of artificial, or linear, perspective. El Greco’s use of a rigorous perspective setting was thus predicated on the belief that a carefully rendered optical illusion of depth signified the physical act of seeing, pertinent to his depiction of Christ catalyzing vision. El Greco used Barbaro’s scenographic diagram of the scena tragica in his Christ Healing the Blind paintings because it makes explicit the implicit function of perspective to represent graphically the rules of optical sensation in which it is so deeply rooted. Modern critics, of course, bristle at the suggestion that one-point perspective actualizes a normative, or veridical, form of ocular experience.57 Michael Baxandall pointed out that because of stereoscopic vision, two-dimensional renditions of three dimensions will not look entirely real. Instead they conform primarily to conceptual expectations of three-dimensional space that allow such scenes to be at best suggestive of real-world depth even if they do not fully replicate it.58 El Greco exploited these expectations by deliberately crafting a perspective scheme that operates on inherent assumptions about its own optical veracity, while also tailoring it in such a way that makes it stand out and be noticed as an indicator of the optical processes of sight. Importantly, while modern skepticism of perspective “truth” was also a characteristic of many early-modern cultural attitudes toward vision,59 this anxiety about perspective’s claim to empirical objectivity was not universally held. The term perspective derives from the Latin perspectiva, which signifies the entire science of optics.60 Linear perspective as practiced by painters is as fundamentally artificial as it is real—it is the artist’s application of optical theory to

117

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

meet fictive ends, implementing the principles of three-dimensional viewing to create an illusion of perspectival depth on a two-dimensional surface.61 Theorists in the last third of the sixteenth century were especially emphatic about treating perspective and its subdiscipline, scenography, as derivatives of the science of sight, restating in explicit terms that its roots lay in visual experience. Barbaro reduced perspective to the basic principles of optical science, saying, at the end of his proemio to La pratica della perspettiva, that “visual rays ought to be extended from a single fixed point and should obey natural lines, so that from any given point certain images of the buildings in the painted scenes are seen in accordance with truth. In order that those things that are drawn in straight lines in the front planes appear to be in relief, it is certain that this entire practice is an answer consisting of three single terms and the understanding of them: eye, ray, and distance.”62 Barbaro further defines perspective as an operation based on seeing: “Perspective has no other intention than to draw on planes or panels subjected to it all forms, or rather visible figures, and to make them appear in the way their positioning, location, and distance requires. Being as such there is no doubt (which we do not have) [that one must] consider the eye that sees, the manner in which it sees, the thing that it sees, the distance from which it sees, and the plane on which Perspective has to draw the things to be seen.”63 Barbaro followed this passage with a detailed physiognomic description of the eye in order to remind readers that artists invented artificial perspective to be an application of the principles observable through the act of vision as an anatomical procedure. Nowhere is the connection between perspective and optics more explicitly stated than in Jacopo da

118

Vignola’s Le due regole della prospettiva pratica (1583).64 Though first compiled between 1535 and 1545, Egnatio Danti only published the treatise after expanding the text and adding woodcut illustrations to complement Vignola’s original engravings.65 El Greco owned this volume as well.66 More important, Vignola’s treatise underscores the optical premises of perspective already evident in Barbaro’s text.67 The first fifty pages comprise a comprehensive summa of classical and medieval optics and Euclidian geometry, borrowing extensively from previous editions published by Danti.68 Vignola first defined perspective as “that which represents to us on any surface by way of disegno all things just as they appear in our view.”69 Danti later reinforced this assertion of the optical basis of artificial perspective through a long survey of the eye’s anatomy, with a cross-section diagram identifying at its center the crystalline humor, which he believed carried the organ’s sensate power.70 Three components of the visual process that Barbaro, Vignola, and Danti attach to the theory of one-point perspective lie at the heart of the sensory act of vision that El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind paintings aim to duplicate. The convergence of these three properties has a direct bearing on the way in which perspective is rendered. The first concerns optical directionality. Modern observers sometimes characterize the force that perspective exerts on the eye as a “pull” or “tug” that draws the spectator’s gaze into an illusion of spatial depth.71 But this directional assumption subverts its true manner of operation, according to El Greco’s understanding. His perspectives are predicated upon a model of vision in which the viewed object progresses outward from within the fictive space. Daniele Barbaro reasoned that debates over these

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

intromission and extramission theories were inconsequential because the eye, as the apex of the visual pyramid, represents the point at which visual rays converge, regardless of whether they originate or terminate there.72 However, Vignola’s treatise and Danti’s commentary on it were much less ambivalent about this issue. Danti devoted an extensive passage to a point-by-point refutation of extramission vision. He concluded that “our vision is not owed in any part to rays that exit our eye. Rather, as Aristotle puts it, vision is a passion, and as all passions reside in the patient, it follows that vision occurs inside the eye, not outside of it. And therefore Aristotle says that the specie or immagine of the viewed thing reaches out into the air so much that it arrives inside of our eye to imprint itself in the crystalline humor.”73 Danti’s indiscriminate use of the terms specie, immagine, and simulacra here and elsewhere, as well as Barbaro’s references to the same terms in passages concerning the activation of visual sensation, reflects a basic familiarity with medieval visual theories. Roger Bacon’s thirteenth-century treatise, De multiplicatione specierum, codified Robert Grosseteste’s original idea that the sense of sight occurs through the invasion of membranous “species” into the eye. These species are self-generated replicas that material bodies continuously emit into the surrounding atmosphere. It is the eye’s interception of these replicas, which carry essential data concerning the physical characteristics of their objects, that triggers visual sensation and cognition. Barbaro, moreover, recognized the necessity of spatial distance between the eye and the visible object in order to provide a luminous medium of air that facilitates the “multiplication of species.”74 Second, there is of course a particular order by which the succession of species fills the space

between eye and object that determines how the presence of those species is to be implied in El Greco’s paintings. For Grosseteste and Bacon, species behave according to the inherent Euclidian geometry of vision, conveyed along rectilinear rays extending outward in every direction.75 Though he discredited Euclid’s assertion that rays travel out of the eye, Danti fully endorsed the geometric framework underlying this system. For example, he confirmed Vignola’s statement that the linea radiale is a straight line that carries the image of things to the eye to be imprinted there.76 Third, these sensible species could not be material in nature because those generated by any significantly sized object would be unable to enter the eye’s aperture, thus rendering the mother object invisible. Instead, it had long been recognized that light was a necessary component of vision, so it followed that these species would have to be luminous in order to be sensible. The premise of this idea is found in Aristotle, who in De Anima describes light as obligatory for the perception of color. Vision cannot occur unless light activates the air as a transparent medium through which the species can be transmitted.77 Consequently, it was common in some cinquecento perspective theories to make species synonymous with visual rays.78 Barbaro stated that “by way of light the figures and the sizes, colors, and forms of things are seen” and “vision does not receive any object without light.”79 He later devoted another lengthy passage of his treatise to the treatment of light.80 Vignola frequently referred to the luminous nature of rays, including in his discussion of the visual cone, saying that “the luminous body sends luminous rays from each of its points, which go in search of all the points of those things illuminated by them.”81

119

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

The convergence of these three components of the mechanical process of seeing as defined by Barbaro, Vignola, and Danti fundamentally shaped El Greco’s understanding of vision. The delineation of linear rays extending outward from a point in space, neatly articulated in Christ Healing the Blind by the approaching plane of pavement lines originating at a point on the horizon, simply illustrates the correct mechanical process of optical sensation. Instead of the eye casting vision into the scene along the paths of the orthogonal lines, testing the limits of the illusion of three-dimensional space, sight happens in the passive tense, via the reception of light traveling in a linear path from an illuminating source in space. The belief that the eye is literally illuminated through the reception of light merges scientific and theological justifications for El Greco’s visual exploitation of Christ’s role as the luminous agent of seeing. The reception of light reflected from corporeal bodies toward the viewer’s gaze corresponds as well to the preferred theological model for divine illumination.82 It was not a particularly long jump for theologians to appeal to optical theory, given the tradition of invoking the natural phenomenon of light as a powerful symbol for the illusory nature of the divine. Pseudo-Dionysius’s fifth-century De coelesti hierarchia became the most influential guide for the philosophy of light in the medieval and Renaissance period. It likens the process of divine illumination to the radiance of light emanating from God, with Jesus acting out the role assigned to him in John 1:9 as “the Light of the world.” “He is truly and really Light itself,” says Pseudo-Dionysius’s text. “He is the cause of being and of seeing,” and “each procession of the Light spreads itself generously toward us.”83 The author

120

makes an explicit connection between the sense of sight and the active reception of grace, noting that “one could say that the powers of sight suggest their ability to gaze up directly toward the lights of God and, at the same time, to receive softly, clearly, without resistance but flexibility, purely and openly the enlightenments coming from the Deity, yet without emotion.”84 At the core of these ideas is St. Augustine’s postulation that visual sensation occurs in the soul. Since the eye and soul are inextricably linked by virtue of the former serving as a conduit to the latter, vision is not just a metaphor for spiritual seeing but the means by which to achieve it. The physical illumination engendered by the entrance of light into the eye thus also implies a spiritual illumination.85 It is the visualization of this process that becomes the true subject of El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind.

The Narrative Icon Narrative paintings rarely attracted the same type of attention as the miraculous portrait icons that worshippers continued to venerate during the time El Greco worked in Italy.86 Instead of the pictures themselves asserting a miraculous or performative power over their viewers, El Greco’s innate artistic ability allowed him to devise compositions that elicited the worshipper’s pious engagement—a power of artistry central to the notion of the artful icon. The intensity with which he devoted himself to orchestrating his visually compelling Cleansing of the Temple and Christ Healing the Blind paintings is symptomatic of a sustained exploration of how a narrative—normally utilized for the simple purpose of telling the events of story—could function in ways similar to a devotional icon.

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

Indeed, much has been made of the role of the narrative with respect to the form and function of religious images. Erwin Panofsky explained the concept of the Andachtsbild as a type of devotional image, defined in formal terms, that draws neither completely from the representational focus of the cult image nor from the scenic elaboration of a narrative, but rather that combines aspects of both. As a result, according to Panofsky, the compositional singularity of the Andachtsbild achieves a functional distinction from the imago and the istoria.87 Sixten Ringbom later exposed such a formulation as an oversimplified and misrepresentative privileging of form as a unique determinant of function. He opined instead that something that does not look like an iconic devotional image, such as a full-fledged narrative, can still function like one.88 Whereas Panofsky claimed that an Andachtsbild is a devotional image defined formally and with a correlative functional aim, Ringbom insisted that it is a formal category only, since devotional function can be achieved (or denied) by any image regardless of its outward appearance. However, Hans Belting has questioned whether a picture conveying a sequenced series of actions and events might prohibit the viewer’s ability to engage in a devotional dialogue with the figures that appear in it—whether a history painting, in other words, can attract the same contemplative response as the static representational focus of an icon.89 While Belting acknowledged that imago and istoria both allow for devotional engagement, he confusingly maintains a basic functional distinction between “icon” and “devotional image” based on formal differences. Besides introducing overlapping terminology without precise definitions, this formulation assumes that the introduction of

narrative elements, however subtle they might be, would be tantamount to sacrificing an image’s capacity to function as an icon. The incompatibility of the iconic and the narrative, according to David Freedberg (while striving to disabuse us of this claim), presupposes that “you cannot, after all, worship a narrative.”90 But we must ask, What prevents any image, even a narrative one, from acting as the portal to a prototype—in other words, from acting as the most basic form of icon? A narrative picture still carries a referential task, even if the prototype itself is embedded in the narrative story portrayed instead of being isolated as a single represented figure. Indeed, some prominent Renaissance artists experimented with compositions that aim to act duplicitously. Raphael and Michelangelo outfitted certain altarpieces with iconographic and compositional trappings necessary to ensure both narrative and iconic functions.91 Federico Zuccaro later achieved a similar merger of the iconic and narrative modes in his Encounter of Christ and Veronica.92 Furthermore, as Marcia Hall has argued, the development of religious narratives in the Counter-Reformation allowed for a new kind of religious engagement that quelled the temptation for images to be wrongly regarded as idols by removing the direct, static address characteristic of Byzantine icons.93 The representation of a narrative ensures the picture’s status as a mere artificial representation in accordance with the definition of the icon as the portal to a sacred prototype. El Greco would have found in his narrative compositions an opportunity to create persuasive stimulants to prayer, to exploit his rapidly developing powers and capabilities as an Italian artist to draw his viewers into devotional engagement by

121

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

way of the stylistic and compositional components of these new artful icons. The Council of Trent’s decree stated three essential things about religious imagery: a picture must accurately and appropriately convey sacred histories, must provide a model of proper conduct, and must move the spectator to cultivate piety. El Greco followed the mandate that religious pictures encourage the viewer to cultivate piety by devising a range of pictorial strategies to communicate a highly informed and nuanced account of the stories shown. Alberti’s guidelines for the construction of a painted istoria fit the Tridentine criteria for the proper role and function of religious images. Narrative images, after all, seek to engage the intellect and body, or, in Alberti’s words, to “charm the eyes and minds of the viewer.”94 El Greco’s ideas of the religious narrative, as observed in his earliest two examples of Cleansing of the Temple and his three Christ Healing the Blind paintings, ratify these Counter-Reformation dictates regarding the proper role and use of sacred images and at the same time further manifest his own ideas concerning the artistry of the devotional image. The compositional structures of El Greco’s narratives provide the worshipper with a clearly ordered visual transcription of a sacred story that would have inspired—even attracted—devotional attention. El Greco drew from a variety of sources and employed an array of pictorial devices to bring the images from something static and merely representational to something dramatic. His narratives take a theatrical approach to painting that emphasizes movement, drama, emotional impact, and a unified three-dimensional scene, all for the purpose of ensuring the worshipper’s own personal engagement with the scenes before him. For his Cleansing of the Temple El Greco devised a

122

composition that emphasized the emotional and physical drama of the scene outlined in Angelico Buonriccio’s descriptions of the event pictured. The figures’ gestures convey the passions of the soul, communicating to the viewer Christ’s anger upon seeing the holy sanctuary of the Temple defiled by corruption in such a way that the symbolic importance of the church’s purification could be most forcefully driven home. It was then up to the viewer to discern the metaphorical value of this subject at a time when the church was embroiled in a campaign to reassert its mission. In other words, it was optical reception of the artist’s work that stimulated the viewer’s mind. El Greco did something even more sophisticated in his Christ Healing the Blind compositions. In these paintings the persuasiveness of gestures based on the visual codifications devised by Raphael are joined to an assertive deployment of perspective to provide a convincing illusion and confirmation of the miraculous act of vision. Instead of exhibiting a story unfolding across the picture plane to be read like a line of text, El Greco oriented the composition so that its primary iconographic feature progresses outward from the depths of the depicted space from back to front. The point of doing so, of course, was to better and more directly engage the spectator, casting the beholder not as a passive viewer but as an active participant. The installation of sight in a man born blind to the physical world thus became a graspable and powerful metaphor for the elusive concept of divine illumination. As Christ allowed light to penetrate the vacant darkness of the eye, he also conveyed spiritual light to activate the dormant soul. Given these analogies between physical and spiritual vision, the devotional experience of El Greco’s three

the theatrics of the counter-reformation narrative

Christ Healing the Blind paintings must have been profound—and this effect was entirely created by the artist through his implementation of a dramatic demonstration of fictive depth. By converging these artistic, scientific, and theological treatments of vision, the perspective illusions act as ciphers for

the power of sight that Christ activates in these pictures. They provide a visual signifier for spiritual seeing by illustrating the process of bodily vision, drawing the viewer’s participation into the miraculous event portrayed by conveying in both eye and soul the light of God’s grace.

123

chapter five

The Artist as Antiquarian in Christian Rome

El Greco left Venice in 1570 to go to Rome and study works by Italian artists that he knew only through prints and other copies. Giulio Clovio’s 1570 letter introducing El Greco to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese as a young “disciple” of Titian is one of the few known benchmarks for the artist’s activities in the Eternal City. Clovio asked that the new arrival be granted a room in the Farnese Palace until he was able to plant roots and find suitable housing elsewhere—a courtesy that the cardinal had extended to Titian in the mid-1540s. The surviving documentation for this period of El Greco’s career substantiates only the brevity of his

Detail of figure 63

stay at the Farnese Palace. By 1572 he was dismissed for an infraction of an unknown nature. At the risk of overanalyzing a situation without sufficient evidence to do so, we might postulate that El Greco’s artistic proclivities made a poor fit since Cardinal Farnese commissioned little in the early 1570s that was appropriate for an artist of El Greco’s training and experience—very few easel paintings, only a limited number of altarpieces, and, at the time, no major church decorations besides fresco cycles not suitable for El Greco’s expertise.1 As short as El Greco’s stay in the Farnese Palace was, the cultural milieu that he experienced there

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

had a formative influence on his practice as a painter. It offered another arena in which he could study the styles of celebrated sixteenth-century artists. His efforts to combine the characteristic qualities of Michelangelo and Titian would presumably have placed El Greco’s works in good company with the large number of Venetian paintings and Roman drawings in the Farnese collection. He also would have enjoyed frequent appearances by Jacopo da Bertoja, Girolamo Muziano, Pirro Ligorio, Federico Zuccaro, and others who worked for the cardinal.2 Indeed, El Greco’s diligent study after the great masters evidently ingratiated him to the members of the Farnese circle, even if his stay did not lead to the prestigious commissions he had hoped to obtain from the cardinal himself. El Greco’s chief supporter was Fulvio Orsini, Cardinal Farnese’s primary art advisor and also his broker, librarian, and resident antiquarian. Above all, Orsini was a noted humanist who himself led an entourage of learned scholars.3 Orsini’s collection included two known paintings “by the hand of a Greek student of Titian” now attributed to El Greco. The first was the View of Mount Sinai panel commonly dated to the artist’s Venetian period, which he probably carried with him to Rome (see fig. 32 in chapter 2).4 Its unusual style and subject probably appealed to humanist scholars who took great interest in Greek culture.5 Orsini also owned paintings that El Greco produced while in Rome. Prominent among them is El Greco’s Portrait of Giulio Clovio, undoubtedly the painter’s most accomplished early portrait (fig. 62).6 This and at least two other paintings from El Greco’s Roman period eventually found their way into the Farnese collection after Orsini’s death, having been mentioned in a 1644 inventory of the

126

family possessions. The Parma Christ Healing the Blind (see fig. 56 in chapter 4) came into the ownership of the Farnese family at an unknown date. Both the 1644 and the 1653 inventories list it as an anonymous work (despite the signature) and mistakenly describe the picture’s support as canvas.7 The inventory also lists a quadretto featuring “a young man blowing on a lit ember to light a candle, by the hand of the Greek.”8 This describes—and attributes—El Greco’s mysterious allegory Boy Blowing an Ember, also known simply as Soplón (see fig. 72). This motley assortment of a portrait, religious narrative, and allegory that El Greco painted within this span of about two years in the early 1570s in Rome represents the most uncharacteristically diverse output for any period of his career. The works also share a distinct and meaningful connection to the place of their making, bearing evidence of what the artistic and cultural environment of El Greco’s adopted city, and that of the Farnese court most especially, contributed to his conception of his role as a maker of religious images. This chapter explores how these works and the intellectual activities associated with their manufacture reveal veiled religious motivations behind El Greco’s Roman body of work, even for subjects whose themes are not overtly religious. The Portrait of Giulio Clovio commemorates his closest friend in Rome and the role he had acquired as a religious painter in the Farnese court. The Parma version of Christ Healing the Blind bears witness to the artist’s study of ancient Rome, thereby aligning with the cardinal’s own fascination with using the ancient city’s archaeological remains as powerful symbols for Christian triumph. Boy Blowing an Ember is tailored to fit the unique cultural circumstances of the

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

cardinal’s closest circle of antiquarians and intellectuals. In particular it makes manifest a form of ekphrastic exegesis that sought to link the otherwise secular interests in antique culture with the religious spirit of the day for an audience who delighted in drawing such complex analogies. All three of these paintings point to the various intellectual, artistic, and humanist pursuits that added to El Greco’s reappraisal of the artful icon as he was working in an environment uniquely affected by the Christian ideology and spiritual self-awareness characteristic of sixteenth-century Rome.

The Artist as Intellectual A number of entries in the inventory of Fulvio Orsini’s collection indicate paintings presumably by El Greco that are now lost. But they are important nonetheless for documenting the artist’s primary activities as a portraitist—a designation that befits the comments in Giulio Clovio’s introductory letter highlighting a self-portrait that astonished all the painters of Rome. Orsini owned a portrait of an anonymous “young man in a red cap” and four roundels featuring the portraits of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, his brother Ranuccio (Cardinal Sant’Angelo), Cardinal Bessarion, and Pope Marcellus.9 All but Cardinal Farnese himself were dead by the time El Greco came to Rome in 1570, so the painter must have copied preexisting portraits.10 Though none of these survive, other portraits believed to date from El Greco’s Italian period shed further light on the formal characteristics of the artist’s work as a portraitist while he was immersed in the Farnese court. Cardinal Charles de Guise had his portrait painted after his arrival in Rome in 1572; the painting, now at the Kunsthaus in

Zurich, receives tentative endorsement by a number of scholars as a painting by El Greco, though the attribution and dating remain inconclusive.11 At some point in the 1570s, possibly after his dismissal from the Farnese court, El Greco may have painted a portrait of the Knight of Malta, Vincenzo Anastagi (now part of the Frick Collection in New York), who in 1575 became sergente maggiore of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.12 Both of these portraits reveal the workings of an artist who, consistent with El Greco’s artistic output, demonstrated advanced skill in rendering the convincing physical and psychological presence of these works’ respective sitters. Of the relatively small number of surviving portraits attributed to El Greco during the years he spent in Italy, that of Giulio Clovio (fig. 62) is undoubtedly the most accomplished. It is also the only one whose attribution cannot be called into question. Though we cannot verify Clovio’s claim in his letter to Alessandro Farnese that El Greco may have been a formal protégé of Titian, this portrait betrays the lasting impression that the elder Venetian master had on El Greco’s work. The open window with a view onto a turbulent landscape of trees bending from the force of an unseen gust is a compositional feature that is periodically seen in works by Venetian artists in the mid-sixteenth century, one which El Greco may have picked up before arriving in Rome.13 This feature, along with the portrait’s brushwork and handling of color, signal El Greco’s ambition to fashion himself as a Venetian-trained painter working in the footsteps of the city’s greatest and most celebrated masters. The Farnese collection included large numbers of paintings by Titian and other Venetians, and El Greco therefore could have used this portrait

127

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

composition to align himself more closely with the prodigious talents he had studied during his time in Venice. However, El Greco’s Portrait of Giulio Clovio also shows the signs of an artist responding as much to his Roman present as to his Venetian past. Both the subject and the way El Greco has portrayed the sitter shed light on the artist’s own role in the place where he worked. The portrait honors one of El Greco’s closest friends and colleagues, the man who was responsible for introducing him to Cardinal Farnese and to the possibilities for artistic growth

and professional development that he hoped would accompany his stay in Rome. Clovio turns to glance outward while seated beside the open window. He points to two illustrated pages of a small prayer book in front of him.14 This book, the Offices of the Madonna (also known as the Farnese Hours) is held open to reveal the Creation of the Sun and Moon and the Holy Family on folios 59v and 60r, respectively. Clovio completed this lavishly illuminated book in 1546, and the cardinal valued it so much that he never allowed it to leave his residence. This detail proves that El Greco painted the portrait while

Figure 62 El Greco, Portrait of Giulio Clovio, ca. 1572. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, New York.

128

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

staying at the Farnese Palace, since he could not have seen these pages anywhere else but in person.15 However, I argue that this compositional element also provides insight into this portrait’s significance with respect to El Greco’s ambitions as an artist. As a painter who self-identified with the making of religious images, El Greco likely admired the role that Giulio Clovio had established for himself while working in the Farnese court—charged with the responsibility of furnishing some of the cardinal’s most intimate and beloved devotional imagery. By showing the artist and the pride he takes in his work, El Greco’s portrait valorizes the artful icon as an artistic product celebrated for its own craft that also fulfills the role required of religious images to attract pious attention. In order to further extend the present analysis of this painting as a paragon for El Greco’s self-­ identification as an artist, we might consider how this work, unequivocally by El Greco’s hand, fits into a larger group of artist portraits that are more tentatively attributed to him. The so-called Portrait of an Architect, probably dating to 1575 or 1576, is purported by many to show an unidentified architect as an erudite gentleman (fig. 63). Some have somewhat convincingly offered Giovanni della Porta and Andrea Palladio as possible identifications.16 It must be acknowledged that there is nothing that conclusively identifies the sitter’s occupation. But this might in fact be intentional. Like Clovio, the figure is pictured in a three-quarters bust with a black robe and white collar. As a result, it is his social status, not his professional trade, that the portrait most ably conveys to the viewer. Exhibiting a confident pose and graceful elegance, this figure’s comportment conforms with prevailing formulas for exhibiting persons of an

elevated and intellectual stature, even if only generically. He looks outward and gestures toward the viewer while his left hand rests on a bound book—a tangible sign of his intellectual prowess. El Greco’s Portrait of a Sculptor shows another man, whom some believe to be Pompeo Leoni, the court sculptor to Philip II in Spain, in the act of chiseling a marble bust of the Spanish monarch (fig. 64). While in this case we have an image of an artist at work, this painting also shows the figure in the pose and outfit of a refined, learned man.17 With the exception of the obvious allusions to the sitter’s occupation, which were lacking in the so-called Portrait of an Architect, the similarities to the previous portraits—the sitter’s dress, his outward acknowledgment of the outside viewer, and so on—reveal the works’ shared efforts to communicate something beyond an identifiable likeness.

Figure 63 El Greco, Portrait of an Architect, ca. 1570–75. National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. Photo © SMK Photo.

129

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

As a group, all three portraits of artists, which correspond to the three major fields of artistic production, celebrate their respective sitters’ upward social standing achieved through their professional accomplishments. It is this position, the artist as erudite gentleman, to which El Greco surely aspired as he developed his career in Italy, especially when immersed in the noble and learned confines of Farnese Rome. El Greco’s likely realization of his connection to the social identity of these gentlemen is consistent with other works that make claims to his status as a painter by projecting his authorial presence onto them. This is especially pertinent when considering the artist’s role as a painter of predominantly religious works of art. We remember that El Greco had expressed a self-referential identification with the status of the primary protagonist who appeared in his earliest surviving artist portrait, St. Luke

Painting the Virgin and Child (see fig. 4 in chapter 1). Of the three portraits discussed above, that of Giulio Clovio provides an especially fertile comparison with this icon because they both make explicit references to the role and status of the representational arts and their subject’s mastery of a medium with which El Greco was most familiar. It therefore might not be coincidental that Clovio’s pose in the portrait echoes that of St. Luke: the Evangelist’s right hand applies a stroke of pigment to the nearly completed icon of Mary and Christ, while Clovio uses the same hand to point to the open pages of his own artistic creation. Despite presenting his finished work removed from the conditions of its production, El Greco’s friend still embodies the authority of the maker of artful icons by miming the pose of his profession’s founding father, the same model after which El Greco chose to fashion his own identity not even a decade before. Furthermore, El Greco expresses his affiliation with Clovio’s elevated position by signing his portrait “ΔΟΜΉΝΙΚΟC ΘΕΟΤΟΚΌΠΟΥΛΟC ΚΡΉC ΕΠΟΊΕΙ” (Domenikos Theotokopoulos of Crete made it) in a relatively high place immediately behind the sitter. This signature serves to overlay El Greco’s accomplishment in making the picture onto the status of the subject, as if only an equally capable artist could capture the refined identity of a court painter such as Clovio. In other words, just as in the earlier icon of St. Luke, the signature draws parallels between El Greco’s own creative act and that of the man pictured. While this representation of Giulio Clovio offers a statement on the intellectual role of the artist, then the juxtaposition of the open window above the open pages of Clovio’s illuminated prayer book evinces El Greco’s understanding of the Figure 64 El Greco, Portrait of a Sculptor, ca. 1576. Private collection. Photo: Mr. Patrick Goetelen.

130

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

hierarchical relationship between reality and artifice. The metaphor of the window as a paradigm for artistic representation had been commonplace since Leon Battista Alberti had codified the artistic goal of pictorial naturalism by urging painters to treat the picture plane as a transparent frame through which to gaze at a distant view. But in El Greco’s portrait, Clovio casts his glance away from the window as he confidently points to the work in front of him, drawing our attention to it as well. This suggests that it is the domain of the artist’s created work that provides the proper stimulus to devotion, not the outside world that painters are ostensibly required to imitate. It is in this guise as a maker of religious images that we see a celebration of artistic agency and the intellectual status of the artist. Giulio Clovio thus represents an aspirational model of a figure responsible for creating works that appealed to a learned and culturally literate Roman audience.

Antiquarianism Though El Greco’s tenure at the Farnese court proved to be short-lived, his relationship with such erudite individuals would have required him to tailor his religious images to the expectations of learned intellectuals. This role of the artist as an intellectual capable of constructing sophisticated religious metaphors is central to the unique formal characteristics visible in Clovio’s Offices of the Madonna. This book is such a prominent part of El Greco’s portrait that it effectively embodies the kinds of objects an artist in his position would have been expected to fashion for the cardinal and his circle. Though the strong Michelangelesque qualities of the book’s images are probably its most

well-known trait, they have tended to overshadow its otherwise overtly classicizing flavor. Consequently, we must take care to appreciate what this illuminated prayer book might say about prevailing attitudes regarding the role of ancient culture within Rome’s identity as the seat of Christianity. The illustrations often forge typological connections between standard New Testament scenes and classical legends. The resulting continuity with the pagan past underscores the longevity of the Christian religion. (Consider, for example, the pairing of the Annunciation to the shepherds with Augustus’s vision of the Sibyl.18) These associations with the classical past get made through style as well. Each image is surrounded by an ornate border consisting of antique motifs and groteschi of the sort that had to have been formed out of direct knowledge of Roman examples. The classicizing character of this illuminated prayer book was so strong that even Giorgio Vasari ranked it as one of Rome’s greatest treasures among other bona fide ancient artifacts.19 It was kept in Cardinal Farnese’s studiolo in the company of a range of curiosities that included ancient coins, medallions, and other small artifacts honoring the glory of Rome’s ancient imperial history.20 The Farnese family held a deep fascination for Rome’s antique culture, and the cardinal saw especially to maintaining the prominence of the city’s history within the intellectual offerings of his milieu. His family’s collection of antiquities was the preeminent of its kind and has been thoroughly studied.21 He also kept the antiquarian scholar Onofrio Panvinio on his payroll in order to fund archaeological expeditions that brought further appreciation for and intellectual understanding of Rome’s past.22 The interest in classical

131

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

and pre-Christian antiquity continued unabated throughout the remainder of the cardinal’s life, even after supposedly renewed concerns over his own piety following the closing of the Council of Trent.23 Working in the studiolo culture of Cardinal Farnese’s circle surely required artists, much like the cardinal himself, to be capable of giving visual expression to the authority of the church in a way that also honored its direct lineage from ancient Rome—to maintain, in other words, the relevance of the city’s long history. After all, El Greco’s career in Rome preceded by only a matter of years Cesare Baronio’s investigations (archaeological and otherwise) into the earliest foundations and practices of the Christian church. The stock Roman ruins that serve as the setting for El Greco’s Adoration of the Magi (see fig. 3 in the introduction) proves that even before arriving in the city he was not unaware of how the remains of ancient Rome could be made relevant for and integrated into religious narratives. But no painting by El Greco better exhibits how the artist’s intellectual environment in Rome shaped his practice of painting than the Parma version of Christ Healing the Blind (see fig. 56 in chapter 4), whose thematization of vision has already been discussed in the previous chapter. While this painting was not documented in the Farnese collection until the seventeenth century, key features of its composition prove that El Greco could not have painted it without having been immersed in the unique environment offered by the Farnese court. First of all, two figures in contemporary dress represent members of the cardinal’s family. The figure on the extreme left is the young Alessandro Farnese, nephew of the cardinal of the same name, who would be the future Duke of Parma.24 El Greco

132

would have had the opportunity to meet this younger Alessandro when he passed through Rome at the end of 1571 to pay his respects to the pope.25 The bearded face of another figure to the left of the nude man whose back is turned toward the viewer resembles known portraits of Cardinal Farnese by Titian and others. It is as if the cardinal has been inserted into the scene to act as a witness to the pictured New Testament event.26 However, it is the distinct antiquarian character of this painting’s cast of characters and their narrative setting that reveals most strongly the impact of the Farnesian and Roman influence on the impressionable young El Greco at a time when he was eager to appease his closest and most exalted observers. Scholars have consistently undervalued the impact of Rome’s pre-Christian past on El Greco’s compositional repertoire—as demonstrated by Harold Wethey’s claim that the artist was “so thoroughly imbued with the traditions of Venetian painting that the art of antiquity touched him surprisingly little.”27 On the contrary, El Greco was keenly aware of Rome’s ancient heritage, and so it ought not be surprising that we see in this painting a number of clear references to identifiable ancient works of sculpture and architecture. The incongruous stumbling, bearded man among the figures on the left is adapted from the Farnese Hercules. This ancient statue was uncovered at the Baths of Caracalla in 1545, restored at Cardinal Farnese’s request, and eventually placed in the courtyard of his family’s palace, where El Greco and scores of other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists studied its influential form.28 Additionally, the unmistakable writhing head of the main figure from the Laocoön appears among the same group of figures in both the New York and

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

Parma versions. This revered sculptural group foreshadows the more focused attention it would receive in El Greco’s late and more liberally adapted painting of this subject from around 1610 to 1614 (now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC).29 Its insertion into El Greco’s early narrative reveals meaningful intentions, especially when we consider the place of its manufacture and the audience who would have viewed the painting. This sculpture experienced unprecedented attention when it was unearthed in 1506 and especially after its installation in the courtyard of the Belvedere Palace.30 Its frequent incorporation into other artists’ works in all media must have guided El Greco, even though his adaptation does not carry any clear narrative role within the subject it adorns.31 His awareness of the statue stems from the fact that it had become a cultural touchstone in a number of ways. The sculpture’s celebrated evocation of bodily and psychological agony became a model for Counter-Reformation depictions of martyrs.32 Gilio da Fabriano recommended that painters follow the example of the Laocoön when making images that required an emotionally moving depiction of suffering.33 El Greco might also have been aware of Michelangelo’s enthusiastic appraisal of the sculpture’s unmatched artistic worth; Michelangelo deemed it “a single miracle of art in which we should grasp the divine genius of the craftsman rather than try to make an imitation of it.”34 Given the depth of El Greco’s own concerns with artistic value, to say nothing of his complex relationship with Michelangelo, he may very well have realized the potential for others to recognize this reference to the Laocoön as but another example of the artistic virtue with which he composed his own works.

Beyond these references to ancient statuary unearthed in the Renaissance, we can best gauge the depth of El Greco’s engagement with ancient Rome through an examination of his proclivities for drafting ancient architecture, which dominates this last Christ Healing the Blind composition more than any other work. Three examples of Roman structures in particular—a round temple, an adaptation of the Arch of Constantine, and the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian—show El Greco’s understanding of the authority of ancient Rome and its utility for symbolizing the church’s ideological connections between its own past and present. All three will be discussed in turn. In both the Parma and New York variants of Christ Healing the Blind, El Greco positions the protagonists in front of a curving row of smooth columns topped with Corinthian capitals that form the support of what is unmistakably a round temple.35 The precise model for this structure is not easy to identify because numerous examples of such circular peripteral buildings existed in and around the city of Rome, including the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum, the Temple of Ercole Vincitore at the Forum Boarium, the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, and the Temple of Portumnus near Ostia. This is not to say, however, that El Greco would have needed to study these buildings in person in order to include them in his paintings. Numerous prints and drawings of all these structures circulated throughout the sixteenth century. Sketches by Giuliano da Sangallo of the Temple of Ercole Vincitore at the Forum Boarium and the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli (fig. 65), as well as a drawing of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli by Maerten van Heemskerck (fig. 66), share features in common with El Greco’s portrayal. They each depict the respective temples supported

133

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

by smooth columns, exactly as they appear in El Greco’s painting—even though the monuments themselves have fluted columns. Other elements visible only in the Parma Christ Healing the Blind reveal the extent to which El Greco’s interest in classical antiquity was inextricably linked to that of his contemporaries. The artist replaced the more modern structure appearing next to the round temple in the New York variant with another building composed of a large central arch flanked by two smaller arched openings seen in sharp foreshortening. These features immediately identify the structure as the Arch of Constantine (fig. 67). But again, rather than relying on his own observations, El Greco used an existing image that supplied a ready-made view of the arch that he desired to insert into the perspective construction.36

An ink and wash sketch at the Uffizi in Florence by Giovanni Antonio Dosio depicts the Arch of Constantine from exactly the same oblique angle as in El Greco’s painting, as seen when looking from the Coliseum toward the Palatine Hill (fig. 68).37 Dosio was one of the most prolific draftsmen of antiquities in the sixteenth century; he and El Greco were active contemporaries in Rome for most of the duration of the latter’s stay there in the 1570s. Dosio’s cache of drawings after ancient and modern monuments dates from 1556 to 1576—the year in which he left Rome for Florence and around the time of El Greco’s own departure to Spain.38 The Uffizi drawing of the Arch of Constantine formed part of Dosio’s Libro delle antichità, a compilation of more than one hundred sketches of monuments, architectural fragments, sculptures, altars, and

Figure 65 Giuliano da Sangallo, sketch of the Temple of the Sibyl from Libro di disegni, Codice Barberiniano Latino 4424, fol. 42r. Photo © 2014 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Reproduced by permission of Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.

134

Figure 66 Maerten van Heemskerck, Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, ca. 1532–36, from the Roman Sketchbook II, inv. 79 D 2 A, fol. 21. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Photo: bpk, Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Volker-H. Schneider / Art Resource, New York.

Figure 67 El Greco, detail from Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1572. Galleria Nazionale, Parma. Photo: George Tatge, 2000 / Alinari / Art Resource, New York.

Figure 68 Giovanni Antonio Dosio, Arch of Constantine, mid-sixteenth century. N. 2531 A, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Scala / Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, New York.

135

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

other objects executed between the years 1560 and 1565, just prior to El Greco’s arrival in Italy.39 Today dispersed among the collections of the Uffizi in Florence, the Staatlichen Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, and the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, this notebook included a number of views of the Arch of Constantine. But only the one that El Greco evidently saw depicts the monument from the same point of view and with such an emphasis on its contemporary urban setting. This manner of portrayal in fact grants Dosio’s drawing a unique singularity. Typically, artists either sketched monuments from points of view that privileged inscriptions, sculptures, and other details of archaeological interest or offered meticulous, if hypothetical, reconstructions for those that were in a state of ruin. Dosio’s drawing of the Arch of Constantine instead shows the monument in an unreconstructed state as it looked at the time he observed it, which curiously prohibits a view of its most characteristic features. El Greco altered Dosio’s composition only slightly for adaptation to his painting by endowing it with an appropriate system of shading consistent with the rest of the structures in his picture. He also replaced the roundels above the two smaller arches with what appear to be windows, and he topped the entire structure with a third register that makes it look like the lower portion of a façade. Despite these changes, El Greco’s building without question derives from Dosio’s drawing, as the painter kept important identifying elements such as the pronounced cornices and the smooth columns with Corinthian capitals. He even included, by way of a conspicuous smudge, the tiny standing figure looking up at the arch that Dosio featured in his sketch. El Greco’s decision to incorporate this view

136

into his painted city street, with the arch hemmed on both sides by other structures instead of spanning a road, may also have come from Dosio’s depiction of the low structure attached to one side of the monument, something that most other drawings of the monument omit. Perhaps the most curious compositional feature of the Parma Christ Healing the Blind is the cluster of what appear to be semiruined vaults that replace the simple pedimented archway framing the terminus of the orthogonal perspective lines that we see in earlier versions of this subject (see fig. 67). This structure’s form contrasts with the other examples of classicizing buildings included in this scene. Instead of an edifice harmonizing the elegant arched colonnades and balconies flanking one side of the rapidly receding street, El Greco shows a latitudinal crosssection of a vaulted crossing, with the lateral axis ending abruptly on the right side with half of a clerestory window. Additionally, the strong contrasts between dark shadows and a yellowish glow on the surfaces that receive the most direct light from the unseen source conflicts with the uniform yet muted shading of the accompanying buildings, thus projecting the structure in higher relief. This structure represents the Baths of Diocletian, the largest and most lavish bath complex in the ancient world, built by its eponymous emperor in the early fourth century c.e. As with the other elements appearing in this painting, there are a number of graphic depictions of this building that testify to the broad range of sources that El Greco had at his disposal when designing his composition—despite the fact that he could have simply visited the site and sketched it himself. Harold Wethey identified a drawing at the Uffizi, featuring the Baths of Diocletian and also by Dosio, as a

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

possible source for El Greco’s painting. This view and others of Dosio’s drawings of ancient Roman monuments were later put into print by Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri in a joint project titled Urbis Romae aedificiorum (1569), a collated folio comprising a range of views of ancient Rome. (Dosio’s design is illustrated as figure 46 in Cavalieri’s book, with the title Pars alia earundum Diocletiani Imp. Thermaru[m] in esquilijs [fig. 69].) This image repeats the same characteristics identifiable in El Greco’s painting, including the perpendicular view down a vaulted hall, the crossing at the point at which the section is cut, and even the rectangular windows hanging from the ceiling at the point where the higher vaulting gives way to a series of shorter arches receding into depth. Yet another nearly identical view of the baths is found in Bernardo Gamucci’s Le antichità della città di Roma, a guidebook first published in Venice in 1565 and again with a slightly revised text in 1569 (fig. 70).40 These duplicates of the Baths of Diocletian beg the question of whether El Greco saw the drawings by Giovanni Antonio Dosio directly or if he instead saw them as reproduced in these printed sources. We have seen that El Greco had access to Dosio’s designs for the Arch of Constantine, either through direct contact with the master himself or from copies by other hands. However, for the baths, it is more likely that El Greco consulted printed images that may have been more widely available. There are some subtle yet revealing formal correspondences with the image in Gamucci’s book that differ from Cavalieri’s adaptation of Dosio’s sketch. El Greco’s structure appears to have a flat roof, belying the curved shape of the vault that supports it. This trait is best attributed to the artist’s overly faithful copying of the woodcut found in Gamucci’s Figure 69 Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri, Baths of Diocletian, from Urbis Romae aedificiorum illustrium quae supersunt reliquiae (Rome, 1569), plate 46. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

text. That illustration’s border truncates the upward slope of the vaults to leave the shape of the roof undefined. Additionally, El Greco’s chiaroscuro modeling matches the incised lines used to render the shadows in Gamucci’s view, while Dosio’s original drawing bears no discernable attempt to convey three-dimensional form in this way. Taken together, it is beyond doubt that the vaulted structure pictured in El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind now in Parma was directly influenced by the corresponding image in Bernardo Gamucci’s Le antichità della città di Roma.41 The fact that Gamucci’s book was published twice in Venice in the second half of the 1560s—and

Figure 70 After Giovanni Antonio Dosio, woodcut illustration of Baths of Diocletian, from Bernardo Gamucci, Le antichità della città di Roma (Venice: Giovanni Varisco e i Compagni, 1569), 114v. Photo: author.

137

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

thus was available to El Greco even before he arrived in Rome—renders it more likely that the artist consulted this illustration when first preparing this Christ Healing the Blind painting in Venice. Matching the source of El Greco’s rendering of the Baths of Diocletian to an illustrated guidebook allows us to identify one of the entries in El Greco’s inventory of books—another vast font of material that speaks to his deep interest in Italian material culture. Jorge Manuel’s 1621 inventory lists two entries that have long resisted precise identification: one noted as “Prospetibas y antiguedades de roma” and another volume listed simply as “Antiguedades de roma.”42 Though somewhat generic, these listings probably refer to the Italian Antichità di Roma, since he customarily translated the names of titles and authors into Castilian. The former, suggestive of a volume that includes illustrations drawn in perspective, identifies a pairing of Sebastiano Serlio’s second and third books on architecture, Il secondo libro di prospettiva and Il terzo libro nel qual si figurano, e descrivono le antiquita di Roma, both first published in Paris in 1545. While there are other titles to which the other entry, “Antiguedades de roma,” could have referred,43 it is certain, based on the visual evidence provided above, that in this case it was Bernardo Gamucci’s guidebook Le antichità della città di Roma.44 The inventory of El Greco’s library is indicative of not only the widespread popularity of antiquarian publications in the second half of the sixteenth century but also his own interest in incorporating elements of his surroundings in Rome into his paintings through the study of printed media. His collection of books consists of some of the most important texts then published on ancient Rome and thus exhibits how influential the antiquarian

138

culture was at that time.45 Besides Gamucci’s guidebook and Serlio’s treatise, the inventory lists a certain “Antonio labaco,” which surely refers to Antonio Labacco’s Libro appartenente a l’architettura nel qual si figurano alcune notabili antichità di Roma, published first in Rome in 1552, with many editions afterward, and republished later with a different typeface in Venice starting in 1567.46 It makes sense that the three volumes on ancient Rome that El Greco owned (Gamucci, Labacco, and Serlio) were among the only examples of the genre that contained illustrations.47 El Greco’s collection of these illustrated books guided his incorporation of temples, arches, and baths in Christ Healing the Blind to document a heightened engagement with ancient Rome, one facilitated by the cultural environment of his time and place.

Past, Present, and the Presence of the Past How do we reconcile El Greco’s interest in Rome’s ancient heritage with the religious themes of his paintings, especially at a time in which references to antiquity in Christian works of art could be cause for suspicion?48 There is no reason to believe that the antiquarian nature of Giulio Clovio’s Offices of the Madonna—a religious devotional book par excellence—made it any less effective as a means for eliciting pious devotion from its owner. This allows us to examine the degree to which the appearance of ancient Roman monuments in El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind paintings work in concert with their aims as devotional images. The decision to include such structures in one of his most symbolically charged Christian images bespeaks the ways in which one could value Rome’s heritage during this time of religious vigilance. The

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

distinctly Roman iconography of the Parma Christ Healing the Blind demonstrates El Greco’s recognition that the city’s ancient fabric could signify the church’s continuity with its early roots in a way that reinforces both the immediacy and timelessness of its evangelical authority. This ideological connection with the ancient past can be seen in parallel projects undertaken in the city around the time the painter lived there. Prominent among them was the work initiated by Pope Pius IV to restore the Lateran, one of the city’s original Constantinian basilicas, which established a direct link to a phase of the Roman Empire that saw the growth of the newly ratified Christian religion.49 El Greco’s associations with antiquarians allowed him to acquire a critical familiarity with the significance of the buildings and building types that he included in his paintings. Though it would be misleading to suggest that his interests were archaeological in nature, only after acquiring this knowledge could he have incorporated these ancient structures into a Christian istoria in a way that underlined the narrative setting of the story they helped to recount. El Greco’s inclusion of a round temple in the New York and Parma versions of Christ Healing the Blind reveals this understanding by serving as a formal allusion to the setting for John 9:1–22, in which Christ miraculously heals a boy born blind whom he encountered upon exiting the Temple in Jerusalem. The artist must have conceived architectural form as an index of function, since a round plan usually signified the building’s status as a religious sanctuary or shrine.50 The Baths of Diocletian make their appearance in reference to the same New Testament passage, where, after placing a mixture of spit and dust on the blind man’s eyes, Christ instructs him to wash

in the pool of Siloam. The act of washing parallels the physical encounter with the regenerative waters of baptism. Therefore, its appearance in El Greco’s depiction of Christ’s miraculous healing reinforces the overall theme of the painting as a symbol for the purification of the soul.51 In the Parma Christ Healing the Blind, the remains of the Baths of Diocletian, where the public performed the frequent social ritual of communal cleansing with water, serves as a typological, if exaggerated in scale, reference to what must have been a much more modest pool in John’s account of this event. In fact, El Greco might not have realized the potential for this image to function in this way had he not learned something about the structure and its unique architectural features. Gamucci’s 1569 edition of his guidebook marvels at the scale of the baths’ subterranean botte del Termine. This gigantic reservoir for water storage differed from the castellum aquae normally built for such complexes, which, according to Vitruvius, distributed water through a more modest network of pipes.52 Knowledge of the baths’ huge pool of water compelled El Greco to use it as a stand-in for the well featured in the narrative account of Christ’s healing the blind. However, the Baths of Diocletian do more than just establish typological references to the New Testament accounts of this event. El Greco has also shifted the setting of the story from biblical Jerusalem to contemporary Rome, thus christening the bath complex as a meaningful agent in the story of Christ’s miracle that appealed directly to viewers in the time and place in which he created the painting. In this way, his insertion of the Baths of Diocletian in a state of ruin might signal the destruction of paganism and the victory of

139

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

Christianity. Jutta Held has drawn similar meanings from its appearance in this painting because of the baths’ associations with an emperor notorious for his persecution of Christians.53 Yet a closer look at the state of the building at the time El Greco was in Rome reveals more nuanced meanings regarding spiritual renewal and grants the monument a more significant role within the overall theme of the painting that spans multiple points in time. The anachronistic inclusion of the Baths of Diocletian in a narrative to which it does not logically belong invites a consideration of recent reevaluations by Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood of the Renaissance sense of time. These scholars suggest that Renaissance audiences conceived of “plural temporalities” that resist modern notions of a fixed linear chronology stretching back into the past and forward into the future.54 The proper meaning of the remnants of ancient Rome in El Greco’s painting relies on this understanding that historical objects—in this case, ancient edifices—do not correspond to fixed chronological points. Instead, the fabric of time can be folded in limitless ways in order to make otherwise disparate events (and even their material relics) contiguous, establishing a duplicitous synchronicity with the past and present. Such an understanding of the inherent flexibility of time allows modern artifacts to materialize the past through the seamless substitution for an absent original. El Greco appears to have understood how this sort of temporal elasticity could be exploited to enhance the representation of the Baths of Diocletian in a way that resists the monument being embedded into one historical era. He did not just expand the geographic significance of this biblical setting by overlaying the plan of Jerusalem onto that of Rome but also

140

broadened the subject’s temporal references. He realigned points in time so that the event of Christ healing the blind occurs at once in the past and in the present because of the setting’s plural temporality signaled by the Baths of Diocletian. Indeed, such a notion of “epochal duality” was not entirely new. Jack Greenstein has shown that Andrea Mantegna used common classical references in Christian subjects to establish simultaneous references to the “narrated past” and the “authorial present.”55 But El Greco does so using specific, recognizable monuments, not generic signs of an ancient past. Moreover, it is essential to stress that the Baths of Diocletian’s “substitutional” power (to use Nagel and Wood’s term) is conditional to its pictorial representation only. The painting qua object does not invite being substituted with an older original in order to extend its own temporal significance. Rather, it is the painting’s narrative domain, or the historical circumstances in which the represented baths operate, that can be substituted, allowing the event of Christ’s miracle to acquire the potential to take place in multiple historical periods. In other words, while having been constructed at a specific point in history, subsequently having fallen into decay, and then having been sketched by the artist at another moment, the baths function simultaneously as a prop for the story’s historical setting and also as a sign that bolsters the painting’s symbolic message for audiences across time. These multiple references to time are simultaneously and mutually resonant; the more recent era does not fully cancel out the former but incorporates one into the other’s ontology and ideology, allowing the present to be inflected with the memory and meaning of the past. The Baths of Diocletian thus act as the staple that connects

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

planarily distant points on a temporal surface via the rupture of a diachronic fold.56 The structural circumstances of the baths in El Greco’s time helped shape his thinking about their use as a diachronic referent in this regard. The Parma Christ Healing the Blind does not display the crumbling jumble of fragments of a neglected late-antique tepidarium. When he arrived in Rome the remains of this vast bath complex had just undergone an ambitious transformation into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. This project, Michelangelo’s last great architectural undertaking, was finally completed in 1566—two years after the master’s death but some five years before it appeared in El Greco’s painting.57 This means that the structure in the Parma Christ Healing the Blind, with its characteristic vault, is not to be taken as the decaying ruin of an early fourth-century bath complex. Instead, the structure in El Greco’s painting references the interior cross-section of a

nearly completed restoration and transformation project that converted the secular baths into a holy temple dedicated to the angels and the many Christian martyrs enslaved to construct it (fig. 71). This is to say that the modern reformulation of an ancient building itself embodies the elastic historical referentiality that El Greco intended for it to signify in his painting. El Greco’s depiction faithfully evokes Michelangelo’s design concept, one that required little structural remodeling. Since the main vaulted hall had remained virtually intact since the fourth century, Michelangelo’s plans consisted largely of superficial “minimalist” restoration work—refacing walls, replacing missing column capitals, and reinforcing parts of the structure weakened after a millennium of neglect.58 It was certainly Michelangelo’s intention to keep as much of the building’s original layout and material mass as he could, being careful not to rebuild so much as to reuse and

Figure 71 Interior of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, Rome. Photo: Grant Peterre.

141

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

reconsecrate the structure for use as a church without erasing the materiality of the site’s preChristian past. Some have argued that the designs by Dosio that El Greco mined reflect the state of the structure before Michelangelo’s intervention.59 However, the clean lines and barren wall surfaces illustrated in Dosio’s sketches, including the one published in Gamucci’s text, are surely close to what Michelangelo envisioned for the finished building. Dosio likely composed his sketches some years after the exterior views that he also drew, which depict the baths as weed-infested ruins prior to Michelangelo’s involvement in the complex’s restructuring. Instead, Dosio’s later interior scenes show a grand vaulted hall, open on either end to be used as secondary and tertiary entrances (which have since been closed off to form chapels), as a perfect expression of the unfinished style. As such, the form as represented by Dosio and El Greco stands as a building whose identity, structural and conceptual, is based on the merger of the ancient and the modern, with neither historical identity overshadowing the other. The questions that remain are whether El Greco could have been aware of Michelangelo’s project and, if so, if he consciously used the Baths of Diocletian because of the symbolic potential of the structure’s literal embodiment of an architectural conversion. Gamucci’s 1569 text does describe the baths’ conversion into a church but neglects to disclose Michelangelo’s involvement. However, it is unlikely that El Greco could have been in Rome in the years immediately following the master’s death without knowing of his last architectural undertaking. In any case, its very existence at that time is indicative of how antique culture informed the contemporary understanding of ancient Rome’s

142

place within the broad history of the Christian Church. An inscription behind the altar reads “Quod fuit idolum nunc est templum Virginis” (What was an idol is now a temple of the Virgin), which expresses textually what Michelangelo’s design for Santa Maria degli Angeli lays bare in the naked conservation of the original. Both text and structure evince a multivalent relationship between Rome’s pagan past and the new Christian present, a relationship forged by the lack of a single fixed chronological reference.60 To be clear: the Baths of Diocletian in El Greco’s painting do not merely stand as a stock reference to Rome’s pagan culture that was defeated by the coming of Christ. Instead, the structure is to be read in its renewed form as the subject of a conversion wrought spiritually and architecturally, bringing this ethos of the church triumphant into fruition. Though the baths could not be given new life as a completely modern structure, the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli instead became a physical embodiment of spiritual rebirth—the central theme of the painting in which it appears—by transforming the vestiges of the classical past through the reuse of the structure itself as its own spolia. The result is a kind of diachronic hybrid that, in defiance of the material erasure of substitution, derives its new meaning from the physical and spiritual perseverance of the past fused together in the present. This elasticity of historical time exhibited by the Baths of Diocletian illuminates the significance of the Arch of Constantine that also appears in the Parma Christ Healing the Blind. This structure had already been subjected to acts of mutilation by Lorenzo de’ Medici in the early decades of the 1500s, revealing its own power to serve as the material convergence of the past and present. Lorenzo’s effacement of

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

Constantine’s sculpted portraits served as a surrogate act of violence against Pope Clement VII.61 However, discerning what religious message the arch might have conveyed by virtue of its appearance in El Greco’s Christ Healing the Blind is a more challenging task, not least because the structure does not have any direct connection to the narrative of Christ’s miraculous healing. And neither does it appear plainly as this particular arch, since its form is partially disguised through a clever formal adaptation to fit the narrative setting by integrating the arch into the urban context of a city street. This compositional arrangement pushes the monument back into space, to the detriment of a clear view of the sculptural elements scavenged from then-preexisting imperial monuments that made up the bulk of the arch’s ideological program.62 El Greco was clearly not interested in depicting the monument’s rich sculptural decoration—the very archaeological features that would have broadcast its identity to knowledgeable viewers in the artist’s time. Instead, it must have played some more general symbolic role in reinforcing the theme of the painting. It is well-known that the Arch of Constantine commemorates the emperor’s victory over Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. This event was thought to have been providentially anointed though Constantine’s vision of the cross as the aegis for his triumph. While Constantine subsequently endorsed the Christian religion throughout the empire, the arch itself bears no trace of a distinct Christian message. Consequently, different sources suggest different understandings of the arch’s historical significance with respect to the Christian present. We might expect that Giulio Romano’s fresco of Constantine’s vision of the cross in the Sala di Costantino in the

Apostolic Palace at the Vatican, executed in the 1520s, would provide a key link between the arch and the event that it commemorates, but the monument does not appear anywhere in the scene. Judging from its treatment in sixteenth-century guidebooks to the antiquities of Rome, the Arch of Constantine appears to have been regarded in El Greco’s time more as an archaeological curiosity than as a monument to a key moment in the history of the Christian religion, no different than the other ruins dotting the cityscape. However, the Christian significance of the event that this structure commemorates was hardly lost on viewers in Rome. Its appearance in the background of two scenes on the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel show that the Arch of Constantine was regarded as a powerful symbol for the dominance of the Christian faith.63 Pietro Perugino’s Christ Giving the Keys shows two triumphal arches flanking the centralized Temple of Solomon in the perspective background, though it is not clear if these are supposed to signify Constantine’s arch specifically. Sandro Botticelli’s fresco The Punishment of Korah and the Stoning of Moses and Aaron makes use of an arch that much more closely copies the sculptural detail visible in the one commemorating Constantine’s victory. As Leopold Ettlinger has posited, its prominence in the center of Botticelli’s composition suggests a meaning based on the recognition of the arch as pertaining to Constantine specifically and to the divine right of the papal office that he authorized.64 In these examples—predating the convening of the Council of Trent—Constantine’s arch is anchored to the moment in history that saw Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge establish Christianity as the official religion of Rome. Even while these scenes

143

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

utilize the arch in narratives that establish the God-given authority of the papal office, the monument references the past, that is, the pivotal divide between the pagan and Christian eras. Scenes closer to El Greco’s time, albeit later, however, treat the Arch of Constantine in a way that provides a better precedent for what the artist might have intended in his own Christ Healing the Blind painting, in which the monument resists historical specificity. Constantinian imagery appeared in a number of artistic projects during the papacy of Gregory XIII (1572–85), especially those that dealt with papal authority and Christian triumph over Protestant attacks in the age of the Counter-Reformation.65 The recognition of what Constantine’s military conquest meant for the subsequent development of the post-Tridentine church informed later representations of the event as the triumph of the Christian faith in present times. Bernardino Cesari’s Triumphal Entry of Constantine fresco in the transept of San Giovanni in Laterano shows the victorious emperor passing in procession underneath the portals of his arch. Francesco Borromini’s design of the church’s nave elevation reflects the structure’s characteristic arrangement of columns, arches, and relief panels. In these cases the triumph refers both to Constantine and to the more recent Counter-Reformation victory as part of the church’s ideological message in El Greco’s time.66 These projects thus rendered the triumphal arch as a monument both structurally and spiritually restored, similar to what happened at Santa Maria degli Angeli. Drawing on examples such as these, El Greco’s insertion of this structure into the highly symbolic scenographic background of a highly significant subject further bolsters his picture’s overtones regarding the

144

triumph of Christianity. It is the eradication of one’s blindness to the true faith that allows viewers to see the Arch of Constantine as a monument of triumph commemorating both the past and the present.

Boy Blowing an Ember as Ekphrastic Metaphor These references to Roman antiquity in El Greco’s final Christ Healing the Blind painting demonstrate the lengths to which he synchronized the city’s classical past with its Christian present at a time in which such symbolism was especially powerful. This interest in the religious identity of Rome, such a fundamental part of Alessandro Farnese’s artistic programs, lies at the heart of what is perhaps the most perplexing painting of El Greco’s entire Italian career: the so-called Boy Blowing an Ember, or Soplón (fig. 72). This panel occupies a prominent singularity within El Greco’s roster of early works. It is his only subject that is not either a religious theme or a portrait. The artist treated the ephemerality of light as the picture’s protagonist. A young boy purses his lips and blows on a burning ember, flaring the ignited end of the coal to cast a brilliant luminescence that fleshes out his face, neck, torso, and palm as he delicately holds a candle dripping with molten wax to the flame. Darkness voids all other parts of the scene. While Manuel Cossío suggested that this subject allegorizes lust by illustrating the Spanish proverb “Man is fire and woman tow; the devil comes and blows,” the picture’s iconographic connection to this saying is not altogether clear.67 The fact that this work resists coherent interpretation only compounds the vexing problem of how the composition resonated with the people who

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

would have viewed it in its own time. It is difficult to say precisely what it might have meant and who it primarily addressed, since no documents for its commission survive. Nevertheless, it is likely that the Naples canvas was commissioned by Fulvio Orsini.68 This painting must have communicated a message of some notable significance, because the artist created multiple versions of it. Another nearly identical picture with a partially defaced signature is now located in a private collection in Florida. Harold Wethey mentions other paintings, all called simply Fábula (fable), that feature the same motif of a boy blowing an ember. For example, El Greco’s Fable in the Museo del Prado in Madrid shows the boy accompanied on the left by a monkey and on the right by a smiling bearded man in rustic dress (fig. 73).69 Wethey identifies two surviving examples, one of which is signed, as possibly dating to El Greco’s Italian period.70 Our understanding of this mysterious subject is aided by its identification as a remaking of lost classical works renowned in Pliny’s Natural Histories for their representational difficulty: the Boy Blowing on a Dying Fire sculpture by Lycius, a student of Myron; a painting by Antiphilus that brought the artist praise for depicting naturalistically “the light from the fire and the light thrown on [a] boy’s face”; and a painting by Philiscus of an artist’s studio that featured “a boy blowing on a flame.”71 One might infer that El Greco’s paintings aimed to show off an artistic virtuosity equal to that of the artist’s ancient predecessors—the mastery of a notoriously difficult subject, capturing the fleeting luminosity of a flickering flame. This precocious ambition, of course, is evidence of the influence the learned circles of the Farnese court had on El Greco’s intellectual development. His

painting of a theme all’antica was surely cultivated in the sophisticated sphere of Orsini’s humanist circle, whose participants might have delighted in recognizing such a learned reference to a remote but still living past.72 We see in this work, for the first and perhaps only time in El Greco’s early career, the achievements of a young painter taking on humanistic themes that are absent in the majority of the works created before or after. What I propose here, however, is a reading of Boy Blowing an Ember that aligns with the other works of art that he created in the orbit of the Farnese circle. Consequently, we might consider how this work’s theme is another example of how the vestiges of an ancient past can serve as veiled symbols reflecting current religious ideology. Indeed, representations of a young boy blowing on a candle or flame, often in religious scenes, increased in the sixteenth century.73 The motif was fairly common among painters in northern Europe, having appeared in paintings by Jan Lievens, Matthias Stomer, Gerrit von Honthorst, and Peter Paul Rubens. In Italy, Jacopo Bassano treated it as the primary subject in a number of canvases.74 Though this motif ’s appearance as an autonomous subject is virtually unprecedented, the context in which El Greco created it may shed light, literally, on what it signified for its primary audience within Cardinal Farnese’s court. The painting was crafted at a time and place in which the artist was expected to forge complex exegetical connections between the ancient world and the contemporary Christian one. It would then be admired by a learned courtly audience that delighted in decoding such complex symbols. One example in particular of this theme’s use elsewhere provides initial evidence for how El Greco may

145

Figure 72 El Greco, Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón), ca. 1570–72. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. Photo: Alinari / Art Resource, New York.

146

Figure 73 El Greco, Fable, ca. 1577. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

147

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

have conceived this theme. Michelangelo’s Erythraean Sibyl on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, surely a work El Greco became familiar with while in Rome, shows a putto blowing on a torch as the prophetess, seated below, receives knowledge foretelling Christ’s Incarnation for the redemption of mankind (fig. 74). Charged with this spiritual energy, she stirs animatedly and turns the pages of a large book. In this scene the torch, with flames nearly licking her head, acts as a purveyor of divine wisdom—a theme, we recall, that El Greco had already encountered when devising the composition of his icon of St. Luke (see chapter 1). These iconographic ties between Michelangelo’s Sibyl and El Greco’s Boy Blowing an Ember suggest an apt thematic analogy as well: both images show a metaphorical rendering of the reception of divine grace through luminous phenomena. While the subject of a boy’s face illuminated by a flame presents formal challenges that might seem too removed from overtly religious connotations to

carry any Christian meaning, we have seen in our examination of Christ Healing the Blind that the physical illumination engendered by the entrance of light into the eye also implies a spiritual illumination, a metaphor for the reception of God’s grace (see chapter 4). It is in this light, as it were, that the meaning of this mysterious painting, commonly regarded as one of the most steadfastly secular works in El Greco’s corpus, takes on a provocative multivalent significance. El Greco materialized lost ancient paintings but gave them new, more current religious meanings, as if Pliny’s descriptions of ancient paintings and sculptures could have prefigured later Christian themes. Given that El Greco painted this meditative work at about the same time he completed his third and last version of Christ Healing the Blind, he could have conceived the theme in which a boy is seen holding and contemplating a source of fire, rendered in deep impasto, as a companion to the optical themes of illumination present in the other

Figure 74 Michelangelo, Erythraean Sibyl, ca. 1508–12. Sistine Chapel, Vatican. Photo: Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City, Italy / Alinari / The Bridgeman Art Library.

148

the artist as antiquarian in christian rome

work. It is not accidental that El Greco depicts Jesus in Christ Healing the Blind as this personification of divine light and the agent of vision through the figure’s integration into the perspective background. Christ is, metaphorically speaking, the very flickering flame whose radiance penetrates the vacant eyes of both the blind boy within the narrative and the viewer outside of it. While Christ Healing the Blind shows the process of spiritual illumination via the path of linear perspective vis-à-vis an overtly religious subject, Boy Blowing an Ember acquires a theological significance calibrated to the humanist pursuits of the Farnese studiolo that conveys the physical manifestation of the allegory of light as divine grace.75 In the end, El Greco’s Boy Blowing an Ember and the other paintings described in this chapter constitute a unique phase in his career and in the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual environment of Rome in the 1570s that sought myriad ways to comment on the new spiritual orientation of the Catholic faith. Though his artistic output in this period differs substantially from the kind of works

he produced before and after, these paintings still serve to document an important moment in the painter’s artistic development. El Greco worked at a time and place and, most important, for an audience who expected paintings that invited prolonged intellectual contemplation. He delivered on this expectation by delving into how the visual culture of Rome’s ancient past could serve as a powerful metaphor for the city’s new religious identity in the years after the Council of Trent, for those willing (and knowledgeable enough) to make such connections. Giulio Clovio represented the artist as a “professional visualizer of the holy stories,” to quote Michael Baxandall’s label for artists in the early-modern period.76 The Parma Christ Healing the Blind and Boy Blowing an Ember each record unique ways that El Greco’s Rome nurtured his ability to visualize sacred themes by using the culture furnished by the city’s ancient legacy. His paintings thus document the intellectual workings of an artist striving to illustrate Rome as a city both ancient and Christian in order to inspire devotion in new and unique ways.

149

chapter six

From Icon to Altarpiece

The years encompassing El Greco’s departure from Rome and his first activities in Spain were checkered with success and disappointment.1 Italy did not furnish the lucrative work opportunities that he had hoped to obtain, and his perception of the promise of prestigious commissions, which had hitherto eluded him, probably compelled him to seek his fortunes elsewhere. El Greco’s goal was to settle in the newly established capital in Madrid and secure a court appointment.2 The Hapsburg crown had developed something of an Italian artistic diaspora beginning in the 1560s when Philip II invited Italian artists to come to Spain and

Detail of figure 79

decorate the Escorial.3 It was during this effort that El Greco would have had his best chance to ingratiate himself to the royal house. Philip’s taste for Venetian painting in particular must have seemed promising for an artist of El Greco’s pedigree. Having also studied the great masters in Rome might have made him especially worthy of contributing to the Italian artistic culture that the king had established. However, Italian artists did not always please Philip’s finicky taste.4 When El Greco did get a chance to demonstrate his abilities to the Spanish throne, his bid to secure court patronage proved unsuccessful. His Martyrdom of

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

St. Maurice, commissioned in 1580 and completed by 1582, was not well received—though it has been convincingly established that, befitting Philip’s unbending concern for decorum and propriety, it was the work’s iconography, not style, that the king found unsatisfactory.5 It was only after being rebuffed by the court that the painter settled permanently in Toledo. It was in fact Toledo, the former capital of the Kingdom of Castile, where El Greco received the first major commissions of his career, before his attempts to attract royal patronage and after his Italian sojourn from 1567 to 1576 had proffered frustratingly few opportunities for long-term employment. In 1577 he signed a contract for the Disrobing of Christ (Espolio) for the sacristy of the Toledo cathedral. This painting famously became the focus of notorious litigation that resulted in the artist being obliged to accept less money than he thought it was worth. While El Greco’s appraisers had judged the painting to be essentially priceless, the cathedral’s representatives claimed that it was not even deserving of the artist’s advance payment. Moreover, El Greco was asked to remove some of the extraneous figures who threatened to distract the viewer’s focus on Christ. He never made these changes, but the cathedral authorities accepted the work as it was originally designed anyway.6 He never received a commission from the Toledo cathedral again. We might infer from these events alone that El Greco’s first years in Spain did more to inhibit his future career advancements than to expedite his ascendancy to the artistic elite. But at the same time it was during this period that he was engaged in the one project that perhaps more than any other set his career on a productive path. Less than one

152

month after signing the contract for the Espolio he commenced work on the high altar retablo and two side altars for Santo Domingo el Antiguo, the principal ecclesiastical edifice of a Cistercian convent in Toledo (figs. 75, 82, and 84).7 It was by far the most lucrative commission of El Greco’s early career, one that allowed him to showcase his talents and demonstrate what he had learned over the previous decade in Venice and Rome. He could not have known at the time that his itinerant journey westward through the Mediterranean would come to a final stop in Toledo, and so we see in El Greco’s artistic efforts a bold announcement of his capabilities that he must have felt would lead to greater and even more prestigious positions. This work is, in other words, the first statement of his artistic maturity. Coming after his Italian sojourn, the retablo bears the indelible marks of an artist fully formed by the artistic examples laid out by Titian, Michelangelo, and other great Italian masters. The high altar at Santo Domingo el Antiguo thus occupies a prominent place in the arc of El Greco’s artistic career, both as the culmination of his multicultural artistic pedigree and as the starting point of a nearly four-decade career in Spain that would solidify his reputation for centuries to come as one of the most unique painters of his time. Of course, this work signifies more than just the artist’s newly acquired proficiency with Italian styles of painting. Rather, the style was adapted to suit the altar’s function. Marcia Hall characterizes El Greco’s activities in Toledo as an effort to provide affective devotional imagery by implementing a new style of visual representation derived from his study after Italian painters.8 But in keeping with the present book’s goal to elucidate the status of the

from icon to altarpiece

religious image, this chapter offers not just a stylistic appraisal of El Greco’s paintings but also a typological reassessment of them. I argue that El Greco’s retablo, through its function as an altarpiece, fundamentally reframes then-contemporary conceptions of what a religious image was. Scholars have not satisfactorily addressed the shared functional characteristics of the icon and the altarpiece, even though theologians, critics, and artists at that time of renewed vigilance over the sacred function of images may have recognized their common devotional and spiritual aims. Therefore, I situate El Greco’s work within an overall consideration of how the relationship between viewer and prototype, the dialogue between artistic representation and the real presence of the Host in the tabernacle designed for the ensemble, and the liturgical function that these features upheld—all issues related to iconicity—are made manifest at the high altar of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. In the end I argue that this combination of artistic mediation and liturgical performance represents the consummate expression of the artful icon on a scale and format not seen in El Greco’s earlier works.

An Italian Retablo, a Greek in Spain It is likely that El Greco earned the commission for his first major altarpiece through connections made in Rome.9 We have seen that the artist’s stay at the Farnese court, albeit short, put him in contact with Fulvio Orsini. Orsini’s circle of scholars and theologians included Luis de Castilla, who was evidently the man responsible for furnishing commissions for both the Espolio and the Santo Domingo el Antiguo retablo.10 His father, Don

Diego de Castilla, dean of the Toledo cathedral, was in charge of executing the will of Doña María de Silva, which called for the erection and decoration of the church adjoining the convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. Diego arranged for use of this church as a funerary chapel for himself, his son Luis, and the patron. Even though documentary records do not substantiate the nature of El Greco’s relationship with either the father or son, it is unlikely that an artist as unproven and unknown as he was at that time could have acquired this commission without having known at least one of them directly. In any case, even though he would not likely have anticipated that his career would take him even farther from his Cretan homeland, it is safe to conclude that his years spent in Rome did, at long last, provide the prestigious work and the legitimacy that he coveted, even if it drew him away from Italy’s shores. The Santo Domingo el Antiguo altar’s principal image is the Assumption of the Virgin (now at the Art Institute of Chicago), the most acclaimed of the nine paintings that El Greco provided for the ensemble (fig. 75; and see fig. 2 in the introduction). Flanking this painting and inserted into the unifying architectural frame was a full-length image of St. John the Baptist, below a smaller panel of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (present location unknown) to the left, and St. John the Evangelist beneath St. Benedict to the right (now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid).11 Situated above the broken pediment, in which we see two gilded angels grasping an escutcheon that shows an image of the Veronica, is a large painting, Trinity (now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid; see fig. 79). Five outsized sculptures stand on top of the architectural ensemble framing these paintings: the three

153

154

from icon to altarpiece

theological virtues, with Charity flanked by Faith and Hope on the left and right, respectively, appear on top and two Old Testament prophets occupy the upper corners of the lower register. El Greco designed these sculptures himself. Two smaller lateral altars separated from the central altar mayor feature the Adoration of the Shepherds (now in a private collection in Madrid; see fig. 84) and the Resurrection of Christ with St. Ildefonsus (see fig. 82). Of the nine paintings El Greco provided, only St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist in the main altarpiece, and the Resurrection from the right lateral altar, remain in place. The others have been replaced with copies after their removal in the nineteenth century.12 The retablo at Santo Domingo el Antiguo was at the time by far El Greco’s most ambitious undertaking, one that presented challenges he had never faced in either Crete or Italy. He must have been somewhat of a risky choice to carry out this project, because he had only demonstrated his abilities in small-scale devotional works, not in the kind of expansive program he was now called on to construct. What he created is essentially a compendium of nearly everything he had learned in Crete, Venice, and Rome, uniting major themes encountered in his previous fifteen years as a painter. While his style would later develop into its own distinct pictorial language (and it is not hard to detect even in these paintings the initial hints of his later, more idiosyncratic manner), the overall “Italianness” of El Greco’s achievement at Santo Domingo el Antiguo says much about the artistic identity he cultivated and the artistic tastes of viewers in the places he now found himself living and working. Indeed, it was likely because of his extensive training in Italy—coupled with his willingness to

leave Rome—that Don Diego de Castilla selected him for this commission.13 Of course, we must not underestimate the power of Spain’s most visible connoisseur to dictate aesthetic taste and to shape the patronage patterns of those who wished to emulate him. King Philip II’s fervent support of Italian masters was one of the major developments in the Spanish artistic environment during the sixteenth century. Indeed, Diego himself imitated the collecting habits of the monarch by inviting Italian artists to Toledo. The Hapsburg taste for Italian art was surely El Greco’s primary attraction to this new place after what must have been a frustrating stint in Rome during which he failed to gain a foothold in the city’s competitive artistic market. Fittingly, El Greco’s paintings for Santo Domingo el Antiguo, completed within just a few years of his departure from Italy, demonstrate the extent to which he was, by artistic inclination and formation, essentially an Italian painter by the time he arrived in Spain. It is not coincidental that he signed the contracts for this project in Italian—a language that was neither his native one nor the one he would need to know in order to achieve success in his new adopted land. The soaring Assumption of the Virgin in the central panel of the retablo’s lower story (see fig. 2 in the introduction) demonstrates the complexity of El Greco’s artistic identity at the time of its making.14 It was the first of the paintings for Santo Domingo el Antiguo that he completed and is the only one that he both signed and dated, making it something of a cornerstone for the entire ensemble that lays bare the artificial conditions that play such a crucial role in the conceptualization of the artful icon. The signature, reading “δομήνικος θεοτοκόπουλος κρής ό δείξας α φ ο ζ” (Domenikos Theotokopoulos of Crete

Figure 75 El Greco, high altar at Santo Domingo el Antiguo, Toledo. Photo: Oronoz Archivo Fotográfico.

155

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

displayed it, 1577), appears on an illusionistic cartellino painted in the lower right.15 We detect El Greco’s awareness of this important benchmark for his own career through the use of his full name and place of birth, as if announcing who he was at this new stage to an audience not already familiar with his work. But that the artist broadcast his Cretan heritage in a place multiple times removed from his homeland indicates that his formation as an “Italian” artist was more complicated than what might be suggested by the simple identification of the origins of his painting style’s most dominant characteristics. A return to the comparison initiated at the beginning of this book between this Assumption of the Virgin and the Dormition of the Virgin (see fig. 1 in the introduction), the latter of which was created only about a decade before, reveals much more about El Greco’s artistic development in Italy that preceded his arrival in Spain. These scenes do not, strictly speaking, portray the same event, and so we would expect their compositions to differ accordingly. The subject of the Dormition, as told in numerous versions of the Apocrypha and perpetuated in an array of Byzantine portrayals, tells of Mary’s death in the company of the apostles who had been miraculously transported to pray together with her.16 It includes, as an accompaniment to the Virgin’s passing, a depiction of the subsequent transitus of her soul. Christ has appeared to carry her spirit into a heavenly environment of amorphous clouds and divine light awash in gold. His mother’s body already appears there in the form of a seated figure dressed to match the prostrate corpse below. Having received a crown to mark her status as the Queen of Heaven, Mary sits enthroned on high while illuminated from below by the

156

incandescent glow of the Holy Spirit. She is surrounded by angels coalescing out of the heavenly light and by St. Thomas, who kneels to receive her girdle.17 The later Assumption of the Virgin, on the other hand, refers to an entirely different event that took place after the entombment of Mary’s body. When the apostles returned to her tomb, they found an empty sarcophagus, confirming the miracle of her corporeal assent into heaven. The representation at Santo Domingo el Antiguo effectively provides a retelling of Mary’s death in collapsed time; the apostles below react to the already empty tomb and look up to witness Mary’s Assumption as if it were taking place at that very moment, when in fact it had occurred sometime before. To clarify this point: this painting does not show the conveyance of her soul seen in the Dormition but rather the later elevation of her body. The Dormition icon, by contrast, displays a composition in which the earthly figures present at Mary’s death direct their attention and mournful grief to her deceased but still present body, apparently unaware of or unable to comprehend the heavenly scene that we as outside viewers see above their heads. The Santo Domingo el Antiguo Assumption of the Virgin signals a trend initiated in the first decades of the sixteenth century in Italy to reconfigure visionary events by using modern styles in retrospective compositions. Such deliberate archaisms align these works with earlier and perhaps more venerable kinds of sacred imagery.18 El Greco, of course, would have been especially adept at implementing formal retrospection in this regard. He only needed to think back to his own origins as a Cretan icon painter to access appropriate models of archaic forms. In the case of the Assumption, the impenetrable wall of

from icon to altarpiece

shimmering clouds and light against which the figures are pushed to the front of the picture plane corresponds to what Alexander Nagel has identified as a technique aimed at reenacting the denial of perspectival depth imposed by the heavenly, golden shimmer of Byzantine dome mosaics.19 Nevertheless, while the lingering memory of having painted the Dormition certainly played a role in shaping El Greco’s design for the later altarpiece, the artist’s training in Italy had so drastically altered his techniques as a painter that it is difficult to find many other residual effects of his artistic origins. Some similarities in composition of course exist, such as the emphasis on frontality advocated by Gilio da Fabriano as a laudable quality found in archaic images.20 But the earlier icon conveys nothing of the rich color, bold application of paint, or Mary’s upward trajectory that mark the later altarpiece at Santo Domingo el Antiguo, which, by comparison, reveals itself to be an Italian work par excellence. Of course, it is also true that El Greco’s composition for his Assumption follows something of an established standard for portrayals of this subject. It is often assumed that El Greco found special inspiration in Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, completed in 1518 when the young Venetian master was at a similarly transitional moment of his career (fig. 76).21 Titian’s celebrated painting would have been an obvious authority to follow if for no other reason than that by El Greco’s time some critics regarded this very work as the paragon of artistic excellence.22 Titian may in fact have been the source for El Greco’s division of his own composition into two distinct zones: the earthly domain from which the spectators gaze upward in adoration of the Virgin; and the clearly defined heavenly place articulated

through a more intensely luminous environment populated by angels. However, a later painting executed at a time much closer to El Greco’s creation of his Assumption makes an even more apt comparison. Tintoretto’s Assumption of the Virgin from 1555 for the Church of the Crociferi in Venice (now situated among the more exuberant confines of the eighteenth-century Chiesa dei Gesuiti) would have provided a more accessible model for El Greco’s own conception of this theme because of the iconographic features the

Figure 76 Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, ca. 1516–18. Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

157

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

works share (fig. 77). Like El Greco, Tintoretto portrayed a crowd of onlookers gathered around a prominent open sarcophagus in the foreground— an element missing in Titian’s work. These figures gesticulate wildly and cast their gazes upward toward the Virgin, who appears in the midst of a vertical ascent even as she occupies the absolute highest point of the composition. Tintoretto’s and El Greco’s paintings further differ from Titian’s in the absence of God the Father. Titian’s Virgin ascends toward the welcoming arms of God, who appears foreshortened above the brightest pulse of divine light. The result is a closed narrative contained entirely within the arched frame. Both Tintoretto and El Greco, on the other hand, envisioned an extension of the scene beyond the confines of what we see defined by their respective pictures’ edges. Tintoretto left the focus of the Virgin’s gaze visually unresolved, offering only the implication of the presence of God the Father that remains inaccessible to our bodily eyes. The only way we as viewers can comprehend his existence in this case is through the contemplative engagement with the subject that the picture is meant to inspire.23 El Greco, by contrast, placed God the Father in the same retablo, showing the Trinity at the very summit of the altar and set apart from the Assumption by the dividing pediment of the ensemble’s architectonic frame. Yet another source of inspiration for El Greco’s Assumption has hitherto gone unrecognized. The gesture of the Virgin as she ascends upward, stretching both arms outward with upturned palms and a gaze oriented upward and slightly to the left, as well as the vaporous angels and divine light that surround her, all appear in a 1571 engraving by Cherubino Alberti after designs for a depiction of the

158

Assumption initiated by Taddeo Zuccaro at the Pucci Chapel in Santa Trinità dei Monti in Rome and finished by his brother, Federico, in 1589 (fig. 78).24 Though El Greco did not follow this composition exactly, the form of the protagonist ascending on a bank of clouds and silhouetted against a heavenly glow of divine light is too similar to El Greco’s painting to not have exerted a formative influence. El Greco also endeavored to translate known textual descriptions of the Assumption into visual form through his own innovative pictorial imagination. In his Assumption, the incongruous apostle at the lower left, with his back turned, is the reverse of the blind Pharisee at the far left of the Parma version of Christ Healing the Blind who refuses to acknowledge the miracle taking place before him (see fig. 56 in chapter 4). Though we certainly cannot discount the possibility that El Greco simply recycled a figure he had used earlier for the sake of compositional expediency, a passage from the Apocryphal narrative of Pseudo-Melito describing the Virgin’s death and Assumption suggests a more meaningful role for this figure that draws from both themes. As the apostles carried Mary’s body to the place of her entombment, Peter turned to a prince of the Jewish priests and directed him to “go into the city, and you will find people blinded; and declare to them the mighty works of God, and whosoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, lay this palm upon his eyes and he shall see; but whosoever does not believe shall continue to be blind.”25 The similarity in message between this passage and the theological underpinnings of Christ’s miraculous healing of the man born blind (described at length in chapter 4) suggests an iconographic and narrative richness to El Greco’s Assumption that lies deeper than style and formal structure. Each event

from icon to altarpiece

involves a causal relationship between the experience of sight and the crystallization of faith, between the willingness to accept Christian truth and the effect of being blind to its benefits. In both paintings El Greco renders the stories so that they carry a single message: the viewer is reminded of the gift of grace and the promise of everlasting life bestowed upon those who open their eyes. The upturned crescent moon underneath the Virgin’s feet, which is absent from all the pictorial examples of the subject that El Greco consulted, effectively makes his Assumption an Immaculate Conception, the doctrine stating that Mary had Figure 77 Jacopo Tintoretto, Assumption of the Virgin, ca. 1555. Chiesa dei Gesuiti, Venice. Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, New York.

been born free of the taint of original sin. The overall iconography is consistent with the formal symbolism described by the theologian Johannes Molanus, even though El Greco did not include any other attributes normally associated with St. John’s vision of the apocalyptic woman.26 The Immaculate Conception was a common type for Spanish depictions of the Assumption from at least the early sixteenth century.27 However, it is unclear if El Greco naïvely engaged a contentious theological dispute over the Virgin’s purity or if this detail fulfilled a requirement to issue a pictorial statement in support of the doctrine. Francisco de Castilla,

Figure 78 Cherubino Alberti, Assumption of the Virgin, ca. 1571. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

159

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

the cousin of the dean who commissioned this work, had composed poetry in support of these ideas, so it may have been a doctrinal imperative that the patron see references to the Immaculate Conception incorporated into the altar’s iconography.28 El Greco may have regarded the crescent to be a conventional attribute for representing Mary’s

death and Assumption, since his Dormition icon also includes one below the Virgin’s feet as she appears in heaven. This detail also connects El Greco’s Assumption with his Adoration of the Shepherds that appears in the left lateral altar, where we see another crescent moon in the upper-right of this nocturnal setting of Christ’s nativity (see fig. 84). The resulting iconographic bridge is exegetical. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception explains how Mary could worthily serve as a vessel that delivered Christ into the world to be adored by the faithful. The doctrine symbolizes her chastity and thus the miraculous nature of both her virginal purity and Christ’s birth.29 The iconographic and narrative message of the Assumption is only complete in the context of the Trinity placed above it (fig. 79). The Trinity represents the focus of Mary’s gaze and the final destination of her body’s trajectory. The formal components of this work differ from the Assumption in revealing ways. Scholars most often point out similarities to an Albrecht Dürer print of the same subject, which El Greco likely knew (fig. 80). However, we must also consider this scene as another product of El Greco’s continuing ambition to combine the best characteristics of Venetian colorito and central Italian disegno. What we thus see at Santo Domingo el Antiguo, alongside the formal and technical homage to Titian and Venetian brushwork, is additional evidence of El Greco’s appropriation of Michelangelo’s treatment of bodily form. For the Trinity, El Greco paid close attention to another Michelangelo Pietà in a different medium. A drawing made for Vittoria Colonna shows two angels suspending Christ’s dead body in front of Mary’s lap at the foot of the Cross in a way that facilitates a contemplative Figure 79 El Greco, Trinity, ca. 1577–79. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

160

from icon to altarpiece

engagement with Christ’s corpse (fig. 81).30 The resulting focus on the physical matter of Christ’s body has Eucharistic implications for the retablo as a whole, as we shall see. Of the two lateral altars that El Greco painted for Santo Domingo el Antiguo, the one that reflects his Italian experience the most is the Resurrection (fig. 82). The importance of this theme is reinforced by the inclusion of St. Ildefonsus, the revered patron saint of Toledo, who serves as a witness. This saint observes a volatile event in which Christ bursts forcefully above the guards below, some of whom remain asleep while others jolt in surprise at the suddenness of his movement. Christ’s palpable corporeality and twisting pose manifest El Greco’s Figure 80 Albrecht Dürer, Holy Trinity, ca. 1511. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum.

memory of Michelangelo’s Risen Christ sculpture at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome.31 The nervous agitation of the figures in the lower zone of the Resurrection may have been adapted from a drawing of the same subject by Michelangelo in Giulio Clovio’s collection in Rome (now at Windsor Castle).32 Other quotations of Michelangelo’s art appearing in the Resurrection include another reference to one of the reclining allegorical figures from the Medici tombs, here shown foreshortened in the lower right.33 Indeed, we might look at El Greco’s first years in Spain as a period of particularly heavy influence from Michelangelo, which probably resulted from El Greco’s six-year stay in Rome. The signed St.

Figure 81 Michelangelo, study for the Colonna Pietà, early 1540s. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Photo © Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston / The Bridgeman Art Library.

161

Figure 82 El Greco, Resurrection, ca. 1577–79. Santo Domingo el Antiguo, Toledo. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

162

from icon to altarpiece

Sebastian at the sacristy of the cathedral at Palencia (fig. 83), completed around 1578 while El Greco was fulfilling the requirements for Santo Domingo el Antiguo, focuses on a single figure taken from Michelangelo’s body of work—though scholars do not agree on which one. The contortion of the body of the saint is taken either from nudes in the Last Judgment, from the famous reclining Adam in Creation of Man on the Sistine Chapel ceiling,34 or even from the master’s sculpture Victory that was originally intended for the Julius II tomb, now located at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.35 Evidently, even after leaving Italy, El Greco was still deriving much inspiration from Michelangelo. We often overlook that the legacy of Italy is preserved equally in the structural framework of El

Greco’s project at Santo Domingo el Antiguo, not just in the paintings. This altar represents the artist’s first activities in the practice of architecture as an independent discipline, having only previously engaged in the two-dimensional representation of buildings in his religious paintings.36 The multipaneled retablo is a largely Iberian form of church decoration that differed from what he would have normally encountered in Italy.37 Nonetheless, all of the paintings in the retablo are arranged in a unifying architectural frame that he designed based on his knowledge of Italian building types. The frame echoes both the form and grandeur of classical architecture, the very idiom that captivated El Greco’s artistic imagination during his stay in Italy and provided material with which he could embellish the symbolic character of his religious compositions. Though El Greco’s builder and collaborator, Juan Bautista Monegro, altered its original height, the completed frame reveals the painter’s diligence in studying the most current architectural achievements in Venice and Rome together in a single work—not unlike the diverse compositional and stylistic borrowings he united in his paintings. Manuel Cossío suggested that Palma il Vecchio’s polyptych of Santa Barbara at Santa Maria Formosa in Venice might have been the model for El Greco’s overall design.38 Indeed, the basic arrangement of paintings and the structural frame that holds them together does bear a basic resemblance to what El Greco later designed, but the present marble construction only dates to 1719. There are other possible sources. The central arch framing the Assumption of the Virgin partakes of Jacopo Sansovino’s fluted Corinthian columns at the Church of San Fantin in Venice, as well as the Figure 83 El Greco, St. Sebastian, ca. 1577–78. Museo Catedralico, Palencia. Photo: Oronoz Archivo Fotográfico.

163

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

rounded pediment in Jacopo da Vignola’s design for the façade of the church of the Gesù in Rome, here broken to accommodate the sculpted angels displaying the Veronica (see fig. 15 in chapter 1 and fig. 75).39 The triumphal arch format of the frame may have come from the one surrounding Titian’s Assumption in the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, granting the scene an appropriately victorious air. We might be further tempted to look at the lower story of the retablo as an adaptation of the Arch of Constantine, with the central, arched Assumption and the lateral panels of the two St. Johns mirroring the arched openings in the original monument. This reference would then rather ingeniously incorporate a symbolism of triumph that the artist had already featured in the Parma Christ Healing the Blind (see chapter 5).40 This serves as a further testament to the depth of El Greco’s familiarity with Italian art and architecture, which he was apparently all too eager to exhibit upon arriving in Spain.

Image and Eucharist Any self-conscious effort on El Greco’s part to advertise his new Italian style, however important it might have been for his own artistic self-presentation, was secondary to the altar’s primary status as an ensemble of religious images operating in a liturgical space. His paintings were meant to stimulate prayer and meditative contemplation, serving as an aid the beholder could use to visualize the themes of the liturgy that would be celebrated in front of it. Consequently, we must now examine the religious and devotional function of this altarpiece in order to appreciate its full meaning. Scholars have correctly identified a unifying theme for El Greco’s retablo in the Eucharist, a

164

component of Catholic theology that received especially focused attention at the Council of Trent.41 His orientation toward Eucharistic themes preceded his arrival in Spain; they had emerged as a routine feature of Venetian church decoration throughout the sixteenth century.42 The particulars of how El Greco’s paintings gave visual expression to these liturgical concerns require further elaboration, as they indicate his attitudes regarding the status of the religious image generally. The form and content of El Greco’s paintings follow the descriptions of the Eucharist found in Bernardino de Sandoval’s Tratado del officio ecclesiastico canonico (1568) closely enough to suggest at least one of two things: either the painter consulted this work directly; or Sandoval’s views summarize broadly entrenched attitudes and church positions that artists would have followed in these years after the Council of Trent. Sandoval’s text repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the mystery of the Eucharist and the devotion it should inspire in the worshipper. It asserts that not even a multitude of printed volumes could possibly elucidate the many profits one receives from the ritualized celebration of Christ’s sacrifice.43 El Greco’s Eucharistic program, therefore, provided concrete expression of a highly privileged subject that would have benefited the worshipper in innumerable ways. It used visible means to compel viewers to leave aside earthly concerns and contemplate the sacred mysteries and true presence of Christ’s body in the consecrated bread of the Eucharist.44 However, the full extent of the retablo’s Eucharistic character requires an understanding of what the ensemble looked like in El Greco’s day. The artist’s contract stipulated that he provide designs for a “custodia” or “sagrario”—evidently a sacra-

from icon to altarpiece

ment tabernacle—measuring up to eight feet in height, which would be constructed on the altar table directly in front of the Assumption of the Virgin.45 This sort of tabernacle housing the Host on the main altar became increasingly commonplace after the Council of Trent.46 The publication of Carlo Borromeo’s Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae in 1577—the year El Greco began work at Santo Domingo el Antiguo, though we cannot know to what extent he was aware of it— provided codified instructions on the form and function that such constructions should adopt.47 Functionally speaking, the tabernacle provided the faithful with a perpetual view of the Host, thereby facilitating a kind of “ocular communion” with the body of Christ in the consecrated bread, independent of the liturgical performance of the rite itself.48 The tabernacle that El Greco and Monegro designed for the altar is not currently in place, and so we must try to understand how this element would have affected the visual components of the retablo as a whole. Thanks to the sheer size of these constructions and the resulting partial obstruction of the images behind them, tabernacles threatened to marginalize an altarpiece’s pictorial features. Yet neither painter nor patron likely intended to do away with images in the manner that their Protestant counterparts had, or even in the way some Italian reformers had advocated earlier in the sixteenth century, before the Council of Trent.49 Documents record that El Greco designed the tabernacle to have an open or transparent second story so as to not occlude the view of the Assumption behind it.50 But the artist also devised a compositional format for the Assumption that yields to the presence of such an intervening structure without obscuring the key components of

the composition. A column of empty space extending from the tomb to the feet of the Virgin could have accommodated a tall tabernacle placed in front of it without fully interfering with the image’s didactic responsibilities. The Eucharistic function of the altar draws the thematic and iconographic links between the images that appear behind and around the tabernacle into a cohesive message. El Greco gave the retablo a pronounced vertical thrust, thanks to the Virgin’s height and her visual and narrative link to the Trinity directly above her.51 This directional orientation provides a visual metaphor for what Sandoval hoped all worshippers would experience through orations that were “so elevated that, leaving the terrestrial realm behind, they rise up to the highest points of heaven.”52 Therefore, instead of isolated images stacked on top of one another, what we see is in fact a continuous scene unimpeded by the framing elements that would seem to divide them. This vertical axis then links all parts under the refrain of Eucharistic iconicity that thematizes corporeal presence and the species in which those bodily forms take shape. The axis visualizes, in other words, both the metaphysics and anagogical benefits of Communion. The visual overlay of the altar tabernacle in front of the painted tomb in the Assumption of the Virgin would have enhanced the meanings they both share, thereby underscoring the tabernacle’s centrality to the symbolic program of the altar. The tabernacle houses the Host, which, according to the doctrine of transubstantiation, undergoes a miraculous transformation from bread to become Christ’s physical corporeality through the mystery of the Eucharist. From the viewer’s perspective the tabernacle is superimposed over the Virgin’s

165

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

boxlike tomb that, until the moment of her Assumption, contained her own body. The painting’s tomb and its former contents thus become conflated with the receptacle sheltering the Host. Further, the Assumption of the Virgin, with its doctrinal overtones of the Immaculate Conception, celebrates the sanctification of that body whose very significance centers around its own suitability as the vessel that brought forth Christ’s incarnate matter into the world. As a narrative sequence, we see Mary’s body rising out of this joint tomb/ tabernacle toward heaven, where she will join Christ’s sacramental body in the Trinity above.53 In that painting, Christ bears the marks of the very sacrifice that gets reenacted at every performance of the Mass. But El Greco has also rendered him stridently corporeal (and with an implied physical presence) through a focus on mass and contour derived from Michelangelo’s treatment of the body. Taken as a whole, the union of the sanctified body in the Eucharist and that of Christ’s mother charts out a devotional itinerary that follows Christ’s incarnation, birth, and physical resurrection, with the end goal being that through his sacrifice all can be granted admission into heaven. The lateral panels flanking the Assumption that feature St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist reinforce this Eucharistic and sacrificial theme. The Baptist points downward at the altar—or, more precisely, at the tabernacle and the Host contained in it. His gesture signals the intonation of the words he spoke to Jesus, as described in the Gospel by the eponymous Evangelist, who is pictured at the right: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).54 The Eucharistic theme of corporeal presence enacted throughout the program of the main

166

retablo gets carried out in the two side altars as well, where other liturgical celebrations would be performed before the Adoration of the Shepherds and Resurrection images. These scenes reinforce the themes of physical presence and their transformations conveyed through the Assumption of the Virgin, the Trinity, and the altar tabernacle and place them within a narrative framework bracketed by Christ’s birth and Resurrection. In the Adoration the artist positioned the radiant body of the newborn Christ in the center of the composition’s lower half, and thus closest to the eyes of the kneeling worshipper and directly above the altar table where the sacrificial Host would have been consecrated (fig. 84). In so doing, El Greco devised a composition that reinforces the words spoken during the elevatio of the Host: “Here is the true body of Christ born of the Virgin Mary.” This compositional arrangement becomes, effectively, an appropriate visual accompaniment to the words that perform the Host’s miraculous transubstantiation, which are emphasized repeatedly in Sandoval’s text. Moreover, Sandoval outlines the exegetical connection between the adoration of the infant Christ in the manger and the adoration due to the consecrated Host during Communion.55 The Resurrection, placed behind the altar on the right side of the main retablo, displays Christ’s revivified body rising triumphantly from the altar table where the sacrifice of his flesh would have been ritualistically reenacted (see fig. 82).56 This too, like the Assumption, enacts a notional sanctification of the body through the depiction of a corpse rendered ideal after death.57 Therefore, these narrative episodes of the adoration and the Resurrection represent two divergent poles in the liturgical reenactment of the sacrifice through the

Figure 84 El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1577–79. Fundación Botín, Santander. © Fundación Botín. Photo: José Luis Municio.

167

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

Eucharist.58 The former refers to the initial consecration of the Host, just as the shepherds kneel to adore Christ as the incarnate God. The Resurrection, on the other hand, represents the renewal of that body infused into the consecrated Host through each instance of transubstantiation. The sculpted angels holding the escutcheon with the image of the Veronica in the pediment above the Assumption (see fig. 15 in chapter 1) represent the most charged visual statement on the liturgical function of the altarpiece and on the consequent ontology of the altar image. This element was not part of the original contract for this project, apparently having replaced the coat of arms of the church’s patron after Borromeo’s Instructiones discouraged such personal displays in sacred areas.59 The Veronica’s insertion into the retablo, even if occurring some years after the completion of the other components of the ensemble, has frequently been dismissed as unrelated to the overall theme of the altar.60 I submit, however, that it carries a crucial thematic and symbolic link to the liturgical function of the altar as a whole, and its insertion is thus integral to the altar’s overall Eucharistic program. It provides a visual component that was iconographically relevant but also experientially powerful for the worshipper witnessing the liturgy of the Mass. Whereas other furnishings for the altar provide a permanent thematic link to the Eucharist as exegetical symbols, the angels and Veronica perform key components of the sacrament by acting out the liturgical drama itself. According to Sandoval, angels play a direct role in the worshipper’s witness of the sacrifice performed at the Mass. The priest’s elevatio—an event that occurred more frequently in the Tridentine liturgy61—initiates an

168

otherworldly intrusion of angels who serve to bridge the heavens and earth. At the moment the priest raises the Host for the worshippers to see, God is present and all the angels adore him.62 Quoting St. Ambrosius, St. John Chrysostom, and other early theologians, Sandoval describes in effusive terms the miraculous materialization of angels at every celebration of the Mass and the Eucharist. The sacred space in front of the altar, which contains the presence of the true body of Christ in the consecrated bread, transforms at the moment the priest utters the words of institution. At that instant the altar fills with a chorus of angels joining the faithful in praising Christ and his sacrificed body. Upon holding up the Host, which is the true body, the angels kneel in honor of him, carrying his body in their hands.63 Subsequently, the liturgical role of angels in delivering the sacrament to the heavenly altar is further emphasized after the consecration of the Host as a standard feature of the prayer “Supplices te regamus.” The angels serve to unite the sacramental body of Christ on earth, in the form of the Eucharist, with the body that ascended into heaven.64 The connection between El Greco’s design of the retablo and the celebration of the Mass is underscored by the fact that the two angels holding the escutcheon cast their gazes downward, toward the tabernacle designed for the altar below, while above them we see the painting of Christ’s body on the lap of God the Father in the celestial paradise.65 The addition of the Veronica specifically strengthens the analogy between Host and image on the retablo. The composition of this relic, a cloth that contains traces of Christ’s blood, forms a typological link to the literal presence in the Host, making concrete the mystical and visionary

from icon to altarpiece

experience offered to the faithful upon the consecration of the bread. Significantly, Sandoval explains that it is precisely this opportunity to see Christ on earth accompanied by angels that should provide the primary attraction for people to attend church regularly.66 During the performance of the Mass, the institution of the Eucharist would catalyze the mystical appearance of angels as described in Sandoval’s Tratado, making external what we might otherwise assume to take place in the worshipper’s mental supplications. All of this depends, of course, on the understanding of the original Veronica’s elision of sign and signified through the fusion of Christ’s bodily matter and his image on the cloth. The painting provides a metaphor wrought pictorial of the reincarnation of the word into flesh. Because of the absorption of Christ’s bodily matter into the weave of Veronica’s cloth, the sudarium essentially embodies the transubstantiated Host itself. Furthermore, Christ’s meticulously rendered face provides visual proof for the illusory transformation of the bread into corporeal matter. Seen in this way, El Greco’s Veronica at Santo Domingo el Antiguo substantiates the retablo’s Eucharistic program by serving as a typological reference to the transubstantiated bread and through the activation of the liturgical ceremonies of the Mass.

The Altar and the Icon The Tridentine emphasis on the real presence of the transubstantiated Host, not to mention the privileged position enjoyed by the visible confirmation of this doctrine in the form of its exhibition in the tabernacle, certainly shaped El Greco’s thinking on how to design an artistic program for the Santo

Domingo el Antiguo retablo in a way that most clearly and effectively communicated these themes to the worshipper. However, we must consider further the implications that this complex Eucharistic message has on the ontology of the altar image. The articulation of Eucharistic themes in the highly symbolic and ritualized space of the church redefines the phenomenological status of the altar ensemble and its imagery, raising pertinent questions regarding liturgical performance and the devotional function of images.67 The emphasis placed on the Eucharist made the literal presence of the miraculously transubstantiated Host the focal point of the altar, and thus it might be seen to have relegated the image to a secondary role in line with Tridentine declarations of an image’s inherent transparency and deference to the prototype. Yet a proper understanding of the Eucharistic theme of El Greco’s retablo requires a more nuanced analysis of the interplay of image, prototype, and real presence.68 As the real presence of Christ’s body, the Eucharist is not a matter to be questioned; but any belief that an image contains the physical manifestation of an outside prototype risks violating the theological justification for devotion to icons.69 We have already seen (in chapter 1) that an inalienable tenet of the artful icon is the emphatic denial of any inherent presence, lest the icon as object be liable for facilitating idolatrous worship practices on account of being the direct and final recipient of devotional attention. El Greco’s paintings clarify the status of images as images that contain no material presence of that which is signified. The placement of the tabernacle in front of the empty sarcophagus in the Assumption helps distinguish the painting’s role by serving as a surrogate container that provides a literal

169

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

manifestation of the painted tomb’s more notional function as a vessel once containing the Virgin’s sanctified body. While the sarcophagus that appears in the Assumption no longer shelters Mary’s physical form, thanks to the doctrine stating that she was purified both in spirit and flesh (meaning that her body went to heaven along with her soul), the tabernacle takes up the charge to contain actual bodily matter—a function emphatically denied of images—thanks to its perpetual custody of the Eucharist. Therefore, one body (Mary’s) is swapped for another (Christ’s) that is regularly present at the altar in a way that clarifies the proper distinction between image and Host. This interchange between real presence and artistic representation, and the devotional implications of both, raises questions concerning the “iconicity” of the altar image generally. This becomes important when examining the Santo Domingo el Antiguo retablo not only because of the Catholic Church’s anxiety over the use of sacred imagery but also because of El Greco’s experience and familiarity with the ontology of the image developed up to that point. The mediative roles of the images making up the altarpiece, with all their stylistic and thematic characteristics outlined above, provide material with which we can investigate how a painter of icons would have conceived of this work and how the altarpiece generally relates to the issues explored over the course of this book. In the end, a careful consideration of the devotional function of images will reveal insights into the iconic role of this altarpiece and its status as the culmination of El Greco’s formulation of the artful icon. First, we should not take for granted that at Santo Domingo el Antiguo El Greco for the first

170

time directed his efforts to the creation of an altarpiece, meaning that the audience his paintings addressed differed from that which would have viewed his other more private devotional images. Nonetheless, the artist’s lack of experience in executing projects of this sort does not mean that he was oblivious to questions of how his compositions would provide the proper visual aids for devotional engagement. Instead, as a painter eager to prove his artistic worth at a time when he must have thought his chances to equal the artistic accomplishments of his Italian predecessors was running out, he was especially careful to shape his work around the devotional and liturgical needs of his time and place. This analysis begs the much broader question of the relationship between the altarpiece and the traditional understanding of the icon that El Greco might have conceived. Unfortunately, efforts by scholars to highlight connections between these two types are frustrated by a persistent refusal to recognize any relation between them.70 Peter Humfrey’s succinct remark that “there was no such thing as an altarpiece in Byzantine art”71 may be true if one approaches the issue as a problem of semantics. But the fact that Byzantine churches did not have images above the altar should not mean that an artist such as El Greco would have regarded the project for this altarpiece as an enterprise wholly distinct from the icons he had produced in Crete just over a decade earlier. He probably could have found the Byzantine iconostasis to be a sufficient analogue to the Spanish retablo because of their formal similarities. It is true that the church’s new emphasis on inclusivity prohibited the use of such barriers (including the rood screen in the West) in order to provide direct visible access to the liturgical perfor-

from icon to altarpiece

mance of the Mass. But their typological similarity comes from the fact that both provided the faithful with a plurality of images useful for illustrating components of the liturgy. The retablo then might be seen as a kind of iconostasis displaced behind the altar to preserve the visibility of the church’s primary ritualistic space. It is then up to the artist to devise a scheme that ensures the worshipper’s understanding of the didactic role of these images as icons. Of course, this conflation of the icon and the altarpiece must also take into account the context, the place where devotion takes place. The common goal of all religious images to inspire piety, whether in a church or in the private realm, evinces a shared identity between altarpieces and other forms of devotional imagery. In that regard, other scholars have recognized that altarpieces, even with their formal and contextual specificity to the liturgy, “are devotional images par excellence” and that their existence is directly tied to the justification for why religious images exist in the first place.72 Altarpieces are thus icons of the most direct typological sort, even if their form and liturgical usage has evolved from the time of the early church. It is well-known that some church officials at the end of the sixteenth century discredited the value of private piety, deeming it a threat to the authority of the church as an institution.73 By providing paintings to adorn the sacred liturgical space of a church, El Greco’s works for the retablo of Santo Domingo el Antiguo served as a specifically institutionalized form of the icon, now located safely under the watchful eyes of ecclesiastical authorities to ensure that they convey the proper themes in the proper way to the viewing faithful. We must not underestimate such concerns of the Church for control over piety, as even Bernardino de Sandoval argued that

if in a church, in the presence of priests, the faithful’s prayers are “more accepted by God” than those done privately at home.74 We must also consider what impact the historical, artistic, and religious conditions of late sixteenthcentury Toledo had on shaping El Greco’s thinking about the function of his images. Needless to say, he found himself by this time working in a much different environment than what he had experienced in Crete or even in Italy. It should be noted that Toledo’s implementation of the Council of Trent’s doctrines appears to have been slow relative to other places.75 Nonetheless, we can see how the CounterReformation conception of the religious image as interpreted by the church authorities in Spain did play at least a part in shaping El Greco’s work there. He received the commission for the retablo a mere fourteen years after the council’s decree on sacred imagery, and thus such issues were likely foremost in his and his patrons’ minds. Generally, the subjects, themes, and formats one encounters in his altarpiece all reaffirm Counter-Reformation theology regarding the iconic roles of images—including their devotional power in directing the viewer toward contemplation of the divine themes and figures represented in them.76 In effect, the retablo at Santo Domingo el Antiguo epitomizes what the artful icon embodied and aimed to accomplish in this age of ecclesiastical, liturgical, and doctrinal reform. It represents a coordinated effort to unite the aesthetic quality of the paintings themselves with their devotional function. One of the major objectives of images as defined by theologians at this time was that they refrain from incorporating anything that might distract the viewer from the contemplation of sacred subjects. However, while Sandoval’s declarations on the

171

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy

restrained use of properly painted imagery remained close to the most conservative attitudes and did not add anything new to the complicated issues involving the place of images in devotion, his concerns went much further than mere iconographical or narrative content. Much like his Italian counterparts examined in chapter 2, Sandoval was also concerned with the way in which the stories and subjects were conveyed to the worshipper—in other words, with the style in which they were rendered. Though the Council of Trent did not address the style of altarpieces directly, nor were any new roles granted to images in the liturgy of the Tridentine Mass, there was a pointed recognition that elaborate visual spectacles—ceremonies, candles, incense, and, we must allow, images—help stimulate the faithful into a more direct emotional involvement with the mysteries and miracles of the Mass itself.77 Indeed, Sandoval’s Tratado makes frequent mention of the trappings of the liturgical and ceremonial space that can aid the worshipper’s devotion.78 This stated acknowledgment of the power of spectacle and sense experience to move the soul makes a further concession to the development of the artful icon described in this book. When considering El Greco’s altar retablo for Santo Domingo el Antiguo as an icon ensemble that uses the outward signs of artistic excellence to enhance the worshipper’s internal devotional engagement, it is also worth remembering once again that this retablo represents the culmination of El Greco’s formal appropriation of Italian art. Though Sandoval did not outline any specific characteristics that paintings ought to convey, he did recognize the importance of a well-conceived and effectively crafted style for drawing the viewer into devotional engagement with the image. Given the distinctly

172

Italian character of much religious art at that time in Spain, it is likely that he saw the style of the Italian Renaissance as a standard-bearer for persuasive pictorial rhetoric.79 Of course, this speaks to the secular issue of aesthetic taste as much as to concerns over the proper form and function of images. Regardless, El Greco’s training would have been an appropriate way to ensure that he created religious works of art that conformed to what was at that time considered the style most suitable for elevating the worshipper’s mind to higher and more spiritual states of contemplation. To conclude, El Greco’s retablo at Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo provides a fitting climax for a journey that took him from Crete, through Italy, and finally to Spain. It features all the signs of a painter who began as a maker of smallscale icons and developed into a designer of altarpieces, all while establishing a new form of artful icon to ensure the traditional function of the religious image. The escutcheon with the miraculous imprint of Christ on St. Veronica’s veil serves as a reminder of El Greco’s professional goal, even then, to produce images that served the devotional needs of the faithful—even as they conformed to new conceptions of the artful icon through an implementation of artistic characteristics developed through his close study of Italian masters. His work bears the fullest range of influences from Italian art, signs of his effort to reformulate the religious image according to the artistic standards demanded of him from patrons he had hoped, but until now had failed, to attract. For example, he could not have painted the Assumption without calling to mind other well-known versions of the subject. At the same time, the Trinity demonstrates El Greco’s eager absorption of Michelangelo’s

from icon to altarpiece

lessons on proportion and bodily form, which in turn express the altar’s thematic portrayal of Eucharistic presence. That El Greco’s works at Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo coordinate style and devotional engagement is indicative of how much his experience in Italy shaped his practice as a painter upon arriving in Spain. However, to reiterate a theme discussed throughout this book, stylistic concerns alone do not make this ensemble or any other religious work an icon. Instead, the retablo functioned as a communicator of meaning to an audience of viewers who expected to be engaged in a devotional dialogue that reinforced the Council of Trent’s dictates that images contain no divinity. The theological justification of images simply reiterated that they be nothing but representations devoid of any material presence of the divine. This reclassification essentially restores the altarpiece to the role of icon, though with a distinctly liturgical

function as well. The exhibition of the Eucharistic Host in the tabernacle facilitated the worshipper’s veneration of the substance of Christ’s body. The images in the altarpiece reinforced these sacramental themes while emphatically asserting a clear distinction from the sanctified body that ensured the separation of image and prototype. Worshippers at this church would have then focused their attention on the images as stimulants to the spiritual contemplation of these themes, using them as visual aids with which to focus attention on the exegetical connections between real presence and Christ’s incarnation into the sanctified body of his mother, as well as the resurrection and assumption of their bodies. It is El Greco’s artistic representation of these scenes, drawing on the formal language acquired while studying in Italy, that thus consecrates his work at Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo as a consummate expression of the artful icon.

173

notes

Introduction 1. “Creta le dió la vida, y los pinceles / Toledo mejor patria donde empieça / a lograr con la muerte, eternidades.” Paravicino, Obras posthumas, 74, quoted in Panagiotakes, El Greco: The Cretan Years, 16–17. 2. Gratziou, “Domenikos Theotokopoulos ‘ó δειξας,’” 69–74. 3. For the critical reception of El Greco’s early works, see Álvarez Lopera, “De historiografía.” For critical receptions of his entire career, see Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:19–69; Álvarez Lopera, “Construction of a Painter”; J. Brown, “El Greco: The Man and the Myths”; J. Brown, “Redefinition of El Greco”; and Hadjinicolaou, “Domenicos Theotocopoulos 450 Years Later.” 4. See Drandaki, Origins of El Greco. 5. For El Greco’s Cretan period, see Panagiotakes, El Greco: The Cretan Years; and Papadaki-Oekland, “El Grecos kretische Periode.” 6. Works by Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Jacopo Palma, and others were found throughout Candia. See Panagiotakes, El Greco: The Cretan Years, 96–99. For Venetian paintings in private collections, see Constantoudaki, “Testimonianze su opere pittoriche a Candia”; and ConstantoudakiKitromilides, “La pittura di icone a Creta veneziana,” 459–63. 7. For El Greco’s use of prints, see Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Italian Influences of El Greco’s Early Work”; Dillon, “El Greco e l’incisione veneta”; and Xydis, “El Greco’s Iconographical Sources.” 8. Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Italian Influences of El Greco’s Early Work,” 104. For the print, see Oberhuber, Works of Marcantonio Raimondi, 41. 9. Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Italian Influences of El Greco’s Early Work,” 105. For the print, see Zerner, Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century, 303. 10. Fatourou-Hesychakis, “Philosophical and Sculptural Interests,” 46. 11. See the entry by Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides in Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 343–44. 12. See Zerner, Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century, 86 and 313. 13. Ibid., 12. 14. Ibid., 248. 15. See Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides in Hadjinicolaou, El Greco of Crete: Exhibition, 150–55 and 334–37.

16. For the print, see Veldman, Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert, 55. 17. Mertzios, “Domenicos Théotocopoulos,” 217–19. For El Greco’s training and apprenticeship, see Panagiotakes, El Greco: The Cretan Years, 79–101. 18. Constantoudaki, “Dominicos Theotocopoulos (El Greco) de Candie à Venise,” 296–300. For this icon, see N. Chatzidakis, Icons of the Velimezis Collection, 184–227. 19. Constantoudaki, “Dominicos Theotocopoulos (El Greco) de Candie à Venise,” 305–8. 20. Manoussacas, “Outline of the History of the Greek Confraternity.” For Cretan icon painters in Venice, see Bettini, La pittura di icone cretese-veneziana e i madonneri; M. Chatzidakis, Icônes de Saint-Georges des Grecs; ConstantoudakiKitromilides, “Cretan Painting During the XV and XVI Centuries”; Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “L’arte dei pittori greci a Venezia”; Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Le icone e l’arte dei pittori Greci”; Cormack, Painting the Soul, 167–217; Gouma-Peterson, “Crete, Venice, the Madonneri and a Creto-Venetian Icon”; and Gouma-Peterson, “Icon as a Cultural Presence.” 21. At least eleven painters traveled to Venice between 1570 and 1640. M. Chatzidakis, Icônes de Saint-Georges des Grecs, 45–122. 22. Bettini, “Il pittore Michele Damasceno”; M. Chatzidakis, Icônes de Saint-Georges des Grecs, 51–73; Constantoudaki-­ Kitromilides, “Damaskinos, Theotokopoulos e la sfida veneziana”; Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Le icone e l’arte dei pittori greci,” 581–88. 23. For the paucity of Greek communities outside of Venice and Naples, see Geanakoplos, Interaction of the “Sibling” Byzantine and Western Cultures, 191. 24. For more on madonnero as an art-historical term, see Gouma-Peterson, “Crete, Venice, the Madonneri, and a Creto-Venetian Icon,” 68–76. 25. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 1:32–33. 26. For the artistic environment that El Greco encountered in Venice, see Hadjinicolaou, “El Greco in Italy”; Marías, “El Greco y los artistas de Italia”; and Stoyanova-Cucco, “El Greco e l’ambiente veneziano.” 27. The letter was first published in Ronchini, “Giulio Clovio,” 270 (quotation). See also Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:83–85. 28. J. Brown, “El Greco and Toledo,” 78. See also Checa Cremades, “El Greco y Tiziano.” 29. Dempsey, “Carracci and the Devout Style,” 82–83. For El Greco’s possible itinerary from Venice to Rome, see Puppi, “El Greco in Italy and Italian Art.”

notes to pages 6–19

30. Pérez de Tudela, “A proposito di una lettera inédita di El Greco.” El Greco’s offense appears to have been more severe than what was suggested in Robertson, “Il Gran Cardinale,” 203–7. 31. Martínez de la Peña, “El Greco, en la Academia de San Lucas.” See also Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:87–89. 32. See Puppi, “El Greco in Italy and Italian Art,” 103 and 108. 33. See the chronology in Davies, El Greco (2003), 32–41. 34. First proposed in Zottman, “Zür Kunst von El Greco.” See also Puppi, “El Greco da Venezia a Roma”; Puppi, “El Greco’s Two Sojourns”; and Puppi, “Il soggiorno italiano del Greco.” 35. Willumsen, La jeunesse du peintre El Greco, 1:429–30. 36. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:88–90. 37. See Wethey, “El Greco in Rome,” 175–76. 38. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 230–31. This anecdote was first brought to scholarly attention in Longhi, “Il soggiorno Romano del Greco,” 301–3. 39. For example, see De Maio, Michelangelo e la controriforma, 41–42. 40. See Barnes, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. 41. Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art. 42. Zeri, Pittura e controriforma. 43. Lingo, Federico Barocci. 44. D’Elia, Poetics of Titian’s Religious Paintings. 45. Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art. For the broader context of such artistic experimentations in the first half of the sixteenth century and how anxieties about religious reform in Italy affected conceptions of art, see Nagel, Controversy of Renaissance Art. 46. Dempsey, “Carracci and the Devout Style.” See also Stoenescu, “Annibale Carracci and the Modern Reform of Altar Painting.” 47. Drandaki, Origins of El Greco, 86–87. 48. For more on his understanding of Counter-Reformation doctrine, see Davies, “Relationship of El Greco’s Altarpieces,” 218. El Greco did own a Greek translation of the canons of the Council of Trent. For arguments that El Greco converted to Catholicism upon arriving in Italy, see Panagiotakes, El Greco: The Cretan Years, 63–77. 49. Jonathan Brown speaks of El Greco’s “ambition to transform himself from Byzantine icon painter to Italian Renaissance master” and characterizes him as “an autodidact in the Italian Renaissance style who had to struggle to overcome his Byzantine origins.” J. Brown, “El Greco and Toledo,” 76 and 78. See also Mann, “Tradition and Originality,” 85–87. 50. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 215–16.

176

51. Dolce, Dialogo della pittura, 112–13. 52. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 14–16 and 458–90. 53. Belting, Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages. 54. Freedberg, “Holy Images and Other Images,” 70. 55. Quoted in Ferino-Pagden, “From Cult Images to the Cult of Images,” 172. 56. Casper, “Taxonomy of Images.” 57. Oen, “Origins of a Miraculous Image,” 14. 58. Barber, Figure and Likeness. 59. For the capacity of art to move the viewer, see Barolsky, “History of Italian Renaissance Art Re-envisioned”; and Barolsky, “Visionary Experience of Renaissance Art.” Chapter 1 1. For the legend of St. Luke as painter, see Bacci, Il pennello dell’Evangelista, 33–40. 2. For some examples, see Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 336–37; and Hadjinicolaou, El Greco of Crete: Exhibition, 118–23. 3. Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides in Hadjinicolaou, El Greco of Crete: Exhibition, 331. 4. Ibid., 332. See also N. Chatzidakis, Icons of the Cretan School, 53. 5. Purtle, Rogier van der Weyden. 6. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 253. The issue is treated more broadly in Maniura, “Icon Is Dead, Long Live the Icon.” 7. For the Western iconography of St. Luke as painter, see Klein, St. Lukas als Maler der Maria; and Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, vol. 3, part 2:827–32. More recent studies include Kraut, Lukas malt die Madonna; and Nante, “Luca Evangelista.” 8. Quoted and translated in Goffen, “Icon and Vision,” 507. 9. Papadaki-Oekland, “El Grecos kretische Periode,” 70 (translation in original). 10. Davies, El Greco (2003), 76 (translation in original). 11. Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Italian Influences of El Greco’s Early Work,” 105 (translation in original). 12. The most authoritative examination of the veneration of St. Luke’s images is Bacci, Il pennello dell’Evangelista. For the importance of these images to the Counter-Reformation, see Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie, 133–37. 13. Maniura, “Icon Is Dead, Long Live the Icon,” 89. 14. Georgopoulou, “Late Medieval Crete and Venice,” 487–90. This icon was revered among both the local Orthodox and Venetian populaces. See Concina, “Venezia e l’icona,” 523–26. 15. Trexler, “Florentine Religious Experience.” For more on the continuing reverence for miraculous images in sixteenth-­

notes to pages 19–26

century Florence, some of which were regarded as St. Luke originals, see Holmes, “Miraculous Images.” 16. It was not until the seventeenth century, particularly with the appearances of a manuscript by Niccolò Cassiani and of Wilhelm Gumppenberg’s Atlas Marianus, that there was much concern for providing evidence of the authenticity of these images. See Bacci, Il pennello dell’Evangelista, 356–402. 17. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 38r. See also Georgopoulou, “Late Medieval Crete and Venice,” 493–95. 18. Goffen, “Icon and Vision,” 508–9. Its subsequent authority as a St. Luke icon got validated by the publication of Giovanni Tiepolo, Trattato della Imagine della Gloriosa Vergine dipinta da S. Luca. 19. For some of these images, see Barone, “Immagini miracolose a Roma.” 20. Bacci, Il pennello dell’Evangelista, 250–80. See also Casper, “Icons, Guidebooks, and the Religious Topography of Sixteenth-Century Rome.” 21. Contarini, L’antiquità di Roma, 97v. 22. Palladio, Descritione de le chiese. 23. Felini, Trattato nuovo delle cose maravigliose, 18–20 and 112–13. The lavish ceremony surrounding the installation of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon into a new chapel dedicated to Pope Paul V in 1613 is indicative of the scale of this icon’s cult. See Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome, 118–32. For more on this icon and its cult, see Andaloro, “L’icona della Vergine Salus Populi Romani”; Cellini, La Madonna di S. Luca in S. Maria Maggiore; Guarducci, La più antica icone di Maria; Noreen, “Icon of Santa Maria Maggiore”; and Wolf, Salus Populi Romani. 24. Nante, “Luca Evangelista,” 194. For a detailed discussion of the controversy concerning St. Luke during the Reformation, see Bacci, Il pennello dell’Evangelista, 329–55. 25. Bacci, Il pennello dell’Evangelista, 339. 26. Dobschütz, Christusbilder, 278**. 27. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 311; Morello and Wolf, Il volto di Cristo, 37–63. 28. For this topic, see Barasch, “Creatio ex Nihilo.” 29. Kleinbub, “At the Boundaries of Sight”; Kleinbub, “Raphael’s Transfiguration as Visio-devotional Program,” 369. 30. Gilio, Dialogo, 36–38. 31. Quoted in Kleinbub, Vision and the Visionary in Raphael, 103. 32. The 1614 inventory of El Greco’s books records both an unspecified “S. dionisio” and a “San dionisio de Celesti yerarquia.” San Román y Fernández, El Greco en Toledo, 196. For El Greco’s reliance on Christian Neoplatonism for his articula-

tion of light as a metaphor for the divine, see Davies, “Influence of Christian Neoplatonism.” See also Moffitt, “El Greco’s Gloria.” 33. Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 157. 34. Ibid., 168 and 177. 35. Ibid., 179. Later writers argued that only divine illumination reveals truth and that the senses are liable to mislead judgment. See Tarsia, Trattato sulla natura de gl’angeli, 18. 36. For this theme and its background, see Lavin, “Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio’s Two St. Matthews.” 37. Maniura, “Icon Is Dead, Long Live the Icon,” 91. 38. Wazbinski, L’accademia medicea del disegno, 1:111–54. 39. Filippi, “San Luca dipinge la Vergine,” 269–75. 40. See Panofsky, Idea. 41. Transcribed in Shearman, Raphael in Early-Modern Sources, 1:735. However, Shearman argues that the letter should be attributed to Castiglione himself, not to Raphael. See Shearman, “Castiglione’s Portrait of Raphael”; and Shearman, Raphael in Early-Modern Sources, 1:734–41. 42. Kleinbub, Vision and the Visionary in Raphael, 100–105. See also Belting, Likeness and Presence, 478–84. For the painting’s self-reflexive portrayal of Raphael, see Nagel, Controversy of Renaissance Art, 77–79. For a challenge to Raphael’s authorship, see Wazbinski, “San Luca che dipinge la Madonna.” 43. For the function of this angel “to bring seer and vision together,” see Cole, “Angel/Demon.” 44. Cellini, Life of Benvenuto Cellini, 2:63–67. 45. Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, 163. 46. On this theme, see Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis.” For St. Luke as the personification of the painter/poet in Heemskerck’s painting, see Filippi, “San Luca dipinge la Vergine,” 272–73. For laurel as the attribute of the ennobled artist, see Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, 33–40. 47. This drawing has been dated to the late 1560s in Lynch, “Lomazzo’s Allegory of Painting.” It has been attributed to Federico Zuccaro in King, “Late Sixteenth-Century Careers’ Advice.” 48. Herrmann-Fiore, “‘Disegno’ and ‘Giuditio.’” 49. See Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 140–47. 50. For example, see Lomazzo, Idea del tempio della pittura, 295. For the transfer of ideas following the same path as the radiation of bellezza through successive reflections in mirrors, see ibid., 213. 51. For the role of angels in Zuccaro’s theory, see HerrmannFiore, “Gli angeli nella teoria e nella pittura di Federico Zuccari.” For the connections between El Greco and Zuccaro, see Koshikawa, “El Greco and Federico Zuccari.” 52. Romano Alberti’s records of these lectures, published as

177

notes to pages 27–36

Origine e progresso dell’Accademia del Disegno di Roma (1604), indicate that Zuccaro’s theoretical ideas were developed by the last decade of the sixteenth century. Barasch, Theories of Art, 1:296. 53. “L’Arte è causa seco[n]daria, & il Disegno interno causa primaria.” Zuccaro, L’idea, 169. 54. Ibid., 171–76. See also Rossi, “Idea e accademia.” 55. Zuccaro, L’idea, 300–303. 56. Deswarte-Rosa, “Idea et le Temple de la Peinture: I,” 22–25. 57. S. Campbell, “‘Fare una Cosa Morta Parer Viva.’” 58. For a documentary history of the Mandylion, see Dobschütz, Christusbilder, 102–96, 135*–57*, and 29**–156**. 59. For the role of these images in the Counter-Reformation, see Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie, 125–29. Recent studies on the Veronica include Belting, Likeness and Presence, 215–24; Chastel, “La Véronique”; Kessler and Wolf, Holy Face; and Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth. For an overview of the history of the Veronica and the diffusion of its image through copies, see Wolf, “‘Or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?’” 60. Comanini, Figino, 52–53. 61. See, among others, St. Theodore the Studite, On the Holy Icons, 101. 62. For El Greco’s paintings of the Veronica, see Caturla, La Verónica; Hadjinicolaou, “El Greco: La Santa Faz”; and Sobral, “Uma Santa Face desconhecida do Greco.” 63. See the entry by Leticia Ruiz Gómez in Ferino-Pagden and Checa Cremades, El Greco, 162. 64. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 2:259. 65. This etymology can only be traced back to the Speculum ecclesiae of Gerald of Wales (ca. 1215). See Belting, Likeness and Presence, 603. 66. Chastel, “La Véronique,” 75. See also Dobschütz, Christusbilder, 308**–30**. 67. Quoted in Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 57. 68. Other artists reinterpreted the Veronica’s image to emphasize its status as a Passion relic. See Wolf, “La Veronica e la tradizione romana di icone,” 17. 69. For this discussion, see Gilio, Dialogo, 34. 70. Ibid., 72–73. 71. For the Veronica and pilgrimage, see Fagiolo and Madonna, “L’immagine simbolica.” 72. Martin, Roma Sancta (1581), 90. 73. Quoted in Thurston, Roman Jubilee, 134–35. 74. For the 1575 Jubilee, see Pastor, History of the Popes, 19:197–214. For another modern account, see Palumbo, “I giubilei del Cinquecento,” 225–30. For a bibliography of primary material, see Cronistoria dell’Anno Santo MCMXXV, 1074–79.

178

75. There is no mention of a showing of the Veronica at the 1550 opening of the Porta Santa as recounted in L’ordine et cerimonie usate dalla santità di Papa Giulio III l’anno MDL in aprire le Porte Sante, published as part of Zini, L’anno santo M D LXXV. 76. Angelo Pientini exclaimed that there were likely one hundred thousand more pilgrims than usual and one hundred times the number of pilgrims that normally visit Jerusalem. See Pientini, Le pie narrationi, 69 and 178–79. 77. Ibid., 167. According to one eighteenth-century historian, the two objects were put on public display more often than normal in 1575. See Alfani, Istoria degli anni santi, 335. The Veronica was customarily shown on every Friday throughout the Jubilee year. See Fagiolo and Madonna, Roma, 1300–1875, 106. 78. See Riera, Historia utilissima, 69. A crush at the opening of the Porta Santa in 1575 killed six people. Pastor, History of the Popes, 19:201. See also Pientini, Le pie narrationi, 361; and Riera, Historia utilissima, 27–28. 79. See Chastel, Sack of Rome, 100–108. 80. Guicciardini mentions the destruction of other holy relics in Chastel, Sack of Rome, 98. 81. From the pamphlet titled Warhaftige eine kurz Berichtung inn der Summa published the summer of 1527. See Chastel, Sack of Rome, 101. 82. “Il Volto Santo è stato robato et passato per mille mani, et andato ormai per tutte le taverne de Roma.” Sanuto, I diarii, 45:191. 83. Palumbo, “I giubilei del Cinquecento,” 212. 84. See Chastel, Sack of Rome, 104. One survivor did claim that many of the sacred relics believed to have been destroyed, including the Veronica, “could not have been desecrated by those infamous hands” due to a certain divine immunity from the willful destruction by heathens. See Alberini, I ricordi, 333. 85. See Nagel, “Authorship and Image-Making.” 86. Gandelman, “Semiotics of Signatures.” 87. Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 30. See also the discussion of frames, windows, and the “Bild im Bild,” which also traces a shift toward artistic authorization, in Krüger, Das Bild als Schleier des Unsichtbaren, 133–43. 88. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 94–95 and 101. 89. See the catalog entry in Raffaello in Vaticano, 324–25. 90. Vasari, Le vite, 5:15. 91. Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images, 195–200; Wolf, Schleier und Spiegel, 322–23. For more on this painting and its technique, see Schiavo, “Per Ugo da Carpi intaiatore . . . ,” 437–40. 92. See Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 103–7.

notes to pages 36–50

93. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 430. 94. For these issues, see Camille, Gothic Idol, 27–49. 95. Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images. 96. Krüger, Das Bild als Schleier des Unsichtbaren, 80. 97. Nagel and Wood, “Interventions.” These ideas are greatly expanded in Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance. 98. Wolf, Schleier und Spiegel. 99. Bynum, Christian Materiality, 58. 100. See Wolf, “From Mandylion to Veronica,” 177–78. 101. For a general overview, see Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie, 55–78. 102. The complete quotation reads, “Ottavo, si piglia ancora più largamente per ogni pittura che rappresenti alcuna cosa di religione e sia fatta a questo effetto: però che e per lo soggetto che contiene, che è cosa sacra, e per la fede di chi l’ha formata, e per lo fine a che è stata destinata, subito acquista una certa santificazione e separazione dalle altre cose meramente profane.” Paleotti, Discorso, 199. 103. For the decrees on sacred images issued at the Council of Nicaea, see Seven Ecumenical Councils, 549–51. 104. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 215–16. On the original statement and others by St. Basil, see Ladner, “Concept of the Image.” 105. “ . . . pure si chiamano sacre per la rappresentazione e fine a che sono ordinate o fabricate, imperoché l’imagini per sé stesse non sono cose, ma segni di cose, onde pigliano la sua condizione da quello che rappresentano, sì come tutti i segni si considerano secondo le cose che significano.” Paleotti, Discorso, 199–200. 106. Ibid., 254–58. 107. “Vogliamo però ora avertire il lettore, che queste differenze dette, delle imagini sacre e profane, si possono considerare in due modi: l’uno quanto alla figura per sè stessa, l’altro quanto alla persona che le riguarda; perché potrà essere che una imagine di sua natura e secondo la sua forma debba giustamente essere risposta tra le sacre, e nientedimeno chi la mira la collocherà in altro ordine. Questo aviene perché lo spettatore averà concetto molto diverso nella imaginazione sua da quello che l’artefice ha avuto, come anticamente il serpente di metallo fatto da Moisè per ordine di Dio ad alcuni era in loco di cosa sacra e misteriosa, ad altri in vece d’idolo. Così, in queste imagini, potrà alcuna di esse, quanto alla superficie esteriore, essere tenuta da qualcuno per religiosa e sacra, la quale da altri perversi et empii si terrà per idolo, e da altri sciochi come pittura profana, che serva solo per passatempo.” Ibid., 171–72. This warning against idolatry was already present in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, which discuss the role of images with regard

to heavenly prototypes and gives the justification for the use of material things, such as icons. See Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 151–52. 108. S. Campbell, “‘Fare una Cosa Morta Parer Viva,’” 606. 109. Nagel, “Leonardo and Sfumato.” 110. S. Campbell, “‘Fare una Cosa Morta Parer Viva,’” 608. For icons as simulacra, see Baudrillard, “Procession of Simulacra,” 3–7. 111. The display of artifice in Jesuit devotional manuals acted as a stimulus to meditative prayer. See Melion, “Pictorial Artifice and Catholic Devotion.” 112. The complete quotation reads, “Laonde diciamo che per imagine noi pigliamo ogni figura materiale prodotta dall’arte chiamata il dissegno e dedotta da un’altra forma per assomigliarla.” Paleotti, Discorso, 132. 113. Ibid., 132–36. 114. Ibid., 251. 115. See also Freedberg, Power of Images, 27–40 and 378–428. Chapter 2 1. The work was published as an autograph El Greco in Cormack and Vassilaki, “Baptism of Christ,” and in Vassilaki and Cormack, “Domenikos Theotokopoulos: The Baptism of Christ.” See most recently, Hadjinicolaou, “Iraklion Baptism of Christ.” 2. First noticed in Puppi, “Il soggiorno italiano del Greco,” 140. 3. Cormack and Vassilaki, “Baptism of Christ.” 4. For the painted illusion of gold as a hallmark of a new valorization of artistic skill, see Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 14–17. 5. See Vassilaki and Cormack, “Domenikos Theotokopoulos: The Baptism of Christ,” 234. 6. Cormack and Vassilaki, “Baptism of Christ,” 41, Vassilaki and Cormack, “Domenikos Theotokopoulos: The Baptism of Christ,” 231. 7. For this and other identifications, see Pallucchini, Il polittico del Greco, 8–10. 8. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:47–48; Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 369–70; Davies, El Greco (2003), 106–7. 9. Mayer, “Notes on the Early El Greco”; Miesel, “La tabla central del triptico de Modena.” 10. These elements are taken from another Last Judgment woodcut. See Hadermann-Misguich, “Deux nouvelles sources.” 11. This may have been taken from a Last Judgment engraving from Dürer’s Small Passion series. Hadermann-Misguich, “Deux nouvelles sources,” 356–58. 12. For the iconographic sources for the Modena Triptych, see

179

notes to pages 50–60

Maria Vassilaki’s entry in Hadjinicolaou, El Greco of Crete: Exhibition, 337–49. See also Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Italian Influences of El Greco’s Early Work.” 13. For the sources of Adam and Eve, see Fatourou-Hesychakis and Hesychakis, Cretan Sources of Theotocopoulos’ (El Greco’s) Humanism, 36–41. 14. First identified in Pallucchini, Il polittico del Greco, 6. 15. Hadjinicolaou, El Greco of Crete: Exhibition, 345. 16. See the entry by Maria Kazanaki-Lappa in Drandaki, Origins of El Greco, 90–91. 17. Maria Vassilaki in Hadjinicolaou, El Greco of Crete: Exhibition, 346. For the print, see Zerner, Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century, 380. 18. For a possible precedent in an older icon, see Kühnel, “Die Ikone des Sinai-Klosters.” For more, see Gardner von Teuffel, “El Greco’s View of Mount Sinai”; and Rice, “Five Late Byzantine Panels.” 19. See the entry by Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides in Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 345–50. 20. All of these identifications are mentioned by Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides in ibid. 21. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:35–37. 22. Acheimastou-Potamianou, Holy Image, Holy Space, 224–27; M. Chatzidakis, Icons of Patmos, 105–6. 23. This work by Klontzas repeats the iconography found in a signed triptych by the same artist formerly owned by the Spada family in Venice. See Acheimastou-Potamianou, Holy Image, Holy Space, 227–29. 24. Frigerio-Zeniou and Lazovic, Icônes, 21–26. 25. Cormack and Vassilaki, “Baptism of Christ”; Vassilaki and Cormack, “Domenikos Theotokopoulos: The Baptism of Christ.” This reverses the conclusions previously made in Vassilaki, “Three Questions on the Modena Triptych.” 26. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 352. 27. For more on compositional repetition, see J. Brown, El Greco: Themes and Variations. For El Greco’s repetition in devotional images of saints, see Mann, “Tradition and Originality.” 28. One is at the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid and another previously in a private collection in Lausanne was sold in 2002. See entries in Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 356–57; and Hadjinicolaou, El Greco in Italy and Italian Art, 506–12. See also Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:48–52. 29. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:89–91.

180

30. Pacheco, Arte de la pintura, 2:8–9. 31. Golden, “Creating and Re-creating.” 32. Hope, Titian, 154. See also Falomir, “Titian’s Replicas and Variants,” 63–64. 33. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:229–30. 34. Zarco Cuevas, Pintores españoles, 140–41. See also San Román y Fernández, “De la vida del Greco,” 4–5 and 50; and San Román y Fernández, El Greco en Toledo, 21–23, 156, and 161–62. 35. El Greco’s first version of Cleansing of the Temple bears a slightly different signature: “ΔΟΜΉΝΙΚΟC ΘΕΟΤΟΚΌΠουΛΟC ΚΡΗC” (Domenikos Theotokopoulos Cretan). 36. Marías, “El Greco y los ‘originales’ de su taller.” 37. J. Brown, “El Greco: An Introduction.” 38. For more on the copying practices of icon painters, see Babic, “Il modello e la replica”; Elkins, “From Original to Copy”; Kessler, “Configuring the Invisible”; and Vikan, “Ruminations on Edible Icons.” 39. Quoted in Coffin, “Pirro Ligorio on the Nobility of the Arts,” 197. 40. For Venetian private devotion, see P. Brown, “Behind the Walls”; Kasl, “Holy Households”; and Morse, “Creating Sacred Space.” 41. Scholars have paid far more attention to late medieval and early Renaissance devotion. Principal studies include Freedberg, Power of Images, 161–91; Hahn, “Visio Dei”; Hamburger, “Imagination and Believing”; Hamburger, Rothschild Canticles; Hamburger, Visual and the Visionary; Ladis and Zuraw, Visions of Holiness; Ringbom, “Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions”; and Os, Art of Devotion. For the role of images in Italian Renaissance devotion, see Rubin, Images and Identity, 177–227. 42. For the integration of devotional images and texts, see Treherne, “Pictorial Space and Sacred Time.” For the prominence of devotional texts in sixteenth-century Venetian households, see Morse, “Creating Sacred Space,” 165. 43. See Hamburger, Visual and the Visionary, 111–48. Gauvin Alexander Bailey has shown that “the Jesuits zealously promoted devotional art and the use of imagery, whether real (as in paintings and illustrated books) or imagined (as in visionary devotional practices).” Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 7. 44. Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 45. 45. For an overview of reform literature in Italy—for which Venice was a major center of printing and distribution—see Rozzo and Menchi, “Book and the Reformation in Italy.” A useful resource for these printed texts is Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books.

notes to pages 62–70

46. See da Lucca, Arte del ben pensare e contemplare la Passione, 46v. For the role of images in devotional texts in the Counter-Reformation, see Palumbo, “L’uso delle immagini.” For the role of images in devotional manuals, see D. Freedberg, Power of Images, 175–88. 47. See Barbieri, “Fra tradizione e cambiamento,” 22. For more on the expansion of religious and devotional titles by the Venetian press starting in the 1560s, see Grendler, Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 129–34. 48. Del Bene, I divoti e pii discorsi sopra la Passione, 11r–18v. 49. See Mayer, “Notes on the Early El Greco,” 28–29; and Miesel, “La tabla central del triptico de Modena,” 205–14. 50. This is not to say that there is a monolithic “CounterReformation” style, as argued in Zeri, Pittura e controriforma. See the counterarguments in Boschloo, Annibale Carracci in Bologna, 142–44; Jedin, “Das Tridentinum und die bildenden Künste”; and Strinati, “Roma nell’anno 1600,” 15–43. 51. For one examination of the devotional impact of style, see Bosch, “Image and Devotion.” 52. Brundin, “Literary Production in the Florentine Academy,” 70–71. 53. Quoted in Belting, Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages, 22. 54. From Sylvester Syropoulos, Vera historia unionis non verae, as cited in Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 254. 55. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 16. 56. Cattapan, “Nuovi elenchi e documenti.” 57. For the multiplicity of styles adopted by Cretan icon painters, see Panagiotakes, El Greco: The Cretan Years, 25–28. See also Vassilaki, Painter Angelos, 67–80. 58. For example, see his icon of the Adoration of the Magi, painted between 1585 and 1591, in Collection of Ecclesiastical Art, Saint Catherine of the Sinaites, Heraklion, Crete. Also see the entry by Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides in Drandaki, Origins of El Greco, 96. 59. On this altarpiece, see Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Le icone e l’arte dei pittori Greci a Venezia,” 577–78. 60. Puppi, “Il Greco giovane,” 31. 61. The quotations are from M. Chatzidakis, Icônes de Saint-Georges des Grecs, xxxi and 181–82. See also M. Chatzidakis, “L’opera del pittore Tommaso Bathas.” 62. Morse, “Creating Sacred Space,” 181–82. 63. “Le quali erano la maggior parte quadretti di certe figure fatte alla greca, goffissime, dispiacevoli e tutte affumicate, le quali ad ogni altra cosa parevano esservi state poste, fuori che à muover divotione, overo à fare ornamento à simil luoghi.” Armenini, De’ veri precetti della pittura, 188. See also Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 34–35.

64. “E si vede in questa levato via il proffilo che ricigneva per tutto le figure, e quegli occhi spiritati e ’ piedi ritti in punta e le mani aguzze, e il non avere ombre, et altre mostruosità di que’ Greci.” Vasari, Le vite, 3:11–12. For Vasari’s use of “goffo,” see Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 281–84. 65. “Così facesse Giotto, in riducendo l’arte della pittura d’una maniera non intesa né conosciuta da nessuno (se non se forse per goffissima) a bella, facile e piacevolissima maniera intesa e conosciuta per buona da chi ha giudizio e punto del ragionevole.” Vasari, Le vite, 2:249. 66. Hadjinicolaou, “La defensa del arte bizantino por El Greco.” 67. “Si supiera lo que es verdaderamente aquella manera griega que el di(. . .) de otra sorte la trataría en lo que dize digo conparan(. . .) la con lo que yzo Jotto que e cosa simple a comparaç(. . .) de lo que se ensenna deficultades engeni(. . .) sas en aquela.” Ibid., 221–22. This is a slight revision from the transcription appearing in Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 77 and 125. 68. Hollanda, Four Dialogues on Painting, 66–67. 69. Ibid., 15–16. 70. Ibid., 66. 71. Ibid., 16 and 18. 72. See Gilio, Dialogo, 55–56. 73. The complete quotation reads, “E mi pare che i pittori che furono avanti Michelagnolo più a la verità et a la devozione attendessero, che a la pompa.” Ibid., 55. 74. Ibid., 111. See also Krüger, “Authenticity and Fiction,” 44. 75. “Se quelli erravano nel poco, e questi errano nel molto; però sarebbe bene di quel poco e di questo molto fare regolata mescolanza e cavare un mezzo che suplisse al difetto degli uni e degli altri, acciò l’opere abbino de debite proporzioni.” Gilio, Dialogo, 56. 76. Vasari himself had already introduced works by Fra Angelico in his 1550 biography as the epitome of the proper compromise between the ineptitude of medieval artists and the lack of decorum exhibited by more refined painters, saying that Angelico’s works exemplified the balance between devotional purity and artistic excellence. See Vasari, Le vite, 3:274. See also Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, 14. 77. Anderson, “Pietro Aretino and Sacred Imagery.” 78. Lingo, Federico Barocci, 6–8. 79. Stoenescu, “Annibale Carracci and the Modern Reform of Altar Painting.” 80. For the concern for artistic quality in the illustrations of devotional texts, see D. Freedberg, Power of Images, 183.

181

notes to pages 73–80

Chapter 3 1. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:71–72; and Puppi, “El Greco in Italy and Italian Art,” 106–8. 2. Trapier, “El Greco in the Farnese Palace,” 83–85. 3. One alternative to Raphael—though not supported here—is Correggio, an artist for whom El Greco reserved significant praise in his notations to Vasari’s Vite. See Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 15–26. 4. See Smith, “Giulio Clovio.” 5. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:66–74. 6. Waterhouse, “El Greco’s Italian Period,” 70. 7. Various studies of El Greco’s notes to Vasari appear in Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo. For his notes to Vitruvius (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, ms. R 33475), see Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas de El Greco. These postille were examined most recently by Hellwig, “El Greco: Zeichner und Kunsttheoretiker,” 52–59. 8. The complete quotation reads, “Paresse deficile donde pues se a visto concieptos yn esta nuestra edad que los Antigos nunqua dieron yn ello et por esso sperar si deve di ver lo que asta hora si a dejado come se a visto nela pintura e scultura donde Micael Angelo tuvo un gusto tan mirable quel nunqua se vio yn hotro scultor e con que palabras se potrebe dezir la eunusta de los colores de Titiano con tanto ymitazion de naturaleza e de hotros que ano mostrado sumo ynjenio ma la desgrazia o hordene que sia de la naturaleza—nuestra—que non compuerta que sean muchos destos como ho dicho los desbarta por varios caminos come fue que el de Jacomo Tintoretto (faltarle el favor de los prinzipes) e assi entendo que es tanbien el numero de los Antigos escritos, y con la morte de Rafael de Urbino yl quale fu de los Primeros que dio luz nela Pintura e juntamente con el de la misma eda de trenta hocho annos levo Antonio de Correjo e non desare de arecordar Parmigiano digo Francisco Parmijano que pare que solo nassio por mostrar con los yschizos ho rascunnos que ssi dicono la svelteza e grazia nelas figuras para juntar este numero ho tenido deficultad e non de meno Jorgio (. . .) unos trezentos y plugera a dios que el saver perfecto de todos esos.” Transcribed in Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas de El Greco, 235–36. 9. See Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco. Other studies include Hellwig, “El Greco: Zeichner und Kunsttheoretiker,” 59–66; Joannides, “El Greco and Michelangelo”; Kitaura, “El Greco y Miguel Ángel”; and Wethey, “Michelangelo e El Greco.” 10. Goffen, Renaissance Rivals. 11. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:230–31. See also Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 38–41.

182

12. The complete quotation reads, “Y no es tanto de maravillar como oirle hablar con tan poco aprecio de Micael Angel (siendo el padre de la pintura) diciendo que era un buen hombre y que no supo pintar.” Pacheco, Arte de la pintura, 1:370. 13. The complete quotation reads, “No labrian, por que el un (. . .) no lo acabaría nunq[ua] acabado y el otro no abria sabido enpeçar, bano onde sabia M[iguel] Angel retratar ne far cabellos ne (. . .)sa que ymitase a carnes y sigue por lo que dan los colores a oglio no si puede negar que el era falto et ynpedido de semejantes delicadezas, que c(. . .) del retrato, ci[erto] que es disvergonça lo que scribe.” Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 90 and 128. See also Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 38. For an alternate translation of “por lo que dan los colores a oglio” as “as for imitating colors as they appear to the eye,” see J. Brown, “El Greco and Toledo,” 88. 14. Fatourou-Hesychakis, “Philosophical and Sculptural Interests,” 58–59. 15. For the full 1644 inventory, see Jestaz, L’inventaire du palais. See also Jestaz, “Le collezioni Farnese di Roma,” in Schinachi and Spinosa, I Farnese, 49–67. 16. See Trapier, “El Greco in the Farnese Palace,” 80–81. Clovio owned more works by Michelangelo than by any other artist and was such a dedicated follower that Vasari once dubbed him “a new, if smaller, Michelangelo.” Goguel, “Giulio Clovio.” 17. For Fulvio Orsini’s collection of Michelangelo drawings, see Nolhac, “Les collections de Fulvio Orsini”; Nolhac, “Une galérie de peinture”; and Trapier, “El Greco in the Farnese Palace,” 74–75. 18. El Greco evidentally paid particular attention to drawings of the Pietà that Clovio collected. See Trapier, “El Greco in the Farnese Palace,” 81. 19. See Vasari, Le vite, 6:92–93. See also Camiz, “Pietà in Rome.” 20. This print bears the privilege of Pope Gregory XIII, who took the throne beginning in 1572. See Barnes, Michelangelo in Print, 145–47. 21. Lavin, “Ex Uno Lapide.” 22. Goffen, Renaissance Rivals, 371. 23. Ibid., 371–85. 24. Wallace, “Michelangelo, Tiberio Calcagni, and the Florentine Pietà.” 25. Steinberg, “An El Greco ‘Entombment’ Eyed Awry.” 26. Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, 202–15. 27. “Asi se ve nelos dibujos por esser solo de un sogeto—obietto solo—come la scultura aver alegado Micael Angel toda perfecion lo qual pues con los colores no echo nada.” Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas de El Greco, 226.

notes to pages 81–89

28. “Y lo meyor que sapeva hazer era esto y sin conparación.” Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 37–38. 29. Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas de El Greco, 227. 30. Barzman, “Perception, Knowledge, and the Theory of Disegno”; Barzman, Florentine Academy in the Early-Modern State, 143–51; Williams, Art, Theory, and Culture, 29–72. 31. Zeitler, “In nueum Licht.” 32. Hellwig, “El Greco: Zeichner und Kunsttheoretiker,” 61–62. 33. This is especially true with engravings after Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina cartoon. See Barnes, Michelangelo in Print, 9–27. 34. Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas de El Greco, 226. El Greco also shared his thoughts on the greater difficulty of colorido over debujo in Pacheco, Arte de la pintura, 1:370. 35. For example, see Salas, “Un exemplaire des Vies de Vasari”; and Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 15–26. 36. For an overview of El Greco’s debt to Titian, see Checa Cremades, “El Greco y Tiziano.” 37. “Entre pintores no habido un[o] en Venecia que no recon[oci]ese a Tiziano como los q[ue] tienen meyor gusto y m[as] q[ue] los de su Florencia, p[or] lo que nos escrivis dello.” Quoted in Salas, “Las notas del Greco,” 164. A slightly different transcription appears in Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 114 and 132. 38. The complete quotation reads, “Ya una persona le concede sea el mayor ymitador de la natura, con la bela manera del colorido. Si la ubiera aprovechado lo de Roma también le poria danar. Lo certo es que teniendo lo quatenido, mas abria sido de provecho a los dos [a Rafael y Miguel Angel] averle ymitado a el, que a el por ventura a imitado a ellos, no ostante que qualquier dellos val se mas quel otro en la parte que mas se enplio, per el antiponerlos entramos en el debito e desta manera no deja de ser disvergença.” Salas, “Las notas del Greco,” 163. A slightly different transcription appears in Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 113 and 134. 39. “En Venecia no le llaman un gofo en la pintura basta decir manera de Roma.” Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 133. 40. This statement is extracted from a longer response to Vasari’s claim that Titian lacked talented competition in Venice. See Salas, “Las notas del Greco,” 165. 41. For a copy of Tintoretto’s San Severo Crucifixion possibly by El Greco, see Pedrocco, “El Greco e Jacopo Tintoretto.” However, the painting bears resemblance to his hand only generally. 42. See Álvarez Lopera, “Sobre Tintoretto y El Greco.” 43. The complete quotation reads, “No ostante que el quadro

que Tintoreto a echo del ospital en S.enRoqco es la mayor pintura que ay oy en el mundo pues que si perdio la batalla de Tiçiano digo la mayor por las muchas y varias cosas que en ella ocoren asi de disnudos como de colorito que no se halla en otra parte si no es en algunas de las buenas obras de Ticiano.” Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 103–4 and 130. See also Salas, “Las notas del Greco,” 164; and Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 33. 44. Vasari did call him “the most awesome brain that painting has ever had” (il più terribile cervello che abbia avuto mai la pittura). Vasari, Le vite, 5:468. 45. “La peyor pintura del Tintoreto tendrá tanto de gracia de Pintor, tanto la meyor de Batista Veneçiano y de Jorge Vasari tendra del gofo.” Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 33. A slightly different transcription appears in Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 103 and 130. 46. Rosand, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice, 20. 47. For the aesthetics of speed, see D’Elia, “Tintoretto, Aretino, and the Speed of Creation.” 48. D’Elia, Poetics of Titian’s Religious Paintings, 107–31. 49. Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 236. 50. For a recent analysis of this painting’s place among El Greco’s early works, see Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:52–54; and Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “La Huida a Egipto.” 51. See Cranston, Muddied Mirror. For Titian’s style as an enhancement of the devotional intensity of his works, see Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 157–71. 52. See Dempsey, Annibale Carracci; and Loh, “New and Improved,” 483–89. 53. For Muziano’s criticism of Vasari, see Hochmann, “Les annotations marginales de Federico Zuccaro,” 67–68. 54. Robertson, “El Greco e Italia,” 95. 55. See Missirini, Memorie, 18. 56. The complete quotation reads, “Se Tiziano e Michel Angelo fussero un corpo solo, over al disegno di Michel Angelo aggiontivi il colore di Tiziano, se gli potrebbe dir lo dio della pittura.” Pino, Dialogo di pittura, 126–27. 57. Cicero, De inventione, 167–69. 58. Seneca, Epistulae morales, 277. 59. Ibid., 279. See also Pigman, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,” 5. 60. Seneca, Epistulae morales, 279. 61. The classic study of art theory’s dependence on classical theories of rhetoric is Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis.” See also Goldstein, “Rhetoric and Art History.” 62. Alberti, On Painting, 91.

183

notes to pages 89–94

63. “La maniera venne poi la più bella dall’aver messo in uso il frequente ritrarre le cose più belle, e da quell più bello, o mani o testi o corpi o gambe, aggiugnerle insieme a fare una figura di tutte quelle bellezze che più si poteva.” Vasari, Le vite, 4:4. 64. For this variety, see Pigman, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance.” 65. Cennini, Il libro dell’arte, 16. 66. Lee erroneously identified Dolce, whose treatise came out nine years after Pino’s, as the originator of this tripartite division of painting. Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis,” 264. For a detailed analysis of Pino’s theoretical division of painting, see Gilbert, “Antique Frameworks for Renaissance Art Theory”; and Pardo, “Paolo Pino’s Dialogo di pittura,” 226–56. 67. He reversed the order because his discussion of disegno incorporates the concept of “invention.” By dividing disegno into giudizio (judgment), circumscrizzione (outline), pratica (practice), and composizione (composition), the first of these three parts correspond exactly to Cicero’s division of inventio into acumen, method, and diligence. It is the fourth component of Pino’s disegno, composition, that encompasses rhetorical dispositio. 68. Hollanda, Four Dialogues on Painting, 73–74. This source erroneously identifies the surname of artist “Giulio” as Clovio instead of Romano. 69. Dolce, Dialogo della pittura, 186–87. 70. Ibid., 184–85. 71. “Il disegno di Michel Angelo, e’ l colorito di Titiano.” Ridolfi, Le meraviglie dell’arte, 2:5–6. 72. Vasari famously reported that Raphael combined manners taken from multiple artists to create a new individual style. Vasari, Le vite, 4:206–7. 73. Poirier, “Disegno-Colore Controversy Reconsidered.” 74. Lomazzo, Idea del tempio della pittura, 153. 75. Dempsey, Annibale Carracci, 62. 76. Kemp, “‘Equal Excellences.’” A fascinating review of the theoretical origins of the Temple of Painting can be found in Deswarte-Rosa, “Idea et le Temple de la Peinture: I”; and Deswarte-Rosa, “Idea et le Temple de la Peinture: II.” 77. Mahon, “Eclecticism and the Carracci.” Dempsey, however, argues that the Carracci introduced a theory-driven eclecticism into their practice by the mid-1580s. See Dempsey, “Carracci Reform of Painting.” 78. For the potential of color to attract devotion, see Lingo, Federico Barocci, 189–207. 79. For discussions of Venetian color and the disegno versus colorito controversy, see S. Freedberg, “Disegno versus Colore”; Puttfarken, “Dispute About Disegno and Colorito”; and Rosand,

184

Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice, 10–25. El Greco’s combination of disegno and colorito effectively achieved a national “Italian” style by merging local traditions—even before such a cultivation of a national style could be attributed to the Carracci. See Dempsey, “National Expression in Italian Sixteenth-Century Art.” For an examination that eschews geographical divisions, see Sohm, “Gendered Style in Italian Art Criticism.” 80. Vasari accused Giorgione of teaching Titian a style that uses color to conceal his ignorance of drawing. Vasari, Le vite, 6:155–56. 81. The complete quotation reads, “Dopo, partiti che furono da lui, ragionandosi del fare di Tiziano, il Buonarruoto lo comendò assai, dicendo che molto gli piaceva il colorito suo e la maniera, ma che era un peccato che a Vinezia non s’imparasse da principio a disegnare bene e che non avessono que’ pittori miglior modo nello studio: ‘Con ciò sia—diss’egli—che, se quest’uomo fusse punto aiutato dall’arte e dal disegno, come è dalla natura, e massimamente nel contrafare il vivo, non si potrebbe fare più né meglio, avendo egli bellissimo spirito et una molto vaga e vivace maniera.’” Ibid., 6:164. 82. See Salas, “Las notas del Greco,” 162. 83. See Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 105. This last comment refers to Vasari’s assertion that Salviati’s frescoes at the Farnese Palace were superior to those by Taddeo Zuccaro. 84. “Perdonale Dios que no sabe lo que dice.” Ibid., 100. 85. “Los toscanos nunca los abrieron.” Salas, “Un exemplaire des Vies de Vasari,” 179. In the margins of Vasari’s biography of Michelangelo, El Greco accuses all Florentines of being blind to colorito. Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 131. See also Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 36. 86. The complete quotation reads, “Desto si be que el Vasari . . . ningun gusto por que esta e(. . .) la mas sporca y gofa ob(ra) que en publico si puede ver y de questo si p(. . .) de ver que las loas que el aze esto todo a caso y segun la pasion y parcialidad e qui no la vis[to] no le paresca estramo pro(. . .) otras cosas que abia visto que es ansi se ha la ca(. . .) lo que quera o por ser figuras grandes se dis[co]bre mas y por el mi[smo] se queda coberto a Jorge Vasari.” Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 111 and 132. 87. “Y ansi reusi tanbien de los primeros gofo[s] que a bido en su tanto.” Ibid., 102 and 130. 88. For anonymous responses to Vasari that share El Greco’s attitudes, see Ruffini, “Sixteenth-Century Paduan Annotations.” 89. Even though Pino’s treatise was published two years before Vasari’s Vite, he referred to Vasari’s work. See Pino, Dialogo di pittura, 135. The two writers must have known each other; Pino

notes to pages 94–110

likely got his hands on a manuscript of Vasari’s book before it went to press. See Pardo, “Paolo Pino’s Dialogo di pittura,” 29–36. 90. “No diria Jorge que le ha balido algo el ver Veneçia.” Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 106 and 131. See also Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 34. 91. “Y por major que todos sus florentinos.” Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 91 and 128. For more of El Greco’s attacks on Vasari’s disapproval of Venetian painting, see Salas, “Las notas del Greco,” 162–63. 92. Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 111. 93. For a comparative analysis of various postille, see Hochmann, “Les annotations marginales.” A copy of the 1568 edition of the Vite with scant annotations by Francisco de Hollanda is kept in the National Library in Lisbon. See dos Santos, “Un exemplaire de Vasari,” 91–92. 94. See Salas and Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo, 130. 95. Scholars once believed that Annibale was solely responsible for these annotations, but in fact all three contributed. See Dempsey, “Carracci Postille in Vasari’s Lives”; Fanti, “Ancora sulle postille carraccesche”; and Fanti, “Le postille carraccesche.” The notations were first attributed to Agostino Carracci by Bodmer, “Le note marginali di Agostino Carracci.” A more accessible transcription can be found in Perini, Gli scritti dei Carracci, 158–64. They were studied most recently by Keazor in “Distruggere la maniera?” 96. Dempsey, “Carracci Postille in Vasari’s Lives,” 75. 97. The complete quotation reads, “Questo divinissimo pittore à fatto di quelle cose che paiano più tosto cose fatte da g[li] Angioli del Cielo che di mano d’u[n] huomo mortale et in alcune cose et particolarmen[te] ne’ ritratti del v[ivo] à avanzato di g[ran] longa tutti i pit[tori] del mondo. E questa bestia d[el] Vasari lo descri[ve] quasi un pittore a caso.” Transcribed in Perini, Gli scritti dei Carracci, 161. 98. Ibid., 161. 99. “Questo Paulino i[l] quale ho io conosc[iuto] et visto le bell’ope[re] sue era degno c[he] scrivesse delle [s]ue lodi un gran vol[ume] essendo che le s[ue] pitture dimostra[no] che egli non fu seco[ndo] ad alcun altro p[ittore], e questo ignoran[te] se la passa con qua[ttro] righe. E ciò perc[hé] egli non fu fior[enti] no.” Transcribed in ibid., 159. 100. “Battista Franco non fu se non mediocre pittore e non fu così eccelente come l’ignorante Vasa[ri] il comenda, ma doveva costui e[ssere] amico suo o c[he] il Vassari dove[tte] reicevere da co[stui] qualche scudo [esse]ndo Giorgio avarissimo.” Transcribed in ibid., 159. 101. Wethey, “Michelangelo e El Greco,” 145.

Chapter 4 1. Finaldi, “Anatomía de una serie”; Harris, El Greco: The Purification of the Temple. 2. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 216. 3. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:67. 4. Davies, El Greco (2003), 87; Finaldi, “Anatomía de una serie,” 56–57. For the historical significance of this theme, see Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, vol. 2, part 2:401–5. 5. While this story found no place in Émile Mâle’s L’art religieux après le Concile de Trent, the significance of the subject with respect to Counter-Reformation doctrine has been highlighted in Held, “El Grecos Interpretationen der Blindenheilung.” See also Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, vol. 2, part 2:371–73. 6. Buonriccio, Le pie, et christiane parafrasi, 1:237. 7. Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 8. 8. MacLaren, Spanish School, 13. 9. Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti, 127–33. 10. Though no credit is given to Alberti, see Ilchman, “Tintoretto as a Painter of Religious Narrative.” For more on Tintoretto’s theatrical narratives as a genre developed to incite religious fervor, see Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 173–97. 11. Gilio, Dialogo, 25. 12. Ibid., 33. 13. The complete quotation reads, “[Il] pittore istorico non è altro che un traslatore, che porti l’istoria da una lingua in un’altra, e questi da la penna al pennello, da la scrittura a la pittura.” Ibid., 39. 14. Buonriccio, Le pie, et christiane parafrasi, 1:237 and 2:37–38. 15. Christ’s pose comes from a 1568 Cornelius Cort engraving after a drawing by Federico Zuccaro. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:69. 16. Alberti, On Painting, 73. 17. Ibid., 76. 18. Ibid., 75. 19. Maré, “El Greco’s Italian Paintings,” 66–67. 20. Alberti, On Painting, 76. 21. Consequently, as Alberti says, “the greatest emotions must be expressed by the most powerful physical indications.” Ibid., 80. For an analysis of El Greco’s gestures as emotional signifiers, see Wittkower, “El Greco’s Language of Gestures.” 22. Alberti, On Painting, 77. 23. See Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 126–27. 24. Gilio, Dialogo, 28. 25. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 367. 26. Rosenberg, “Raphael and the Florentine Istoria.” 27. For more on the significance of sight and blindness in

185

notes to pages 110–117

Blinding of Elymas, see Kleinbub, Vision and the Visionary in Raphael, 72–81. 28. Held, “El Grecos Interpretationen der Blindenheilung,” 114–18. See also Davies, El Greco (2003), 80–81. 29. “Signore, rispondono, noi desideriamo che tu, il qual sei il vero lume, che illumina tutto il mondo, apri & illumini anchora questi nostri occhi; accioche vedendo etiandio noi la bellezza di queste cose create, ammiriamo, & lodiamo la sapienza & potenza del creatore. All’hora Giesu havendo misericordia di questi poverelli, & volendo dimostrare che la divina virtù, laqual stava in lui nascosta; operava con il mezo del suo santißimo corpo, come con uno strumento animato a se congionto, toccò loro gl’occhi; & di subito incominciarono a chiaramente vedere. Onde poi eßi come spiritualmente illuminati, & come grati di uno cosi segnalato beneficio, insieme con gl’altri si posero a seguire Giesu Christo non solamente con i piedi corporali, ma anche con l’imitazione delle virtù.” Buonriccio, Le pie, et christiane parafrasi, 1:232–33. 30. “Ma essendosi la vera luce Giesù Christo, che illumina tutti gl’huomini, che vengono in questo mondo . . . & essendo uscito del tempio, fece una opera & uno miracolo tale, in cui apertamente dimostrò, che havendo lasciato nelle tenebre i giudei, che chiudevano i loro occhi per non vedere la luce, doveva passare alle genti, & illuminarle.” Ibid., 2:138. 31. Ibid., 2:146. 32. See the entry in Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 367–68; J. Brown, “El Greco and Toledo,” 79–80; Davies, El Greco (2003), 80; and Wethey, El Greco and His School, 1:22 and 2:44. 33. For the influence of these images on sixteenth-century Venetian painters, see Gould, “Sebastiano Serlio and Venetian Painting.” 34. Serlio, Il secondo libro di prospettiva, 68r. 35. See ibid., 64v. 36. Gilio, Dialogo, 24–25. 37. See the chronology convincingly laid out in Vechnyak, “El Greco’s Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind.” 38. “Un quadro in tela con cornici di noce, dipinto un Christo che illumine il cieco nato in una prospettiva fatta a portico con Apostoli et altre figure, mano antica buona.” Jestaz, L’inventaire du palais, 170. 39. See Alberti, On Painting, 47–59. 40. For Alberti’s optics and his assertion that vision is fundamental to the cognitive process, see Greenstein, “On Alberti’s ‘Sign.’” See also Edgerton, “Alberti’s Perspective”; Grayson, “L. B. Alberti’s ‘Costruzione Legittima’”; and Lindberg,

186

Theories of Vision, 147–77. This issue of Alberti’s reliance on optical theories has been debated. See Massey, “Configuring Spatial Ambiguity,” esp. 161–63. 41. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form. For a survey of the metaphorical meanings of perspective that opposes the notion of a unified theory, see Elkins, “Renaissance Perspectives.” 42. Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas de El Greco. 43. Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, 24–25. 44. The complete quotation reads, “Solo farò avvertiti quelli, i quali dipingono le scene, che con grande circonspettione pongino il punto, accioche le cose dissegnate non parino ruinare, & accioche servino lo sito, & l’aparenza naturale, & questo faranno commodamente ponendo l’occhio oltra’l piano della scena, & considerando la distanza de gli spettatori, & la grandezza de gli edificij.” Barbaro, La pratica della perspettiva, 155. 45. See Marotti, “Teoria e tecnica dello spazio scenico”; and Molinari, “Gli spettatori e lo spazio scenico.” 46. Di Maria, Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance, 129–54. 47. For a Lacanian analysis of perspective’s aim to capture the viewer, see Damisch, Origin of Perspective, 44–46. See also Iverson, “Discourse of Perspective.” For these visual effects in Renaissance theater, see Di Maria, Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance, 136–38. 48. Serlio, Il secondo libro di prospettiva, 25r. 49. For the construction of perspective stage spaces in sixteenth-century Italy, see Kernodle, From Art to Theater, 176–86. 50. Serlio, Il secondo libro di prospettiva, 64v. 51. “I pittori de i nostri tempi altrimenti celebri, & di gran nome, si lasciano condurre da una semplice pratica, & nelle tavole loro non dimostrano sopra questa parte cosa degna di molta commendatione.” Barbaro, La pratica della perspettiva, 3. 52. Ibid., 130–31. Alberti also discussed these devices in De re aedificatoria, which was first published in Italian shortly before Barbaro’s first edition of his perspective treatise. Povoledo, “Origini e aspetti della scenografia,” 411–12. 53. See Barbaro, I dieci libri dell’architettura, 30. 54. “Sciegraphia e vocabulo Griego conpuesto de dui vozes di so[m]bra e Pintura e quitando sci e puesto scen sera Pintura de la scena et bien se intende que nella scena non si pinta seno fabrica in perspetiva con todo esso puede server a mi parezer un vocavulo et lotro en qualquier forma que se dibusso en Griego se la nobra lama sciasma tomando de ho[m]bra de la qual ho[m] bra no puede faltar prespetiva e assi no ay duda que se intende de la prespettiva digo prospettiva.” Transcribed in Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas de El Greco, 228. 55. For a discussion of these two terms as intersections of

notes to pages 117–119

visual and artistic principles, see Summers, Vision, Reflection, and Desire, 16–42. 56. Serlio, Il secondo libro di prospettiva, 67r. 57. Critics favoring a plurality of socialized modes of viewing question the predominance of perspective vision as a construction of ocular reality. See especially Foster, Vision and Visuality; and Jay, Downcast Eyes. For a recent discussion of Renaissance perspective as a conceptual and perceptual construction removed from the real world as it actually exists, see Hendrix, “Perception as a Function of Desire.” 58. Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 32–36. 59. Clark, Vanities of the Eye. For more on the fallacies of vision, see Summers, Judgment of Sense, 42–49. 60. Panofsky reminds his readers that for Albrecht Dürer, “Perspectiva is a Latin word which means ‘seeing through [Durchsehung].’” Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 27. 61. For the most recent assessment of the optical basis for painterly perspective, see Summers, Vision, Reflection, and Desire. For an engaging discussion of Renaissance perspective as a pictorial equivalent of vision, see Snyder, “Picturing Vision.” For discussions of perspective and medieval optics, see Edgerton, Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective, 64–78; and Elkins, Poetics of Perspective, 67–80. A fuller exploration of the science of perspective can be found in Kemp, Science of Art, 9–98. For the paradox of perspective as both deceptive and truthful, see Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 83–90. 62. “ . . . si debbiano stendere i raggi del vedere, che rispondino alle linee naturali, accioche di cosa incerta certe imagini de gli edifici nelle pitture delle Scene corrispondenti al vero si vedino, & accioche quelle cose, lequali ne gli driti, & nelle fronti piane sono disegnate, parino di rilievo, certo è, che tutta questa pratica in tre soli termini, & nella cognitione di quelli è risposta. Cioè, occhio, raggi, & distanza.” Barbaro, La pratica della perspettiva, 4. 63. “Il Perspettivo non ha altra intentione, che disegnare ne i piani, o tavole sottoposte tutte le forme, overo figure visibili, & farle parere in quel modo, che il giacimento, il sito, & la distanza loro richiede. Ilche cosi essendo non ha dubbio, che noi non habbiamo, a considerare l’occhio, che vede: il modo, col quale si vede: la cosa, che si vede: la distanza, dallaquale si vede: & il piano, sopra’lquale il Perspettivo ha da disegnare le cose, che si hanno a vedere.” Ibid., 5. 64. Frangenberg, “Angle of Vision,” 33–38. 65. For a critical study of Danti’s edition of Vignola, see Fiorani, “Danti Edits Vignola.” See also Frangenberg, “Egnatio Danti’s Optics,” 12–20. 66. Vignola’s theories of perspective and Danti’s commentaries

on them must have circulated among artists in Rome. El Greco met Vignola, who served as Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s chief architect, when they both were staying at the Farnese court in the early 1570s and likely discussed matters of perspective with him then. Robertson, “El Greco e Italia,” 93. Danti composed much of the commentary as early as the late 1560s or early 1570s while preparing lectures on perspective at the Medici court. Fiorani, “Danti Edits Vignola,” 143. Vignola himself was working on the Gesù at the time El Greco was in Rome. A manuscript of his text is kept at the Archivio Storico at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and may have been available to El Greco as a member of the Università dei Pittori. Roccasecca, “La ‘Portione del manoscritto originale.’” 67. The most authoritative essay on Vignola’s perspective treatise is Kitao, “Prejudice in Perspective.” However, the author addresses optics only briefly. 68. Frangenberg, “Egnatio Danti’s Optics,” 8–12. 69. “L’arte della Prospettiva è quella, che ci rappresenta in disegno in qual si voglia superficie tutte le cose nello stesso modo, che alla vista ci appariscono.” Vignola, Le due regole della prospettiva, 1. 70. For an examination of Danti’s description of the eye, see Dubourg Glatigny, “La ‘merveilleuse fabrique de l’oeil.’” 71. Elkins, Poetics of Perspective, 176–77. 72. Barbaro, La pratica della perspettiva, 6. Alberti also regarded the dispute over directionality to be “without value.” Alberti, On Painting, 40–41. 73. The complete quotation reads, “Per le quali ragione si deve indubitatamente concludere, che il veder nostro no[n] si faccia in modo alcuno da’raggi, che escono dall’occhio; ma che, come vuole Aristotile, essendo il vedere passione, & ogni passione essendo nel patie[n]te; ne segue che’l vedere si facia dentro all’occhio nostro, & no[n] fuori. & perciò dice Aristotile, che la specie, o imagine della cosa veduta si stende nall’aria tanto, che viene fin dentro all’occhio nostro ad imprimersi nell’humor cristallino, nel quale si fa principalmente la visione, a che concorre nondimeno tutta la sustanza dell’occhio.” Danti in Vignola, Le due regole della prospettiva, 12. 74. Barbaro, La pratica della perspettiva, 7. In a similar vein, Danti referred to these species making “imprints.” Vignola, Le due regole della prospettiva, 10. Bacon related this process of the multiplication of species to a passage in Aristotle’s De anima, which likens the transmission of sensible qualities in matter to a stamp making impressions in wax. Bacon, De multiplicatione specierum, 45–47. 75. Lindberg, Theories of Vision, 98. See also Lindberg, “Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Light,” 17.

187

notes to pages 119–132

76. Vignola, Le due regole della prospettiva, 7–9. 77. Aristotle, De Anima, 173–74. 78. However, this equivalence of species with visual rays contradicts Aristotle’s supposition that visual rays convey the entire shape and essence of the mother object. Frangenberg, “Perspectivist Aristotelianism,” 144–45. 79. “Per lo mezzo della luce si vedono le figure, & le grandezze, i colori, & le forme delle cose . . . ; la vista non riceve alcuno oggetto senza lume.” Barbaro, La pratica della perspettiva, 7. 80. Ibid., 175–76. 81. “E quello stesso, che i Prospettivi dicono del corpo luminoso, che da ciascuno suo punto manda linee luminose, le quali vanno a trovare tutti i punti delle cose da loro illuminate.” Danti in Vignola, Le due regole della prospettiva, 8. 82. An understanding of the convergence of bodily and spiritual vision in the formal apparatus of one-point perspective had already been established. See Edgerton, Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry, 88–107, esp. 89–91: “Henceforth Renaissance pictorial realism could be defined as not only replicating human vision but revealing the actual process of God’s divine grace working on earth.” For the inherence of spiritual vision in Alberti’s optics, see Carman, “Meanings of Perspective in the Renaissance.” 83. Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, 178 and 145. 84. Ibid., 185. For an overview of classical philosophies that inform medieval light theology, see St. Augustine, City of God, 305–6. 85. Vance, “Seeing God.” 86. Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie, 65–66. Narrative images that did become the foci of religious cults usually acquired the same reputation for performing miracles. See, for example, Oen, “Origins of a Miraculous Image.” 87. Panofsky, “Imago Pietatis.” 88. Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 52–58. 89. Belting, Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages, 52–54. 90. D. Freedberg, “Holy Images and Other Images,” 68. 91. See Kleinbub, “Raphael’s Transfiguration as Visio-­ devotional Program”; and Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, 83–90 and 113–40. 92. Stoenescu, “Ancient Prototypes Reinstated,” 423–48. 93. Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 71–74. 94. Alberti, On Painting, 87. Chapter 5 1. None of the churches funded by Cardinal Farnese were decorated before El Greco left Rome. Robertson, “El Greco, Fulvio Orsini, and Giulio Clovio,” 222–23.

188

2. Robertson, “El Greco e Italia,” 94–95. 3. For more on El Greco’s contact with Fulvio Orsini, see Vegüé y Goldoni, “En torno a la figura del Greco.” 4. Nolhac, “Une galérie de peinture,” 433 (quotation). 5. Puppi, “Il soggiorno italiano del Greco,” 144. 6. Cited in Nolhac, “Une galérie de peinture,” 433n43. 7. Jestaz, L’inventaire du palais, 170. 8. “. . . un Giovane che buffa in un tizzone acceso per accendere un lume, mano del Greco.” Ibid., 172. 9. Nolhac, “Une galérie de peinture,” 433nn44,45. 10. Pérez de Tudela, “A proposito di una lettera inédita di El Greco,” 187. 11. Douglas-Scott, “Portrait of Charles de Guise.” See also Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:95–96; and Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 363–64. 12. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:97–99; Wethey, “El Greco in Rome.” 13. See, for example, Titian’s portrait of Count Antonio Porcia at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. 14. This format probably derives from Titian’s portrait of Giulio Romano in the Palazzo della Provincia in Mantua. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:93. 15. See Trapier, “El Greco in the Farnese Palace,” 75n8. 16. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:99–102. 17. The portrait has been dated to 1576–78 by Keith Christiansen in Davies, El Greco (2003), 266. Wethey was more cautious about its attribution. See Wethey, El Greco and His School, 2:94–95. 18. Robertson, “Il Gran Cardinale,” 30. A rendering of the vision of Augustus circulated in some manuscript editions of Marvels of Rome, 17–18. 19. Robertson, “Il Gran Cardinale,” 30. See also Voelkle, “Farnese Hours,” 65–66. 20. Robertson, “Il Gran Cardinale,” 50. 21. See Riebesell, “Die Antikensammlung Farnese”; and Riebesell, Die Sammlung des Kardinal Alessandro Farnese. 22. Robertson, “Il Gran Cardinale,” 14. 23. For Alessandro Farnese’s attitudes about the CounterReformation, see ibid., 149–207. Robertson is correct to suggest that Alessandro’s pronounced pietistic austerity reflected his ambitions to be pope. 24. See Schinachi and Spinosa, I Farnese, 248; and Trapier, “El Greco in the Farnese Palace,” 83–85. 25. Pérez de Tudela, “A proposito di una lettera inédita di El Greco,” 185–86. 26. Puppi maintains that this figure is Don Juan of Austria. However, his portrait could only have been painted in Parma in

notes to pages 132–141

1574, when El Greco was still in Rome. See Puppi, “El Greco in Italy and Italian Art,” 109–12. 27. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 1:24. 28. See Navenne, Rome, le palais Farnèse, 436 and 483–84. 29. Moffitt, “Christianization of Pagan Antiquity.” 30. For the impact of the Laocoön on Renaissance artists, see Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 152–55. 31. It should be pointed out, however, that El Greco may have seen casts of both the Laocoön and Farnese Hercules that Tintoretto kept in his workshop in Venice. Vechnyak, “El Greco’s Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind,” 179. The head of Laocoön also appears in a Cornelius Cort etching after Titian’s Gloria. See Xydis, “El Greco’s Healing of the Blind.” 32. Ettlinger, “Exemplum Doloris.” For an overview of recent scholarship on the reception of the Laocoön in Renaissance art, see D’Elia, Poetics of Titian’s Religious Paintings, 28–34. 33. Gilio, Dialogo, 41–42. 34. Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 152. 35. Vechnyak identified the structure in the Parma picture as the rectilinear alignment of columns in the porch of the Pantheon. Vechnyak, “El Greco’s Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind,” 177. However, close observation clearly reveals that this, too, is a temple in the round. 36. For Renaissance sketches of the Arch of Constantine, see Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 216. 37. Another nearly identical view is at the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (inventory no. 10780). I. Campbell, Ancient Roman Topography and Architecture, 238. 38. For Dosio’s work and patronage in Rome, see Valone, “Giovanni Antonio Dosio.” 39. For a critical analysis of Dosio’s drawings, see Hülsen, Das Skizzenbuch des Giovannantonio Dosio. For the collection of drawings at the Uffizi, see Borsi et al., Roma antica. 40. Gamucci’s book was first published in 1565 as I libri quattro dell’antichità di Roma and again in 1569 with slight modifications as Le antichità della città di Roma. 41. First noticed by Bury, “El Greco’s Books.” 42. San Román y Fernández, “De la vida del Greco,” 89. 43. Other variants of the generic “Antichità di Roma” include Luigi Contarini’s L’antiquità di Roma, sito, imperadori, famiglie, statue, chiese, corpi santi, reliquie, pontefici, e cardinali di essa (Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1575); Andrea Fulvio’s Opera di Andrea Fulvio delle antichità della città di Roma (Venice:

Michele Tramezino, 1543); Pirro Ligorio’s Delle antichità di Roma (Venice: Michele Tramezino, 1553); Bartolomeo Marliani’s Le antiquità di Roma (Rome: Antonio Blado, 1548); Lucio Mauro’s Le antichità de la città di Roma (Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1542); and Vincenzo Scamozzi’s Discorsi sopra l’antichità di Roma (Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1582). Andrea Palladio published his small guidebook to ancient Rome, L’antichità di Roma, together with his Descritione de le chiese, stationi, indulgenze e reliquie de Corpi Sancti, che sonno in la città de Roma in 1554. It was republished anonymously many times over as Le cose maravigliose dell’alma città di Roma. 44. This issue was taken up briefly by Bury, “El Greco’s Books,” 389–90. 45. See also Zorach, Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome. 46. For a critical study of all the editions of this book, see Ashby, Il libro d’Antonio Labacco. 47. Other illustrated texts include the Latin edition of Bartolomeo Marliani’s Urbis Romae topographia, first published in 1534 (the later Italian translation has no images), and some editions of the Le cose maravigliose della città di Roma. See Rossetti, Rome. Cavalieri’s publication consists entirely of Dosio’s designs. 48. For the church’s attitudes regarding collections of antiquities, see Stenhouse, “Visitors, Display, and Reception.” For Counter-Reformation criticism of pagan antiquity, see Laureys, “Pagan and Christian Legacy of Rome.” 49. See Freiberg, Lateran in 1600. 50. Renaissance artists typically portrayed the Temple of Solomon as a centralized structure. See Sinding-Larsen, “Some Functional and Iconographical Aspects of the Centralized Church.” 51. Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, vol. 2, part 2:372. 52. Gamucci, Le antichità della città di Roma, 116r. 53. Held, “El Grecos Interpretationen der Blindenheilung,” 111–12. The role of martyred Christians is emphasized in Biondo, Roma ristaurata, 24v. 54. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance. 55. Greenstein, Mantegna and Painting as Historical Narrative, 59–85. 56. For related issues, see also Nagel and Wood, “What Counted as an ‘Antiquity’ in the Renaissance?” 57. See Schiavo, “Santa Maria degli Angeli alle Terme”; and Siebenhüner, “S. Maria degli Angeli in Rom.” For a brief history of Michelangelo’s involvement in the construction of the church, see the relevant sections of Argan and Contardi, Michelangelo Architect. A more detailed account is offered in Ackerman, Architecture of Michelangelo, 2:132–36. A contemporary

189

notes to pages 141–155

chronicle of the church’s construction is offered in Catalani, “Historia della erettione della Chiesa di S. Maria degli Angeli.” 58. Ackerman, Architecture of Michelangelo, 2:133; Karmon, “Michelangelo’s ‘Minimalism.’” 59. Borsi et al., Roma antica, 40. 60. Importantly, the baths were the only ancient structure converted for ecclesiastical use in the sixteenth century, as the practice of reusing ancient structures became less common after the Middle Ages. Ackerman, Architecture of Michelangelo, 1:123. 61. Bredekamp, “Lorenzinos de’Medici Angriff auf den Konstantinsbogen.” 62. Literature on the Arch of Constantine and its decorative program is vast, but see Peirce, “Arch of Constantine.” It is unlikely that El Greco would have been aware of the intricacies of the arch’s spolia and their meaning. 63. For the appearance of the arch in Italian Renaissance art, see Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 214–16. 64. Ettlinger, Sistine Chapel Before Michelangelo, 112–13. 65. See Freiberg, “In the Sign of the Cross.” 66. See Freiberg, Lateran in 1600, 84–85 and 186–88. 67. “El hombre es fuego, la mujer estopa, venga el diablo y sopla.” Cossío, El Greco, 29. See also Davies, “Playing with Fire.” For a different interpretation, see Bury, “An Interpretation of El Greco’s Allegory.” 68. Mena Marqués, “La Fábula o Alegoría moral,” 347. Since it was not listed in Orsini’s collection, Finaldi suggests that this work may have been painted directly for the cardinal. See the entry in Davies, El Greco (2003), 226. 69. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 2:81–83. 70. Another painting at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh was probably painted in Spain. For this and all other paintings of this subject, see Davies, El Greco: Mystery and Illumination, 50–59. 71. Bialostocki, “Puer Sufflans Ignes.” See also Glendinning, “El soplón y la Fábula de El Greco”; and Stechow, “Bassano’s and El Greco’s Boy Blowing on a Fire.” 72. J. Brown, “El Greco and Toledo,” 83. 73. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:103. 74. See the bibliography in El Greco of Toledo, 227–28; and Wethey, El Greco and His School, 2:195. For Bassano’s version, see Stechow, “Bassano’s and El Greco’s Boy Blowing on a Fire.” 75. The religious circle of Fulvio Orsini may have fostered this religious allegorical significance. See Mena Marqués, “La Fábula o Alegoría moral,” 347–48. However, the connection to Valdesian doctrine is discredited by the literal and figurative proximity of

190

the Papacy to Cardinal Farnese’s intellectual and theological circles. 76. Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 45. Chapter 6 1. For an overview of El Greco’s early career in Spain, see Trapier, El Greco: Early Years at Toledo. 2. For more on El Greco’s ambitions to stay in Madrid, see Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:92–93; and Pita Andrade, “Sobre la presencia del Greco en Madrid.” 3. Zarco Cuevas, Pintores italianos. For this and other aspects of Philip’s patronage, see Mulcahy, Philip II of Spain. For the decorative program of the Escorial more generally, see Mulcahy, Decoration of the Royal Basilica of El Escorial. 4. In the 1580s, unable to lure Veronese and Tintoretto away from Venice, Philip secured the services of Federico Zuccaro instead. But the work of this decidedly non-Venetian artist was not to the king’s liking. Mulcahy, Decoration of the Royal Basilica of El Escorial, 144. 5. Ibid., 54–62. See also Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:141–47; Checa, “Das Martyrium des hl. Mauritius von El Greco”; and Cloulas-Brousseau, “Le Greco à l’Escurial.” For more on the king’s taste for religious art, see Mulcahy, “Philip II as a Patron of Religious Painting.” 6. Kagan, “El Greco and the Law,” 84–86. 7. The documents for this project were published in San Román y Fernández, “Documentos del Greco.” See also Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:96–110. The most detailed studies of this project include Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:113–32; and Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 1–45. 8. Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 225–47. 9. Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 15–20; Vegüé y Goldoni, “En torno a la figura del Greco.” The Spanish humanist Pedro Chacón may also have assisted in El Greco’s move. See Leone de Castris, “Domenikos Theotokopoulos,” 245. 10. As suggested in Mulcahy, “Philip II as a Patron of Religious Painting,” 315. 11. The figure commonly identified as St. John the Evangelist might be St. Paul. Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 42–43. 12. Pérez Sánchez, “On the Reconstruction of El Greco’s Dispersed Altarpieces,” 150–54. 13. For more on El Greco’s selection for this project, see Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 20–21. The contract required that El Greco execute the works entirely on his own, without the help of assistants. The artist kept costs low by paying for the materials himself, and he later reduced his compensation from 1,500 to

notes to pages 155–165

1,000 ducats. See the Memoria of Don Luis de Castilla and other documents transcribed in San Román y Fernández, “Documentos del Greco,” 3–6. 14. For the latest work on this masterpiece, see Mann, “La Asunción de la Virgen.” 15. For the use of such signature devices, see Matthew, “Painter’s Presence.” 16. For an overview of the early Christian accounts of the Dormition and Assumption, see Apocryphal New Testament, 691–723. 17. As identified by Georgios Mastropoulos in Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Identity and Transformation, 340–42. 18. A thoughtful analysis of El Greco’s reform-driven archaism can be found in Stoenescu, “Visual Narratives of El Greco, Annibale Carracci, and Rubens,” 13–90. For archaism generally and in the work of Federico Barocci, see Lingo, Federico Barocci, 4–6 and 13–31. 19. Nagel, Controversy of Renaissance Art, 85. 20. Gilio, Dialogo, 55–56. 21. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 2.1:118. Marcia Hall even claimed that “El Greco could only have had Titian’s masterpiece . . . in mind.” Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 233. 22. See Dolce, Dialogo della pittura, 186–87. 23. Raphael’s Transfiguration similarly portrays Christ looking upward toward a vision of God the Father that lies beyond the representational frame of the canvas. See Kleinbub, “Raphael’s Transfiguration as Visio-devotional Program,” 383–87. 24. For this project, see Gere, “Two of Taddeo Zuccaro’s Last Commissions,” 286–93. 25. Quoted in Apocryphal New Testament, 713. 26. Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art. See also Levi D’Ancona, Iconography of the Immaculate Conception. Of course, St. John the Evangelist is pictured alongside the Assumption. Pérez Sánchez, “On the Reconstruction of El Greco’s Dispersed Altarpieces,” 152. 27. Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, 52–54. For more on the Immaculate Conception in the second half of the sixteenth century, see Lingo, Federico Barocci, 39–48. 28. Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 37–38. 29. Ibid., 26–27. 30. Michelangelo’s Trinity may also have been known through engravings by Giulio Bonasone from 1546 and by Nicolas Beatrizet from 1547. Barnes, Michelangelo in Print, 78–80. 31. Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 31. 32. Trapier, “El Greco in the Farnese Palace,” 81.

33. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 1:35. This figure might also be based on an ancient statue called Ariadne Sleeping. See Kitaura, “El Greco y la tradición,” 6. For the most recent examination of the iconographic sources for this work, see Constantoudaki-­ Kitromilides, “Notes on El Greco’s Resurrection,” 37–52. 34. Salas, Miguel Angel y El Greco, 23–24. 35. Snow-Smith, “El Greco’s Religious Oeuvre in Spain,” 424–26. For other formal identifications, see Kitaura, “El San Sebastián de El Greco.” 36. Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 22–23. For more on El Greco and his architectural projects, see Marías, La arquitectura del Renacimiento en Toledo, 2:101–16; and Marías and Bustamante García, Las ideas artisticas, 17–41. 37. The most comprehensive examination of the retable remains Braun, Der christliche Altar, 2:277–545. 38. Cossío, El Greco, 129–31. 39. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 1:67. 40. Davies, “El Greco’s Scheme of Decoration,” 105–9. 41. For El Greco’s iconographic program, see Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 1–45. For the Council of Trent decree on the Eucharist, see the thirteenth session in Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 72–80. For the sculptural elements reinforcing Tridentine decrees regarding justification and the Holy Eucharist, see Davies, “El Greco’s Scheme of Decoration,” 96. 42. The best overview remains Cope, Venetian Chapel of the Sacrament. For the liturgical importance of the Eucharist in the second half of the sixteenth century, see Wandel, Eucharist in the Reformation, 208–55. 43. Sandoval, Tratado, 266. 44. Ibid., 267. 45. San Román y Fernández, “Documentos del Greco,” 4. 46. For the sacrament altar as a type, see Braun, Der christliche Altar, 2:574–99; for Renaissance and Baroque examples, 590–97. For a more nuanced analysis of tabernacles and sacrament houses in the sixteenth century, see Timmermann, Real Presence, 321–45. Prominent examples in Rome, though postdating El Greco’s work in Toledo, are the altar tabernacles constructed at the Sistine and Pauline Chapels at Santa Maria Maggiore, as well as the altar of the sacrament at the Lateran. For the first two projects, see Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome. For the latter, see Freiberg, Lateran in 1600, 130–58. 47. See Borromeo, Instructiones fabricae, 160–73. 48. See Kilde, Sacred Power, Sacred Space, 99; and White, Roman Catholic Worship, 12. 49. Nagel reveals that the displacement of images in favor of

191

notes to pages 165–172

sacrament tabernacles in some Italian churches in the first half of the 1500s amounted to a kind of “soft iconoclasm.” See Nagel, Controversy of Renaissance Art, 195–285. Nonetheless, this image-sacrament polemic subsided after midcentury as images regained their former prominence at the altar alongside the Eucharist. 50. See Wethey, El Greco and His School, 2:4. Monegro’s letters to Don Diego de Castilla from 1579 regarding the execution of the tabernacle confirm this. Davies, “El Greco’s Scheme of Decoration,” 102–3. See also Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:116–17. 51. González, “El concepto del retablo en El Greco”; Mann, “El Greco’s Altarpieces,” 115–18. 52. The complete quotation reads, “Y por esto dize S. Chrysostomo, que los que assiste[n] a la missa, deven attentamente considerar, que es tiempo de oracion: y que han de estar tan levantados, que dexada la tierra, suban alo mas alto delos cielos.” Sandoval, Tratado, 268. 53. Moreover, Sandoval explained that the Assumption elevated Mary to a position in heaven from which she could lead the angelic choirs in celebration of the Eucharist during Mass. See Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 39; and Sandoval, Tratado, 263–64. 54. Davies, “El Greco’s Scheme of Decoration,” 88–89. See also Davies, “The Relationship of El Greco’s Altarpieces,” 227–28. 55. Sandoval, Tratado, 277. 56. J. Brown, “El Greco and Toledo,” 120. 57. Davies, “Relationship of El Greco’s Altarpieces,” 229. 58. Mann, El Greco and His Patrons, 31. For the Eucharistic significance of the Resurrection with respect to the liturgy of the Mass, see Sandoval, Tratado, 286. 59. Davies, “El Greco’s Scheme of Decoration,” 95. 60. The precise date of this panel is not known. El Greco is recorded as having been paid for a “pintura de la Verónica” in 1579. This payment may have been for the painting St. Veronica Displaying Her Veil, originally located on the nave wall of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. See Álvarez Lopera, El Greco: Estudio y catálogo, 1:115. However, the assertion that the escutcheon could

192

not date before 1586 is only conjectural, and so we should not be so quick to dismiss the possibility that this is what the document refers to. 61. For a history of the vision of the Host within the liturgy of Mass, see Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, 2:206–12. For the elevatio as the consecration of the Host, see Wandel, Eucharist in the Reformation, 237–40. See also Clark, Vanities of the Eye, 183–91. 62. Sandoval, Tratado, 276. 63. Ibid., 277. 64. Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, 2:231–35. 65. This particular aspect is noted by Keith Christiansen in Davies, El Greco (2003), 116. 66. Sandoval, Tratado, 278. 67. I thank Ian Verstegen for sharing ideas regarding pictorial presence and the altar image. 68. For a discussion of these issues in the Counter-Reformation, see Cole, “Perpetual Exorcism.” 69. For discussions of formal presence in works of art, see Maniura and Shepherd, Presence. 70. For the differing functions of icons and altarpieces in Byzantium, see Gardner, “Altars, Altarpieces, and Art History,” 14–15. 71. Humfrey, Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice, 25. 72. See Martin Kemp, introduction to Humfrey and Kemp, Altarpiece in the Renaissance, 6–7. 73. Kagan, “Toledo of El Greco,” 59–60. 74. Sandoval, Tratado, 89–90. 75. See Kagan, “Toledo of El Greco,” 55. 76. Davies, “Relationship of El Greco’s Altarpieces,” 212–42. 77. See “Ceremonies and Rites of the Mass,” in Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 147. 78. For example, see Sandoval, Tratado, 268. 79. Mann, “El Greco’s Altarpieces for the Chapel of Saint Joseph,” 48–49. One index of the popularity of Italian art in Spain is the influence of Vasari’s Lives starting in the 1560s. See Gérard Powell, “Vasari et l’Espagne.”

Bibliography

Primary Sources Alberini, Marcello. I ricordi. Vol. 1 of Il sacco di Roma del MDXXVII: Studi e documenti. Edited by Domenico Orano. Rome: Coi Tipi di Forzani, 1901. Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Translated by Cecil Grayson. London: Penguin, 2004. Alfani, F. Tommaso-Maria. Istoria degli anni santi al di loro solenne cominciamento per infino a quello del regnante Sommo Pontefice Benedetto XIII. Naples: Gennaro Muzio, 1725. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Edited by J. K. Elliot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Aristotle. De Anima (On the Soul). Translated by Hugh Lawson-Tancred. London: Penguin, 1986. Armenini, Giovanni Battista. De’ veri precetti della pittura. Ravenna: Francesco Tebaldini, 1587. Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. New York: Modern Library, 1993. Bacon, Roger. De multiplicatione specierum. In Roger Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Edition, with English Translation, and Notes, of “De Multiplicatione Specierum” and “De Speculis Comburentibus,” edited by David C. Lindberg, 1–269. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. Barbaro, Daniele. I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio. Venice: Francesco de’ Franceschi, 1567. ———. La pratica della perspettiva. Venice: Camillo and Rutilio Borgominieri, 1568. Biondo, Flavio. Roma ristaurata. Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1542. Borromeo, Carlo. Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae. In “Charles Borromeo’s Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae, 1577: A Translation with Commentary and Analysis,” by Evelyn Carole Voelker. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 1977. Buonriccio, Angelico. Le pie, et christiane parafrasi sopra l’Evengelio di San Matteo, et di San Giovanni. 2 vols. Venice: Gabriel Giolito, 1568. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Translated by H. J. Schroeder. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1941. Catalani, Matteo. “Historia della erettione della Chiesa di S. Maria degli Angeli alle Terme Diocleziane, cavata dagli scritti di Antonio Duca di Cefalù, sacerdote e per Mattia Catalani di

Palazzolo fedelmente composta.” Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana ms. vat. lat. 8735. Cellini, Benvenuto. The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. Translated by Robert H. Hobart Cust. 2 vols. London: Navarre Society, 1927. Cennini, Cennino. Il libro dell’arte, o Trattato della pittura. Edited by Gaetano Milanesi and Carlo Milanesi. Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1859. Cicero. De inventione. Translated by H. M. Hubbell. Loeb Classical Library 386. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Comanini, Gregorio. The Figino, or On the Purpose of Painting. Translated by Ann Doyle-Anderson and Giancarlo Maiorino. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Contarini, Luigi. L’antiquità di Roma, sito, imperadori, famiglie, statue, chiese, corpi santi, reliquie, pontefici, e cardinali di essa. Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1575. Cronistoria dell’Anno Santo MCMXXV: Appunti storici, dati statistici, atti ufficiali con appendice storico-bibliografico. Rome: Tipografica Poliglotta Vaticana, 1928. da Lucca, Pietro. Arte del ben pensare e contemplare la Passione del nostro Signor Jesu Christo. Venice: Nicolo di Aristotile detto il Zoppino, 1527. del Bene, Giovanni. I divoti e pii discorsi sopra la Passione di Nostro Signore. Bergamo: Comin Ventura, 1595. Dolce, Ludovico. Dialogo della pittura intitolato l’Aretino. In Dolce’s “Aretino” and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, edited by Mark W. Roskill, 83–195. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Felini, Pietro Martire. Trattato nuovo delle cose maravigliose dell’alma città di Roma. Rome: Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1610. Gamucci, Bernardo. Le antichità della città di Roma. Venice: Giovanni Varisco e i Compagni, 1569. Gilio, Giovanni Andrea. Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori e degli abusi de’ pittori circa l’istorie. In Trattati d’Arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma, edited by Paola Barocchi, 2:1–115. Bari: Gius. Laterza e Figli, 1961. Guicciardini, Luigi. The Sack of Rome. Translated by James H. McGregor. New York: Italica Press, 1993. Hollanda, Francisco de. Four Dialogues on Painting. Translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928. Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo. Idea del tempio della pittura. Edited by Robert Klein. Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1974. Mancini, Giulio. Considerazioni sulla pittura. Edited by Adriana Marucchi. 2 vols. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1956. Martin, Gregory. Roma Sancta (1581): Now First Edited from the Manuscript by George Bruner Parks. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969.

bibliography

The Marvels of Rome (Mirabilia Urbis Romae). Translated by Francis Morgan Nichols. New York: Italica Press, 1986. Pacheco, Francisco. Arte de la pintura: Edición del manuscrito original, acabado el 24 de enero de 1638; Preliminar, notes, e indices de F. J. Sanchez Canton. 2 vols. Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1956. Paleotti, Gabriele. Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane. In Trattati d’Arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma, edited by Paola Barocchi, 2:117–509. Bari: Gius. Laterza e Figli, 1961. Palladio, Andrea. Descritione de le chiese, stationi, indulgenze, e reliquie de Corpi Sancti, che sonno in la città de Roma. Rome: Vincentio Lucrino, 1554. Paravicino, Fray Hortensio Félix. Obras posthumas, divinas, y humanas. Madrid: Carlos Sanchez, 1641. Pientini, Angelo. Le pie narrationi delle opere piu memorabili fatte in Roma l’anno del giubileo 1575. Viterbo: Agostino Colaldo, 1577. Pino, Paolo. Dialogo di pittura. In Trattati d’Arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma, edited by Paola Barocchi, 1:93–139. Bari: Gius. Laterza i Figli, 1960. Pseudo-Dionysius. The Celestial Hierarchy. In The Complete Works, 143–91. New York: Paulist Press, 1987. Ridolfi, Carlo. Le meraviglie dell’arte, ovvero, vite dei pittori veneti e dello stato. 2 vols. Venice: Gio. Battista Sgava, 1648. Riera, Raffaele. Historia utilissima, et dilettevolissima delle cose memorabilie passate nell’Alma Città di Roma l’anno del gran giubileo M.D.LXXV. Macerata: Sebastiano Martellini, 1580. Sandoval, Bernardino de. Tratado del officio ecclesiastico canonico. Toledo: Francisco de Guzman, 1568. Sansovino, Francesco. Venetia città nobilissima et singolare. Venice: Iacomo Sansovino, 1581. Sanuto, Marino. I diarii di Marino Sanuto. Venice, 1896. Seneca. Epistulae morales. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978. Serlio, Sebastiano. Il secondo libro di prospettiva. Paris: Iehan Barbé, 1545. The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church. Vol. 14, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Translated by Henry R. Percival. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1955. Tarsia, Giovanni Maria. Trattato sulla natura de gl’angeli nel quale tutte le cose attinenti ad essa natura si contengono. Florence: Bartolomeo Sermatelli, 1576. Theodore the Studite. On the Holy Icons. Translated by Catharine

194

P. Roth. Crestwood: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. Tiepolo, Giovanni. Trattato della Imagine della Gloriosa Vergine dipinta da S. Luca conservata già molti secoli nella Ducale Chiesa di S. Marco della città di Venetia. Venice: Alessandro Polo, 1618. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568. Edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi. 6 vols. Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1966–87. Vignola, Jacopo Barozzi da. Le due regole della prospettiva pratica. Rome: Francesco Zannetti, 1583. Vitruvius. Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by Ingrid D. Rowland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Zini, Pietro Francesco. L’anno santo M D LXXV nel pontificato di N. S. Papa Gregorio XIII. Venice: Francesco Rampazetta, 1575. Zuccaro, Federico. L’idea de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti. In Scritti d’arte di Federico Zuccaro, edited by Detlef Heikamp, 131–312. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1961. Secondary Sources Acheimastou-Potamianou, Myrtali, ed. Holy Image, Holy Space: Icons and Frescoes From Greece. Athens: Greek Ministry of Culture, 1988. Ackerman, James S. The Architecture of Michelangelo. 2 vols. London: A. Zwemmer, 1961. Álvarez Lopera, José. “The Construction of a Painter: A Century of Searching for and Interpreting El Greco.” In El Greco: Identity and Transformation, edited by José Álvarez Lopera, 23–53. Milan: Skira, 1999. ———. “De historiografía: La recuperación del período italiano del Greco.” In El Greco in Italy and Italian Art: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 23–46. Rethymno: University of Crete, 1999. ———. El Greco: Estudio y catálogo. Vol. 1, Fuentes y bibliografía. Madrid: Fundación de Apoyo a la Historia del Arte Hispánico, 2005. ———. El Greco: Estudio y catálogo. Vol. 2.1, Catálogo de obras originales: Creta, Italia, retablos y grandes encargos en España. Madrid: Fundación Arte Hispánico, 2007. ———, ed. El Greco: Identity and Transformation; Crete, Italy, Spain. Milan: Skira, 1999. ———. “Sobre Tintoretto y El Greco.” In Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional, edited by Miguel Falomir, 77–83. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2009. Andaloro, Maria. “L’icona della Vergine Salus Populi Romani.” In La Basilica Romana di Santa Maria Maggiore, edited by Carlo Pietrangeli, 124–27. Florence: Nardini, 1987.

bibliography

Anderson, Jaynie. “Pietro Aretino and Sacred Imagery.” In Interpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, edited by David Rosand, 275–90. Venice: Arsenale, 1984. Argan, Giulio Carlo, and Bruno Contardi. Michelangelo Architect. Translated by Marion L. Grayson. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Ashby, Thomas. Il libro d’Antonio Labacco appartenente all’architettura. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1914. Babic, Gordana. “Il modello e la replica nell’arte bizantina delle icone.” Arte cristiana 76 (1988): 61–78. Bacci, Michele. Il pennello dell’Evangelista: Storia delle immagini sacre attribuite a san Luca. Pisa: GISEM, 1998. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565–1610. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Barasch, Moshe. “Creatio ex Nihilo: Renaissance Concepts of Artistic Creation; A Minor Mistranslation.” In Die Renaissane und ihr Bild in der Geschichte: Die Renaissance als erste Aufklärung III, edited by Enno Rudolf, 37–58. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998. ———. Theories of Art. Vol. 1, From Plato to Winckelmann. New York: Routledge, 2000. Barber, Charles. Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Barbieri, Edoardo. “Fra tradizione e cambiamento: Note sul libro spirituale del XVI secolo.” In Libri, biblioteche e cultura nell’Italia del Cinque e Seicento, edited by Edoardo Barbieri and Danilo Zardin, 3–61. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002. Barnes, Bernadine Ann. Michelangelo in Print: Reproductions as Response in the Sixteenth Century. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. ———. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Barolsky, Paul. “The History of Italian Renaissance Art Re-envisioned.” Word and Image 12 (1996): 243–50. ———. “The Visionary Experience of Renaissance Art.” Word and Image 11 (1995): 174–81. Barone, Giulia. “Immagini miracolose a Roma alla fine del medio evo.” In The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance: Papers from a Conference Held at the Accademia di Danimarca in Collaboration with the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institute für Kunstgeschichte), Rome, 31 May–2 June 2003, edited by Erik Thunø and Gerhard Wolf, 123–33. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2004. Barzman, Karen-edis. The Florentine Academy in the Early-

Modern State: The Discipline of Disegno. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. “Perception, Knowledge, and the Theory of Disegno in Sixteenth-Century Florence.” In From Studio to Studiolo: Florentine Draftsmanship Under the First Medici Grand Dukes, edited by Larry J. Feinberg, 37–48. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991. Baudrillard, Jean. “The Procession of Simulacra.” In Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Belting, Hans. The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion. Translated by Mark Bartusius and Raymond Meyer. New Rochelle: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1990. ———. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Bettini, Sergio. “Il pittore Michele Damasceno e l’inizio del secondo periodo dell’arte cretese-veneziana.” Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 93 (1934–35): 331–80. ———. La pittura di icone cretese-veneziana e i madonneri. Padua: CEDAM, 1933. Bialostocki, Jan. “Puer Sufflans Ignes.” In Arte in Europa: Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Edoardo Arslan, 591–95. Milan: Artipo, 1966. Blunt, Anthony. Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940. Bober, Phyllis Pray, and Ruth Rubinstein. Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources. London: Harvey Miller, 1986. Bodmer, Heinrich. “Le note marginali di Agostino Carracci nell’edizione del Vasari del 1568.” Il Vasari 10 (1939): 89–127. Borsi, Franco, Cristina Acidini, Fiammetta Mannu Pisani, and Gabriele Morolli, eds. Roma antica e i disegni di architettura agli Uffizi. Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1976. Bosch, Lynette M. F. “Image and Devotion in Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Spanish Painting.” In The Word Made Image: Religion, Art, and Architecture in Spain and Spanish America, 1500–1600, 30–45. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1998. Boschloo, W. A. Annibale Carracci in Bologna: Visible Reality in Art After the Council of Trent. The Hague: Government Public Office, 1974. Braun, Joseph. Der christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen

195

bibliography

Entwicklung. 2 vols. Munich: Alte Meister Guenther Koch and Co., 1924. Bredekamp, Horst. “Lorenzinos de’Medici Angriff auf den Konstantinsbogen als ‘Schlacht von Cannae.’” In L’art et les révolutions: Section 4; Les iconoclasms, edited by Sergiusz Michalski, 95–115. Strasbourg: Société Alsacienne pour le Développement de l’Histoire de l’Art, 1992. Brown, Jonathan. “El Greco: An Introduction into His Art, Life, and Thought.” In El Greco: Themes and Variations, edited by Jonathan Brown, 9–29. New York: Frick Collection, 2001. ———. “El Greco: The Man and the Myths.” In El Greco of Toledo, 15–33. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. ———, ed. El Greco: Themes and Variations. New York: Frick Collection, 2001. ———. “El Greco and Toledo.” In El Greco of Toledo, 75–147. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. ———. “The Redefinition of El Greco in the Twentieth Century.” In El Greco: Italy and Spain, edited by Jonathan Brown and José Manuel Pita Andrade, 29–33. Studies in the History of Art 13. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984. Brown, Patricia Fortini. “Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites.” In Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, edited by John Martin and Dennis Romano, 295–338. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Brundin, Abigail. “Literary Production in the Florentine Academy Under the First Medici Dukes: Reform, Censorship, Conformity?” In Forms of Faith in Sixteenth-Century Italy, edited by Abigail Brundin and Matthew Treherne, 57–76. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Bury, John. “El Greco’s Books.” Burlington Magazine 129 (1987): 388–91. ———. “An Interpretation of El Greco’s Allegory.” In El Greco in Italy and Italian Art: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 173–75. Rethymno: University of Crete, 1999. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York: Zone Books, 2011. Camille, Michael. The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Camiz, Franca Trinchieri. “The Pietà in Rome.” In Michelangelo’s Florence Pietà, edited by Jack Wasserman, 99–107. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Campbell, Ian. Ancient Roman Topography and Architecture. Vol. 1, Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo. Series A, Antiques and Architecture, Part 9. London: Royal Collection, 2004.

196

Campbell, Stephen J. “‘Fare una Cosa Morta Parer Viva’: Michelangelo, Rosso, and the (Un)Divinity of Art.” Art Bulletin 84 (2002): 596–620. Carman, Charles H. “Meanings of Perspective in the Renaissance: Tensions and Resolution.” In Renaissance Theories of Vision, edited by John Shannon Hendrix and Charles H. Carman, 31–44. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Casper, Andrew R. “Icons, Guidebooks, and the Religious Topography of Sixteenth-Century Rome.” In Early Modern Rome, 1341–1667, edited by Portia Prebys, 477–87. Ferrara: Edisai, 2011. ———. “A Taxonomy of Images: Francesco Sansovino and the San Rocco Christ Carrying the Cross.” Word and Image 26 (2010): 100–114. Cattapan, Mario. “Nuovi elenchi e documenti dei pittori in Creta dal 1300 al 1500.” Thesaurismata 9 (1972): 202–35. Caturla, María Luisa. La Verónica: Vida de un tema y su transfiguración por El Greco. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1944. Cellini, Pico. La Madonna di S. Luca in S. Maria Maggiore. Rome: Istituto Grafico Tiberino, 1943. Chastel, André. The Sack of Rome, 1527. Translated by Beth Archer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. ———. “La Véronique.” Revue de l’Art 40 (1978): 71–82. Chatzidakis, Manolis. Icônes de Saint-Georges des Grecs et de la collection de l’institut. Venice: Neri Pozza, 1962. ———. Icons of Patmos: Questions of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Painting. Athens: National Bank of Greece, 1985. ———. “L’opera del pittore Tommaso Bathas e la ‘divota maniera greca.’” Thesaurismata 14 (1977): 239–50. Chatzidakis, Nano, ed. Icons of the Cretan School. Athens: Benaki Museum, 1983. ———. Icons of the Velimezis Collection: Catalogue Raisonné. Athens: Benaki Museum, 1997. Checa, Carmen Garcia-Frias. “Das Martyrium des hl. Mauritius von El Greco und sein Schicksal im Escorial.” In El Greco, edited by Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Fernando Checa Cremades, 77–81. Milan: Skira, 2001. Checa Cremades, Fernando. “El Greco y Tiziano.” In El Greco, 37–50. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2003. Clark, Stuart. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Cloulas-Brousseau, Annie. “Le Greco à l’Escurial: Le martyre de Saint Maurice.” In El Greco: Italy and Spain, edited by Jonathan Brown and José Manuel Pita Andrade, 49–54. Studies in the History of Art 13. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984.

bibliography

Coffin, David R. “Pirro Ligorio on the Nobility of the Arts.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964): 191–210. Cole, Michael. “Angel/Demon.” In Das Double, edited by Victor I. Stoichita, 121–37. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006. ———. “Perpetual Exorcism in Sistine Rome.” In The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions, and the Early Modern World, edited by Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach, 57–76. Burlington: Ashgate, 2009. Concina, Ennio. “Venezia e l’icona.” In Venezia e Creta: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Iraklion-Chanià, 30 settembre–5 ottobre 1997, edited by Gherardo Ortalli, 523–42. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1998. Constantoudaki, Maria. “Dominicos Theotocopoulos (El Greco) de Candie à Venise: Documents inédits (1566–1568).” Thesaurismata 12 (1975): 292–308. ———. “Testimonianze su opere pittoriche a Candia in documenti del XVI e XVII secolo.” Thesaurismata 12 (1975): 35–135. Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, Maria. “L’arte dei pittori greci a Venezia nel Cinquecento.” In La pittura nel Veneto: Il cinquecento, edited by Mauro Lucco, 1203–61. Milan: Electa, 1999. ———. “Cretan Painting During the XV and XVI Centuries: The Long Path Towards Domenikos Theotokopoulos and His Early Production.” In El Greco: Identity and Transformation, edited by José Álvarez Lopera, 82–93. Milan: Skira, 1999. ———. “Damaskinos, Theotokopoulos, e la sfida veneziana.” In Il contributo veneziano nella formazione del gusto dei Greci (XV–XVII sec.), edited by Chryssa A. Maltezou, 49–59. Venice: Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini di Venezia, 2001. ———. “La Huida a Egipto y la producción juvenil de El Greco.” In El Greco, 21–36. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2003. ———. “Le icone e l’arte dei pittori Greci a Venezia: Maestri in rapporto con la confraternita greca.” In I Greci a Venezia, edited by Maria Francesca Tiepolo and Eurigio Tonetti, 569–641. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2002. ———. “Italian Influences of El Greco’s Early Work: Some New Observations.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 97–118. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1990. ———. “Notes on El Greco’s Resurrection in Santo Domingo el Antiguo.” In El Greco: The First Twenty Years in Spain, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 37–52. Rethymno: University of Crete, 2005.

———. “La pittura di icone a Creta veneziana (secoli XV e XVI): Questioni di mecenatismo, iconografia e preferenze estetiche.” In Venezia e Creta: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Iraklion-Chanià, 30 settembre–5 ottobre 1997, edited by Gherardo Ortalli, 459–507. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1998. Cope, Maurice E. The Venetian Chapel of the Sacrament in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Garland, 1979. Cormack, Robin. Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks, and Shrouds. London: Reaktion, 1997. Cormack, Robin, and Maria Vassilaki. “The Baptism of Christ: New Light on Early El Greco.” Apollo 80 (2005): 34–41. Cossío, Manuel B. El Greco. Madrid: Victoriano Suárez, 1908. Cranston, Jodi. The Muddied Mirror: Materiality and Figuration in Titian’s Later Paintings. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Damisch, Hubert. The Origin of Perspective. Translated by John Goodman. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Davies, David, ed. El Greco. London: National Gallery Company, 2003. ———. El Greco: Mystery and Illumination. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1989. ———. “El Greco’s Scheme of Decoration in Santo Domingo el Antiguo: The Creative Process.” In El Greco’s Studio: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 83–134. Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2007. ———. “The Influence of Christian Neoplatonism on the Art of El Greco.” In El Greco of Crete: Exhibition on the Occasion of the 450th Anniversary of His Birth, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 20–55. Heraklion: Demos, 1990. ———. “Playing with Fire: El Greco’s Boy Blowing on an Ember.” In El Greco, edited by David Davies, 221–25. London: National Gallery Company, 2003. ———. “The Relationship of El Greco’s Altarpieces to the Mass of the Roman Rite.” In The Altarpiece in the Renaissance, edited by Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp, 212–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. D’Elia, Una Roman. The Poetics of Titian’s Religious Paintings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ———. “Tintoretto, Aretino, and the Speed of Creation.” Word and Image 20 (2004): 206–18. De Maio, Romeo. Michelangelo e la controriforma. Bari: Editori Laterza, 1978. Dempsey, Charles. Annibale Carracci and the Beginnings of Baroque Style. Villa i Tatti: Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies, 2000.

197

bibliography

———. “The Carracci and the Devout Style in Emilia.” In Emilian Painting in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Symposium, 75–87. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1987. ———. “The Carracci Postille in Vasari’s Lives.” Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 72–76. ———. “The Carracci Reform of Painting.” In The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 237–54. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1986. ———. “National Expression in Italian Sixteenth-Century Art: Problems of the Past and Present.” In Nationalism in the Visual Arts, edited by Richard A. Etlin, 15–24. Studies in the History of Art 29. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1991. Deswarte-Rosa, Sylvie. “Idea et le Temple de la Peinture: I. Michelangelo Buonarroti et Francisco de Holanda.” Revue de l’Art 92 (1991): 20–41. ———. “Idea et le Temple de la Peinture: II. De Francisco de Holanda à Federico Zuccaro.” Revue de l’Art 94 (1991): 45–65. Didi-Huberman, Georges. Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art. Translated by John Goodman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. Dillon, Gianvittorio. “El Greco e l’incisione veneta: Precisazioni e novità.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 229–49. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1990. Di Maria, Salvatore. The Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance: Cultural Realities and Theatrical Innovations. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2002. Dobschütz, Ernst von. Christusbilder: Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1899. dos Santos, Reynaldo. “Un exemplaire de Vasari annoté par Francisco de Olanda.” In Studi Vasariani: Atti del Convegno Internazionale per il IV Centenario della Prima Edizione delle “Vite” del Vasari, 91–92. Florence: Sansoni, 1952. Douglas-Scott, Michael. “The Portrait of Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine.” Arte Veneta 36 (1982): 216–17. Drandaki, Anastasia, ed. The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, 2009. Dubourg Glatigny, Pascal. “La ‘merveilleuse fabrique de l’oeil’: Illustration anatomique et théorie de la perspective à la fin du XVIe siècle.” Roma Moderna e Contemporanea 7 (1999): 369–94. Edgerton, Samuel. “Alberti’s Perspective: A New Discovery and a New Evaluation.” Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 367–78.

198

———. The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. ———. The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective. New York: Basic Books, 1975. El Greco of Toledo. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. Elkins, James. “From Original to Copy and Back Again.” British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1993): 113–20. ———. The Poetics of Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. ———. “Renaissance Perspectives.” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 209–30. Ettlinger, Leopold. “Exemplum Doloris: Reflections on the Laocoön Group.” In De Artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, edited by Millard Meiss, 1:121–26. New York: New York University Press, 1961. ———. The Sistine Chapel Before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. Fagiolo, Marcello, and Maria Luisa Madonna. “L’immagine simbolica del pellegrinaggio a Roma: La Veronica e il volto di Cristo.” In Roma 1300–1875: L’arte degli anni santi, edited by Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna, 106–12. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. ———, eds. Roma 1300–1875: L’arte degli anni santi. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. Falomir, Miguel. “Titian’s Replicas and Variants.” In Titian, edited by David Jaffé, 60–68. London: National Gallery Company, 2003. Fanti, Mario. “Ancora sulle postille carraccesche alle Vite del Vasari: In buona parte sono di Annibale.” Il Carrobbio 6 (1980): 135–41. ———. “Le postille carraccesche alle Vite del Vasari: Il testo originale.” Il Carrobbio 5 (1979): 147–64. Fatourou-Hesychakis, Kanto. “Philosophical and Sculptural Interests of Domenicos Theotocopoulos in Crete.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 45–68. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. Fatourou-Hesychakis, Kanto, and Minos Hesychakis. Cretan Sources of Theotocopoulos’ (El Greco’s) Humanism. Athens: National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, 2004. Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia. “From Cult Images to the Cult of Images: The Case of Raphael’s Altarpieces.” In The Altarpiece in the Renaissance, edited by Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp, 165–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia, and Fernando Checa Cremades, eds. El Greco. Milan: Skira, 2001.

bibliography

Filippi, Elena. “San Luca dipinge la Vergine (1532): Lo specchio della ‘maniera’ in Maarten van Heemskerck.” Veltro 35 (1991): 267–83. Finaldi, Gabriele. “Anatomía de una serie: Los cuadros de la Purificación del Templo.” In El Greco, 51–60. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2003. Fiorani, Francesca. “Danti Edits Vignola: The Formation of a Modern Classic on Perspective.” In The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished, edited by Lyle Massey, 127–59. Studies in the History of Art 59. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003. Foster, Hal, ed. Vision and Visuality. Seattle: Bay Press, 1988. Frangenberg, Thomas. “The Angle of Vision: Problems of Perspectival Representation in Fifteenth- and SixteenthCentury Perspective Theory.” Renaissance Studies 6 (1992): 1–45. ———. “Egnatio Danti’s Optics: Cinquecento Aristotelianism and the Medieval Tradition.” Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza 3 (1988): 3–38. ———. “Perspectivist Aristotelianism: Three Case-Studies of Cinquecento Visual Theory.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 137–58. Freedberg, David. “Holy Images and Other Images.” In The Art of Interpreting, edited by Susan C. Scott, 68–87. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. ———. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Freedberg, Sydney J. “Disegno versus Colore in Florentine and Venetian Painting of the Cinquecento.” In Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations, 309–22. Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1980. Freiberg, Jack. “In the Sign of the Cross: The Image of Constantine in the Art of Counter-Reformation Rome.” In Piero della Francesca and His Legacy, edited by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, 67–87. Studies in the History of Art 48. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1995. ———. The Lateran in 1600: Christian Concord in Counter-­ Reformation Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Frigerio-Zeniou, Stella, and Miroslav Lazovic. Icônes de la collection du Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Genève. Geneva: Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, 2006. Gandelman, Claude. “The Semiotics of Signatures in Painting: A Peircian Analysis.” American Journal of Semiotics 3 (1985): 73–108. Gardner, Julian. “Altars, Altarpieces, and Art History:

Legislation and Usage.” In Italian Altarpieces, 1250–1550: Function and Design, edited by Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi, 5–19. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Gardner von Teuffel, Christa. “El Greco’s View of Mount Sinai as Independent Landscape.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 161–72. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. Geanakoplos, Deno John. Interaction of the “Sibling” Byzantine and Western Cultures in the Middle Ages and Italian Renaissance (330–1600). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Georgopoulou, Maria. “Late Medieval Crete and Venice: An Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage.” Art Bulletin 77 (1995): 479–96. Gérard Powell, Véronique. “Vasari et l’Espagne, XVIe–XVIIe siècles.” Revue de l’Art 80 (1988): 72–75. Gere, J. A. “Two of Taddeo Zuccaro’s Last Commissions, Completed by Federico Zuccaro: I. The Pucci Chapel in S. Trinità dei Monti.” Burlington Magazine 108 (1966): 286–93. Gilbert, Creighton. “Antique Frameworks for Renaissance Art Theory: Alberti and Pino.” Marsyas 3 (1943–45): 87–106. Glendinning, Nigel. “El soplón y la Fábula de El Greco: ¿Imitaciones de los clásicos cuadros de género o pinturas emblemáticas?” Traza y Baza 8 (1978): 53–60. Goffen, Rona. “Icon and Vision: Giovanni Bellini’s Half-Length Madonnas.” Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 487–518. ———. Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Goguel, Catherine Monbeig. “Giulio Clovio ‘nouveau petit Michel-Ange’: A propos des dessins du Louvre.” Revue de l’Art 80 (1988): 37–47. Golden, Andrea. “Creating and Re-creating: The Practice of Replication in the Workshop of Giovanni Bellini.” In Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion, edited by Ronda Kasl, 91–127. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2004. Goldstein, Carl. “Rhetoric and Art History in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque.” Art Bulletin 73 (1991): 641–52. González, J. J. Martín. “El concepto del retablo en El Greco.” In El Greco and Spain, edited by Jonathan Brown and José Manuel Pita Andrade. Studies in the History of Art 13. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984. Gould, Cecil. “Sebastiano Serlio and Venetian Painting.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25 (1962): 56–64. Gouma-Peterson, Thalia. “Crete, Venice, the Madonneri, and a Creto-Venetian Icon in the Allen Art Museum.” Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 25 (1968): 53–86.

199

bibliography

———. “The Icon as a Cultural Presence After 1453.” In The Byzantine Tradition After the Fall of Constantinople, edited by John J. Yiannias, 151–80. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. Grafton, Anthony. Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. Gratziou, Olga. “Domenikos Theotokopoulos ‘ó δείξας’: A Commentary on a Rare Signature Type of El Greco.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 69–74. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1990. Grayson, Cecil. “L. B. Alberti’s ‘Costruzione Legittima.’” Italian Studies 19 (1964): 14–27. Greenstein, Jack M. Mantegna and Painting as Historical Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. “On Alberti’s ‘Sign’: Vision and Composition in Quattrocento Painting.” Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 669–98. Grendler, Paul F. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Guarducci, Margherita. La più antica icone di Maria: Un prodigioso vincolo fra oriente e occidente. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1989. Hadermann-Misguich, Lydie. “Deux nouvelles sources d’inspiration du polyptyque de Modène.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 63 (1964): 355–58. Hadjinicolaou, Nicos. “La defensa del arte bizantino por El Greco: Notas sobre una paradoja.” Archivo Español de Arte 81 (2008): 217–32. ———. “Domenicos Theotocopoulos 450 Years Later.” In El Greco of Crete: Exhibition on the Occasion of the 450th Anniversary of His Birth, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 56–111. Heraklion: Demos, 1990. ———. “El Greco in Italy.” In El Greco in Italy and Italian Art, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 57–73 and 404–10. Athens: Ionike Trapeza, 1995. ———, ed. El Greco in Italy and Italian Art. Athens: Ionike Trapeza, 1995. ———. “El Greco: La Santa Faz.” In Classics of Modern Art, 26–33. Andros: Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, 1999. ———, ed. El Greco of Crete: Exhibition on the Occasion of the 450th Anniversary of His Birth. Heraklion: Demos, 1990. ———. “The Iraklion Baptism of Christ.” In El Greco’s Studio: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 243–70. Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2007. Hahn, Cynthia. “Visio Dei: Changes in Medieval Visuality.” In

200

Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance, edited by Robert Nelson, 169–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hall, Marcia B. The Sacred Image in the Age of Art: Titian, Tintoretto, Barocci, El Greco, Caravaggio. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Hamburger, Jeffrey F. “Imagination and Believing: The Suspicion of Sight and the Authentication of Vision in Late Medieval Art and Devotion.” In Imagination und Wirklichkeit: Zum Verhältnis von mentalen und realen Bildern in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit, edited by Klaus Krüger and Alessandro Nova, 48–68. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2000. ———. The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. ———. The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Harris, Enriqueta. El Greco: The Purification of the Temple. London: Lund Humphries, 1943. Hecht, Christian. Katholische Bildertheologie im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock: Studien zu Traktaten von Johannes Molanus, Gabriele Paleotti, und anderen Autoren. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1997. Held, Jutta. “El Grecos Interpretationen der Blindenheilung.” In Zeitenspiegelung: Zur Bedeutung von Traditionen in Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft, 109–22. Berlin: Reimer, 1998. Hellwig, Karin. “El Greco: Zeichner und Kunsttheoretiker.” In El Greco kommentiert den Wettstreit der Künste, 45–74. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006. Hendrix, John S. “Perception as a Function of Desire in the Renaissance.” In Renaissance Theories of Vision, edited by John Shannon Hendrix and Charles H. Carman, 89–102. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Herrmann-Fiore, Kristina. “‘Disegno’ and ‘Giuditio,’ Allegorical Drawings by Federico Zuccaro and Cherubino Alberti.” Master Drawings 20 (1982): 247–56. ———. “Gli angeli nella teoria e nella pittura di Federico Zuccari.” In Federico Zuccari: Le idea, gli scritti, edited by Bonita Cleri, 89–110. Milan: Electa, 1997. Hochmann, Michel. “Les annotations marginales de Federico Zuccaro à un exemplaire des Vies de Vasari: La réaction anti-vasarienne à la fin du XVIe siècle.” Revue de l’Art 80 (1988): 64–71. Holmes, Megan. “Miraculous Images in Renaissance Florence.” Art History 34 (2011): 432–65. Hope, Charles. Titian. New York: Harper and Row, 1980.

bibliography

Hülsen, Christian. Das Skizzenbuch des Giovannantonio Dosio in Staatlichen Kupferstichkabinett zu Berlin. Berlin: H. Keller, 1933. Humfrey, Peter. The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Humfrey, Peter, and Martin Kemp, eds. The Altarpiece in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Ilchman, Frederick. “Tintoretto as a Painter of Religious Narrative.” In Tintoretto, edited by Miguel Falomir, 63–94. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007. Iverson, Margaret. “The Discourse of Perspective in the Twentieth Century: Panofsky, Damisch, Lacan.” Oxford Art Journal 28 (2005): 191–202. Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Jedin, Hubert. “Das Tridentinum und die bildenden Künste: Bermerkungen zu Paolo Prodi, Ricerche sulla teorica delle arti figurative nella Riforma Cattolica (1962).” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 74 (1963): 321–39. Jestaz, Bertrand, ed. L’inventaire du palais et des propriétés Farnèse à Rome en 1644. Vol. 3, Le palais Farnèse. Paris: De Boccard, 1994. Joannides, Paul. “El Greco and Michelangelo.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 199–214. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. Jungmann, Joseph A. The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development. Translated by Rev. Francis A. Brunner. 2 vols. Westminster: Christian Classics, 1986. Kagan, Richard L. “El Greco and the Law.” In Figures of Thought: El Greco as Interpreter of History, Tradition, and Ideas, edited by Jonathan Brown, 79–90. Studies in the History of Art 11. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1982. ———. “The Toledo of El Greco.” In El Greco of Toledo, 35–73. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. Karmon, David. “Michelangelo’s ‘Minimalism’ in the Design of Santa Maria degli Angeli.” Annali di Architettura 20 (2008): 141–52. Kasl, Ronda. “Holy Households: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Venice.” In Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion, edited by Ronda Kasl, 59–89. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2004. Keazor, Henry. “Distruggere la maniera”? Die Carracci-Postille. Freiburg: Rombach, 2002. Kemp, Martin. “‘Equal Excellences’: Lomazzo and the

Explanation of Individual Style in the Visual Arts.” Renaissance Studies 1 (1987): 1–26. ———. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Kernodle, George R. From Art to Theater: Form and Convention in the Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. Kessler, Herbert. “Configuring the Invisible by Copying the Holy Face.” In The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, edited by Herbert Kessler and Gerhard Wolf, 129–51. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998. Kessler, Herbert, and Gerhard Wolf, eds. The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998. Kilde, Jeanne Halgren. Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. King, Catherine. “Late Sixteenth-Century Careers’ Advice: A New Allegory of Artists’ Training–Albertina, Inv. No. 2769.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 41 (1988): 77–96. Kitao, Timothy K. “Prejudice in Perspective: A Study of Vignola’s Perspective Treatise.” Art Bulletin 44 (1962): 173–94. Kitaura, Yasunari. “El Greco y la tradición.” Goya 247–48 (1995): 2–11. ———. “El Greco y Miguel Ángel: Problemas del dibujo en El Greco.” Archivo Español de Arte 68 (1995): 145–64. ———. “El San Sebastián de El Greco de la catedral de Palencia: Un estudio morfológico.” Archivo Español de Arte 60 (1987): 307–21. Klein, Dorothee. St. Lukas als Maler der Maria: Ikonographie der Lukas-Madonna. Berlin: Oskar Schloß, 1933. Kleinbub, Christian K. “At the Boundaries of Sight: The Italian Renaissance Cloud Putto.” In Renaissance Theories of Vision, edited by John Shannon Hendrix and Charles H. Carman, 117–33. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. ———. “Raphael’s Transfiguration as Visio-devotional Program.” Art Bulletin 90 (2008): 367–93. ———. Vision and the Visionary in Raphael. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011. Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Koshikawa, Michiaki. “El Greco and Federico Zuccari.” In El

201

bibliography

Greco in Italy and Italian Art: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 357–71. Rethymno: University of Crete, 1999. Kraut, Gisela. Lukas malt die Madonna: Zeugnisse zum künstlerischen Selbstverständnis in der Malerei. Worms: Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1986. Krüger, Klaus. “Authenticity and Fiction: On the Pictorial Construction of Inner Presence in Early Modern Italy.” In Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Reindert Falkenburg, Walter S. Melion, and Todd M. Richardson, 37–69. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. ———. Das Bild als Schleier des Unsichtbaren: Ästhetische Illusion in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit in Italien. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2001. Kühnel, Gustav. “Die Ikone des Sinai-Klosters und verwandte Pilgerillustrationen.” Oriens Christianus 65 (1981): 173–80. Kuryluk, Ewa. Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a “True Image.” Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Ladis, Andrew, and Shelley E. Zuraw, eds. Visions of Holiness: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Italy. Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2000. Ladner, Gerhart B. “The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1953): 1–34. Laureys, Marc. “The Pagan and Christian Legacy of Rome in Pompeo Ugonio’s Oration De Lingua Latina.” Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 2 (2000): 125–53. Lavin, Irving. “Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio’s Two St. Matthews.” Art Bulletin 56 (1974): 59–81. ———. “Ex Uno Lapide: The Renaissance Sculptor’s Tour de Force.” In Il Cortile delle statue: Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan; Akten des internationalen Kongress zu Ehren von Richard Krautheimer, edited by Matthias Winner, Bernard Andreae, and Carlo Pietrangeli, 191–210. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1998. Lee, Rensselaer W. “Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting.” Art Bulletin 22 (1940): 197–269. Leone de Castris, Pierluigi. “Domenikos Theotokopoulos, genannt El Greco.” In Der Glanz der Farnese: Kunst und Sammelleidenschaft in der Renaissance, 245–48. Munich: Prestel, 1995. Levi D’Ancona, Mirella. The Iconography of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. New York: College Art Association, 1957. Lindberg, David C. “The Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Light:

202

Light Metaphysics from Plotinus to Kepler.” Osiris 2 (1986): 5–42. ———. Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Lingo, Stuart. Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Loh, Maria H. “New and Improved: Repetition as Originality in Italian Baroque Practice and Theory.” Art Bulletin 86 (2004): 477–504. Longhi, Roberto. “Il soggiorno Romano del Greco.” L’Arte 17 (1914): 301–3. Lynch, James B. “Lomazzo’s Allegory of Painting.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 110 (1968): 325–30. MacLaren, Neil. The Spanish School. National Gallery Catalogues. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1952. Mahon, Denis. “Eclecticism and the Carracci: Further Reflections on the Validity of a Label.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953): 303–41. Mango, Cyril. The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Maniura, Robert. “The Icon Is Dead, Long Live the Icon: The Holy Image in the Renaissance.” In Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium; Studies Presented to Robin Cormack, edited by Antony Eastmond and Liz James, 87–103. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Maniura, Robert, and Rupert Shepherd, eds. Presence: The Inherence of the Prototype Within Images and Other Objects. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Mann, Richard G. “La Asunción de la Virgen: Creación y recepción de una obra maestra.” In El Greco, 139–73. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2003. ———. El Greco and His Patrons: Three Major Projects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ———. “El Greco’s Altarpieces for the Chapel of Saint Joseph: Devotion, Politics, and Artistic Innovation in Counter-­ Reformation Toledo.” In The Word Made Image: Religion, Art, and Architecture in Spain and Spanish America, 1500–1600, 46–65. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1998. ———. “El Greco’s Altarpieces: Three Representative Commissions.” PhD dissertation, New York University, 1982. ———. “Tradition and Originality in El Greco’s Work: His Synthesis of Byzantine and Renaissance Conceptions of Art.” Quidditas 23 (2002): 85–110. Manoussacas, M. I. “An Outline of the History of the Greek Confraternity in Venice.” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 5 (1989): 321–33 and 383–93.

bibliography

Maré, Estelle Alma. “El Greco’s Italian Paintings (1560–76) Based on Bible Texts.” Acta Theologica 29 (2009): 61–80. Marías, Fernando. La arquitectura del Renacimiento en Toledo (1541–1631). 4 vols. Madrid: Instituto Provincial de Investigaciones y Estudios Toledanos, 1983–86. ———. “El Greco y los artistas de Italia: Venecia (1567–1570).” In El Greco in Italy and Italian Art: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 47–66. Rethymno: University of Crete, 1999. ———. “El Greco y los ‘originales’ de su taller.” In El Greco’s Studio: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 187–97. Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2007. Marías, Fernando, and Agustín Bustamante García. Las ideas artisticas de El Greco (comentarios a un texto inédito). Madrid: Cátedra, 1981. Marotti, Ferruccio. “Teoria e tecnica dello spazio scenico dal Serlio al Palladio nella trattatistica rinascimentale.” Bolletino del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio 16 (1974): 257–70. Martínez de la Peña, Domingo. “El Greco, en la Academia de San Lucas (el primer documento cierto sobre la estancia del Greco en Italia).” Archivo Español de Arte 40 (1967): 97–105. Massey, Lyle. “Configuring Spatial Ambiguity: Picturing the Distance Point from Alberti to Anamorphosis.” In The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished, edited by Lyle Massey, 161–75. Studies in the History of Art 59. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003. Matthew, Louisa C. “The Painter’s Presence: Signatures in Venetian Renaissance Pictures.” Art Bulletin 80 (1998): 616–48. Mayer, August L. “Notes on the Early El Greco.” Burlington Magazine 74 (1939): 28–29. Melion, Walter. “Pictorial Artifice and Catholic Devotion in Abraham Bloemart’s ‘Virgin of Sorrows with the Holy Face’ of c. 1615.” In The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, edited by Herbert Kessler and Gerhard Wolf, 319–40. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998. Mena Marqués, Manuela B. “La Fábula o Alegoría moral.” In El Greco, 335–61. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2003. Mertzios, Konstantin. “Domenicos Théotocopoulos: Nouveaux éléments biographiques.” Arte Veneta 15 (1961): 217–19. Miesel, Victor H. “La tabla central del triptico de Modena, del Greco.” Archivo Español de Arte 26 (1953): 205–14.

Missirini, Melchiore. Memorie per servire alla storia della Romana Accademia di S. Luca. Rome: De Romanis, 1823. Moffitt, John F. “A Christianization of Pagan Antiquity: Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano, Antonio Possevino, and the ‘Laocoön’ of Domenico Theotocopouli, ‘El Greco.’” Paragone 35 (1984): 44–60. ———. “El Greco’s Gloria.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 130 (1997): 143–54. Molinari, Cesare. “Gli spettatori e lo spazio scenico nel teatro del Cinquecento.” Bolletino del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio 16 (1974): 145–54. Morello, Giovanni, and Gerhard Wolf, eds. Il volto di Cristo. Milan: Electa, 2000. Morse, Margaret A. “Creating Sacred Space: The Religious Visual Culture of the Renaissance Venetian Casa.” Renaissance Studies 21 (2007): 151–84. Mulcahy, Rosemarie. The Decoration of the Royal Basilica of El Escorial. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. “Philip II as a Patron of Religious Painting.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 315–23. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. ———. Philip II of Spain, Patron of the Arts. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004. Nagel, Alexander. “Authorship and Image-Making in the Monument to Giotto in Florence Cathedral.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 53–54 (2008): 143–51. ———. The Controversy of Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. ———. “Leonardo and Sfumato.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 24 (1993): 7–20. ———. Michelangelo and the Reform of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. Anachronic Renaissance. New York: Zone Books, 2010. ———. “Interventions: Towards a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism.” Art Bulletin 87 (2005): 403–15. ———. “What Counted as an ‘Antiquity’ in the Renaissance?” In Renaissance Medievalisms, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler, 53–74. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009. Nante, Andrea. “Luca Evangelista: Fatti iconografici nella pittura italiana dal Tre al Settecento.” In Luca Evangelista: Parola e immagine fra Oriente e Occidente, edited by Giordana Canova Mariani, 187–204. Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2000. Navenne, Ferdinand Henri de. Rome, le palais Farnèse et les Farnèse. Paris: Librairie Albin Michel, 1914.

203

bibliography

Nolhac, Pierre de. “Les collections de Fulvio Orsini.” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 4 (1884): 139–231. ———. “Une galérie de peinture au XVI siècle. Les collections de Fulvio Orsini.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 29 (1884): 427–36. Noreen, Kirstin. “The Icon of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome: An Image and Its Afterlife.” Renaissance Studies 19 (2005): 660–72. Oberhuber, Konrad, ed. The Works of Marcantonio Raimondi and of His School. The Illustrated Bartsch 26. New York: Abaris Books, 1978. Oen, Maria Husabø. “The Origins of a Miraculous Image: Notes on the Annunciation Fresco in SS. Annunziata in Florence.” Konsthistorisk tidskrift / Journal of Art History 80 (2011): 1–22. Os, Henk van, ed. The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300–1500. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Ostrow, Steven F. Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome: The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in Santa Maria Maggiore. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pallucchini, Rodolfo. Il polittico del Greco della Reale Galleria Estense e la formazione dell’artista. Rome: Reale Istituto di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, 1937. Palumbo, Genoveffa. “I giubilei del Cinquecento tra Riforma e Controriforma.” In La storia dei giubilei, vol. 2, 1450–1575, edited by Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna, 198–237. Florence: BNL Edizioni, 1998. ———. “L’uso delle immagini: Libri di santi, libri per predicatori, libretti di dottrina dopo il concilio di Trento.” In I tempi del concilio: Religione, cultura e società nell’Europa tridentina, edited by Cesare Mozzarelli and Danilo Zardin, 353–85. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1997. Panagiotakes, Nikolaos M. El Greco: The Cretan Years. Translated by John C. Davis. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. ———. Idea: A Concept in Art Theory. Translated by Joseph J. S. Peake. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968. ———. “Imago Pietatis: Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des Schmerzenmannes und der Maria Mediatrix.” In Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60: Geburtstag, 261–308. Leipzig: Seemann, 1927. ———. Perspective as Symbolic Form. Translated by Christopher S. Wood. New York: Zone Books, 1997. Papadaki-Oekland, Stella. “El Grecos kretische Periode: Späte Nachklänge früherer Erfahrungen.” In El Greco, edited by Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Fernando Checa Cremades, 69–75. Milan: Skira, 2001.

204

Pardo, Mary. “Paolo Pino’s Dialogo di pittura: A Translation with Commentary.” PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1984. Pastor, Ludwig. The History of the Popes: From the Close of the Middle Ages. Translated by Ralph Francis Kerr. Vol. 19. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1930. Pedrocco, Filippo. “El Greco e Jacopo Tintoretto.” Arte Documento 8 (1994): 151–54. Peirce, Philip. “The Arch of Constantine: Propaganda and Ideology in Late Roman Art.” Art History 12 (1989): 387–418. Pérez de Tudela, Almudena. “A proposito di una lettera inédita di El Greco al cardinale Alessandro Farnese.” Aurea Parma 85 (2001): 175–88. Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E. “On the Reconstruction of El Greco’s Dispersed Altarpieces.” In El Greco of Toledo, 149–76. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. Perini, Giovanna, ed. Gli scritti dei Carracci. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1990. Pigman, G. W., III. “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance.” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 1–32. Pita Andrade, José Manuel. “Sobre la presencia del Greco en Madrid y de sus obras en las colecciones madrileñas del siglo XVII.” Archivo Español de Arte 58 (1985): 321–31. Poirier, Maurice. “The Disegno-Colore Controversy Reconsidered.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 13 (1987): 52–86. Povoledo, Elena. “Origini e aspetti della scenografia in Italia dalla fine del quattrocento agli intermezzi fiorentini del 1589.” In Li due Orfei da Poliziano a Monteverdi, 371–516. Turin: Edizioni RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1969. Puppi, Lionello. “El Greco da Venezia a Roma e da Roma a Venezia (per la via di Parma).” In Arte d’Occidentale: Temi e metodi; Studi in onore di Angiola Maria Romanini, 1119–28. Rome: Sintesi Informazioni, 1999. ———. “El Greco in Italy and Italian Art.” In El Greco: Identity and Transformation, edited by José Álvarez Lopera, 94–113. Milan: Skira, 1999. ———. “El Greco’s Two Sojourns in Venice.” In El Greco in Italy and Italian Art, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 31–38 and 393–96. Athens: Ionike Trapeza, 1995. ———. “Il Greco giovane ed altri pittori ‘madonneri’ di maniera italiana a Venezia nella seconda metà del Cinquecento.” Prospettive 26–27 (1963): 25–46, 100. ———. “Il soggiorno italiano del Greco.” In El Greco: Italy and Spain, edited by Jonathan Brown and José Manuel Pita Andrade, 133–51. Studies in the History of Art 13. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984.

bibliography

Purtle, Carol J., ed. Rogier van der Weyden: St. Luke Drawing the Virgin; Selected Essays in Context. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997. Puttfarken, Thomas. “The Dispute About Disegno and Colorito in Venice: Paolo Pino, Ludovico Dolce, and Titian.” In Kunst und Kunsttheorie 1400–1900, edited by Peter Ganz, Martin Gosebruch, Nikolaos Meier, and Martin Warnke, 75–99. Wolfenbutteler Forschungen 48. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991. Raffaello in Vaticano. Milan: Electa, 1984. Réau, Louis. Iconographie de l’art chrétien. 6 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955–59. Rice, David Talbot. “Five Late Byzantine Panels and Greco’s Views of Sinai.” Burlington Magazine 89 (1947): 92–94. Riebesell, Christina. “Die Antikensammlung Farnese zur Carracci-Zeit.” In Les Carrache et les décors profanes: Actes du colloque organisé par l’École Française de Rome, 2–4 octobre 1986, 373–417. Rome: École Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1988. ———. Die Sammlung des Kardinal Alessandro Farnese: Ein “studio” für Künstler und Gelehrte. Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1989. Ringbom, Sixten. “Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions: Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Private Piety.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 73 (1969): 159–70. ———. Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting. Doornspijk: Davaco, 1984. Robertson, Clare. “El Greco e Italia: Arte, patrocinio y teoría.” In El Greco, 85–98. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2003. ———. “El Greco, Fulvio Orsini, and Giulio Clovio.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 215–27. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. ———. “Il Gran Cardinale”: Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Roccasecca, Pietro. “La ‘Portione del manoscritto originale di Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola della sua prospettiva.’” In Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, edited by Richard J. Tuttle, Bruno Adorni, Christoph Luitpold Frommel, and Christof Thoenes, 372–77. Milan: Electa, 2002. Ronchini, Amadio. “Giulio Clovio.” Atti e Memorie delle RR. Deputazioni di Storia Patria 3 (1865): 259–70. Rosand, David. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Rosenberg, Charles M. “Raphael and the Florentine Istoria.” In Raphael Before Rome, edited by James Beck, 175–89. Studies in the History of Art 17. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1986.

Rossetti, Sergio. Rome: A Bibliography from the Invention of Printing Through 1899. Vol. 1, The Guidebooks. Rome: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2000. Rossi, Sergio. “Idea e accademia: Studio sulle teorie artistiche di Federico Zuccaro; I. Disegno interno e disegno esterno.” Storia dell’Arte 20 (1974): 37–56. Rozzo, Ugo, and Silvana Seidel Menchi. “The Book and the Reformation in Italy.” In The Reformation and the Book, edited by Jean-François Gilmont, 319–67. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Rubin, Patricia Lee. Giorgio Vasari: Art and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. ———. Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Ruffini, Marco. “Sixteenth-Century Paduan Annotations to the First Edition of Vasari’s Vite (1550).” Renaissance Quarterly 62 (2009): 748–808. Salas, Xavier de. Miguel Angel y El Greco. Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1967. ———. “Las notas del Greco a la ‘Vida de Tiziano,’ de Vasari.” In El Greco: Italy and Spain, edited by Jonathan Brown and José Manuel Pita Andrade, 161–69. Studies in the History of Art 13. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984. ———. “Un exemplaire des Vies de Vasari annoté par Le Greco.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 69 (1967): 176–80. Salas, Xavier de, and Fernando Marías. El Greco y el arte de su tiempo: Las notas de El Greco a Vasari. Madrid: Real Fundación de Toledo, 1992. San Román y Fernández, Francisco de Borja de. “De la vida del Greco (nuevo serie de documentos inéditos).” Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueología 3 (1927): 139–95, 275–339. ———. “Documentos del Greco, referentes a los cuadros de Santo Domingo el Antiguo.” Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueología 10 (1934): 1–13. ———. El Greco en Toledo: Nuevas investigaciones acerca de la vida y obras de Domenico Theotocópuli. Madrid: Libreria General de Victoriano Suárez, 1910. Schiavo, Armando. “Per Ugo da Carpi intaiatore . . . ” Strenna dei romanisti 35 (1974): 437–40. ———. “Santa Maria degli Angeli alle Terme.” Bolletino del Centro di Studi per la Storia dell’Architettura 8 (1954): 15–42. Schinachi, Lucia Fornai, and Nicola Spinosa, eds. I Farnese: Arte e collezionismo. Milan: Electa, 1995. Schutte, Anne Jacobson. Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books, 1465–1550. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1983. Shearman, John. “Castiglione’s Portrait of Raphael.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 38 (1994): 69–97.

205

bibliography

———. Raphael in Early-Modern Sources (1483–1602). 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Siebenhüner, Herbert. “S. Maria degli Angeli in Rom.” Münchener Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 6 (1955): 179–206. Sinding-Larsen, Staale. “Some Functional and Iconographical Aspects of the Centralized Church in the Italian Renaissance.” Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 2 (1965): 203–52. Smith, Webster. “Giulio Clovio and the maniera di figure piccole.” Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 395–401. Snow-Smith, Joanne. “El Greco’s Religious Oeuvre in Spain: Reflections of Titian’s Venetian Light and Michelangelo’s ‘Figura Serpentinata.’” In El Greco in Italy and Italian Art: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 411–28. Rethymno: University of Crete, 1999. Snyder, Joel. “Picturing Vision.” Critical Inquiry 6 (1980): 499–526. Sobral, Louis de Moura. “Uma Santa Face desconhecida do Greco no Palácio da Ajuda.” Colóquio Artes 69 (1986): 5–13. Sohm, Philip. “Gendered Style in Italian Art Criticism from Michelangelo to Malvasia.” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 759–808. Stechow, Wolfgang. “Bassano’s and El Greco’s Boy Blowing on a Fire.” Burlington Magazine 110 (1968): 633. Steinberg, Leo. “An El Greco ‘Entombment’ Eyed Awry.” Burlington Magazine 116 (1974): 474–77. Stenhouse, William. “Visitors, Display, and Reception in the Antiquity Collections of Late-Renaissance Rome.” Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005): 397–434. Stoenescu, Livia. “Ancient Prototypes Reinstated: Zuccari’s Encounter of Christ and Veronica of 1594.” Art Bulletin 93 (2011): 423–48. ———. “Annibale Carracci and the Modern Reform of Altar Painting.” RACAR 35 (2010): 65–80. ———. “The Visual Narratives of El Greco, Annibale Carracci, and Rubens: Altarpieces of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in the Early Modern Age.” PhD dissertation, Queen’s University, 2009. Stoichita, Victor. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-painting. Translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Stoyanova-Cucco, Magdalena. “El Greco e l’ambiente veneziano.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 187–98. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. Stratton, Suzanne L. The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

206

Strinati, Claudio. “Roma nell’anno 1600: Studio di pittura.” Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 10 (1980): 15–43. Summers, David. The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and The Rise of Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. ———. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. ———. Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Thurston, Herbert. The Roman Jubilee: History and Ceremonial. London: Sands and Co., 1925. Timmermann, Achim. Real Presence: Sacrament Houses and the Body of Christ, c. 1270–1600. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Trapier, Elizabeth du Gué. El Greco: Early Years at Toledo, 1576–1586. New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1956. ———. “El Greco in the Farnese Palace, Rome.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 51 (1958): 73–90. Treherne, Matthew. “Pictorial Space and Sacred Time: Tasso’s Le lagrime della beata vergine and the Experience of Religious Art in the Counter-Reformation.” Italian Studies 62 (2007): 5–25. Trexler, Richard C. “Florentine Religious Experience: The Sacred Image.” Studies in the Renaissance 19 (1972): 7–41. Valone, Carolyn. “Giovanni Antonio Dosio: The Roman Years.” Art Bulletin 58 (1976): 528–41. Vance, Eugene. “Seeing God: Augustine, Sensation, and the Mind’s Eye.” In Rethinking the Medieval Senses: Heritages, Fascinations, Frames, edited by Stephen G. Nichols, Andreas Kablitz, and Alison Calhoun, 13–29. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Vassilaki, Maria. The Painter Angelos and Icon-Painting in Venetian Crete. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. ———. “Three Questions on the Modena Triptych.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 119–32. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. Vassilaki, Maria, and Robin Cormack. “Domenikos Theotokopoulos: The Baptism of Christ; A Recent Acquisition of the Municipality of Heraklion, Crete.” Deltion tes Christianikes Archaiologikes Hetaireias 4 (2005): 227–40. Vechnyak, Irina Barskova. “El Greco’s Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind: Chronology Reconsidered.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal 26 (1991): 177–82. Vegüé y Goldoni, Angel. “En torno a la figura del Greco.” Arte Español 8 (1926–27): 70–79. Veldman, Ilja M., ed. Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert. The Illustrated Bartsch 55. New York: Abaris Books, 1991.

bibliography

Vikan, Gary. “Ruminations on Edible Icons: Originals and Copies in the Art of Byzantium.” In Retaining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies, and Reproductions, edited by Kathleen Preciado, 47–59. Studies in the History of Art 20. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Voelker, Evelyn Carole. “Charles Borromeo’s Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae, 1577: A Translation with Commentary and Analysis.” PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, 1977. Voelkle, William M. “The Farnese Hours: Maraviglia di Roma.” In Farnese Book of Hours with Illuminations by Giulio Clovio Croata: Complete Colour Facsimile Edition of the MS M.69 of the Pierpont Morgan Library New York, 7–128. Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2001. Wallace, William E. “Michelangelo, Tiberio Calcagni, and the Florentine Pietà.” Artibus et Historiae 21 (2000): 81–99. Wandel, Lee Palmer. The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Waterhouse, Ellis K. “El Greco’s Italian Period.” Art Studies: Medieval, Renaissance and Modern 8 (1930): 59–88. Wazbinski, Zygmunt. L’accademia medicea del disegno a Firenze nel Cinquecento: Idee e istituzione. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1987. ———. “San Luca che dipinge la Madonna all’Accademia di Roma: Un ‘pastiche’ zuccariano nella maniera di Raffaello?” Artibus et Historiae 12 (1985): 27–37. Wethey, Harold. El Greco and His School. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. ———. “El Greco in Rome and the Portrait of Vincenzo Anastagi.” In El Greco: Italy and Spain, edited by Jonathan Brown and José Manuel Pita Andrade, 171–78. Studies in the History of Art 13. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984. ———. “Michelangelo e El Greco.” Palatino 8 (1964): 144–48. White, James F. Roman Catholic Worship: Trent to Today. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003. Williams, Robert. Art, Theory, and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy: From Techne to Metatechne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Willumsen, Jens Ferdinand. La jeunesse du peintre El Greco: Essai sur la transformation de l’artiste Byzantin en peintre Européen. 2 vols. Paris: Les Éditions G. Crès et Cie., 1927. Wittkower, Rudolf. “El Greco’s Language of Gestures.” Art News 56 (1957): 45–49 and 53–54. Wolf, Gerhard. “From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the ‘Disembodied’ Face and Disseminating the True Image of

Christ in the Latin West.” In The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, edited by Herbert Kessler and Gerhard Wolf, 153–79. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998. ———. “‘Or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?’ Sguardi alla ‘vera icona’ e alle sue copie artistiche.” In Il volto di Cristo, edited by Giovanni Morello and Gerhard Wolf, 103–14. Milan: Electa, 2000. ———. Salus Populi Romani: Die Geschichte römisher Kulturbilder im Mittelalter. Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1990. ———. Schleier und Spiegel: Traditionen des Christusbildes und die Bildkonzepte der Renaissance. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002. ———. “La Veronica e la tradizione romana di icone.” In Il Ritratto e la Memoria: Materiali 2, edited by Augusto Gentili, Philippe Morel, and Claudia Cieri Via, 9–35. Rome: Bulzoni, 1993. Xydis, Alexander G. “El Greco’s Healing of the Blind, Sources and Stylistic Connections.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 64 (1964): 301–6. ———. “El Greco’s Iconographical Sources.” In El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, edited by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, 141–59. Heraklion: Municipality of Heraklion, 1995. Zarco Cuevas, Julián. Pintores españoles en San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial (1566–1613). Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1931. ———. Pintores italianos en San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial (1575–1613). Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1932. Zeitler, Kurt. “In nueum Licht: El Grecos Variation über Michelangelos Giorno.” In El Greco kommentiert den Wettstreit der Künste, 9–43. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006. Zeri, Federico. Pittura e controriforma: L’arte senza tempo di Scipione da Gaeta. Turin: Einaudi, 1957. Zerner, Henri, ed. Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century: School of Fontainebleau. The Illustrated Bartsch 32. New York: Abaris Books, 1979. Zorach, Rebecca, ed. The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Zottman, Ludwig. “Zür Kunst von El Greco.” Die Christliche Kunst 3 (1906–7): 66–67, 79–88, 104–10, 186–92, 213–16, and 221–40.

207

index

Page numbers in boldface refer to illustrations. Accademia del Disegno (Florence), 8 Accademia di San Luca (Rome) Muziano in establishment of, 88 Zuccaro’s lectures at, 26, 177n52 accuracy artists’ responsibility for, 99–102, 104 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 102, 104 Acts of the Apostles, 108 Adam, in Expulsion from Paradise (El Greco), 50 Adam and Eve (Dürer), 50 Adoration of the Magi (Correggio), 5 Adoration of the Magi (El Greco), 5, 56, 132 Adoration of the Shepherds (Britto), 49 Adoration of the Shepherds (Titian), 49 Adoration of the Shepherds, Kettering (El Greco), 49, 49 Adoration of the Shepherds, Kingston (El Greco), 47–49, 48, 56 Adoration of the Shepherds, Madrid (El Greco), 155, 160, 166, 167 Adoration of the Shepherds, Modena (El Greco), 46, 49, 63 Agony in the Garden (Dürer), 53 Agony in the Garden (Leyden), 53 Agony in the Garden (Montagna), 53 Agony in the Garden, Ferrara (El Greco), 52–53, 53, 60, 62 Alberti, Cherubino, 77, 182n20 Assumption of the Virgin, 158, 159 Alberti, Leon Battista De re aedificatoria, 186n52 on emotions, 103, 185n21 on gestures, 102–3 on istoria, 99, 102–4, 105, 122 on naturalism, 37, 131 On Painting, 89, 99, 102–4, 114 on periaktoi, 186n52 on perspective and optics, 114 Alberti, Romano, 177n52 Allegory of Painting (Lomazzo, attributed to), 26, 27, 177n47

altarpieces. See also Santo Domingo el Antiguo Byzantine, existence of, 170 vs. icons, functions of, 153, 169–73 Ambrosius (saint), 168 Anastagi, Vincenzo, El Greco’s portrait of, 7, 127 anatomy, artists’ study of, 81, 82 ancient Rome. See Rome, ancient Andachtsbild, 121 Angeli, Marco d’, Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, 5 Angeli (del Moro), Giovanni Battista d’ Baptism of Christ, 45, 47, 47 Crucifixion, 53, 54, 56 Victory Crowning the Roman Vestal Tucia, 5 Angelico, Fra, 181n76 angels in Adoration of the Shepherds (El Greco), 47, 49 in Agony in the Garden (El Greco), 53 in Annunciation (El Greco), 50–51 in Baptism of Christ (El Greco), 45, 47 in Christ Crowning the Christian Soldier (El Greco), 50 delivery of divine inspiration by, 21–28 in Eucharist, 168, 169 in Santo Domingo el Antiguo retablo (El Greco), 168 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 15, 16, 20–28 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (Heemskerck), 23 anger, in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 102, 103–4, 122 annotations of El Greco. See library Annunciation (Caraglio, after Titian), 51, 51, 84 Annunciation, Barcelona (El Greco), 84–87, 86, 88 Annunciation, Madrid, Museo del Prado (El Greco), 84–87, 85, 88 Annunciation, Madrid, Museo ThyssenBornemisza (El Greco), 72, 84–87, 87, 88 Annunciation, Modena (El Greco), 46, 50, 50–51, 56, 63 Annunciation, Murano (Titian), 51, 84–86 Annunciation, Venice (Titian), 84, 84–86 antichità della città di Roma, Le (Gamucci), 137, 137–38, 139, 142, 189n40, 189n43 antichità di Roma, L’ (Palladio), 189n43

Antiphilus, 145 antiquarianism. See Rome, ancient antiquità di Roma, L’ (Contarini), 20 Apollo, in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 99 Apostolic Palace (Vatican), 143 apprentices to El Greco, 58 archaic style, 68, 70 architecture. See also specific buildings of ancient Rome, 133–44 El Greco’s first venture into, 163–64 in Portrait of an Architect (El Greco), 129–30 of theater scenery, 115–17 archival practices of El Greco, 56–58 Arch of Constantine (Dosio), 134–36, 135, 137 Arch of Constantine (Rome) in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 133, 134–36, 137, 142–44 in Christianity, 143–44 in Santo Domingo el Antiguo retablo, 164 views of, 134, 189n37 Aretino, Pietro, 7, 70 I quattro libri de la humanità di Christo, 84 Ariadne Sleeping, 191n33 Aristotle, 27, 119 De anima, 119, 187n74, 188n78 Armenini, Giovanni Battista, De’ veri precetti della pittura, 67 art, as form of divine inspiration, 24–28 Arte del ben pensare e contemplare la Passione del nostro Signor Jesu Christo (da Lucca), 60 artful icon artificial nature of, 11, 38, 40, 44, 169 definition of, 11, 12, 38 El Greco’s altarpiece as, 153, 170–73 El Greco’s narrative paintings as, 99, 120–23 El Greco’s panel paintings as, 38–41, 43–44, 59, 70 artificiality of artful icons, 11, 38, 40, 44, 169 of El Greco’s paintings, 34–41 of icons, requirement of, 37, 40–41 of linear perspective, 117–18 signature as signal of, 34, 36, 41 of veil of Veronica paintings, 34–37, 38, 41 artist(s) El Greco’s conception of role of, 16–18, 33–34, 41 El Greco’s portraits of, 127–30

index

artist(s) (continued) historical and religious accuracy as responsibility of, 99–102, 104 intellectual role of, 127–30 Luke as, 15–28 miracles performed by paintings and, 11–12 signatures as signs of authorship of, 34 social status of, 129–30 as translators, 102 artistic style(s). See also synthesis of artistic styles; specific styles as component parts, 91 as potential barrier to devotional engagement, 63–70 recognition of variation in, 90 art theory and synthesis of artistic styles by El Greco, 88–92, 95 after Vasari, 92–95 assistants, El Greco’s use of, 58, 190n13 Assumption of the Virgin (Alberti), 158, 159 Assumption of the Virgin (El Greco), 3, 153–60 Alberti’s (Cherubino) influence on, 158 vs. Christ Healing the Blind, 158–59 vs. Dormition of the Virgin, 1–4, 156–57, 160 evidence of stylistic development in, 1–4, 156–57 Immaculate Conception in, 159–60, 166 retrospection in, 156–57 signature on, 2, 155–56 structural framework of, 163–64 tabernacle in front of, 165–66, 169–70 Tintoretto’s influence on, 157–58 Titian’s influence on, 157, 158, 191n21 Assumption of the Virgin (Tintoretto), 157–58, 159 Assumption of the Virgin (Titian), 90–91, 157, 157, 158, 164, 191n21 Assumption of the Virgin (Zuccaro and Zuccaro), 158 Atlas Marianus (Gumppenberg), 177n16 Augustine (saint), 120 Augustus (Roman emperor), 131, 188n18 authenticity of paintings attributed to Luke, 177n16 and transparency of icons, 64 authorship, signatures as signs of, 34 background, of Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 111–15

210

Bacon, Roger, De multiplicatione specierum, 119, 187n74 Bailey, Gauvin Alexander, 64, 180n43 Balaam and the Angel (Coornhert), 5 Balaam and the Angel (Heemskerck), 5 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum in, 55 Bandinelli, Baccio, 79 Bandini, Pierantonio, 77 Baptism of Christ (Angeli), 45, 47, 47 Baptism of Christ, Heraklion (El Greco), 43–49, 44 basis for attribution of, 45 color palette of, 45, 47 composition of, 45–47 dating of, 45–47, 56 El Greco’s conception of artful icon in, 43–44 Italian style of, 43, 56 vs. Modena Triptych, 45–47 as part of triptych, 44, 47–49 rediscovery of, 43 significance of triptych format of, 47–48 Baptism of Christ, Modena (El Greco), 45–47, 46, 47 composition of, 45–47 dating of, 45–47 devotional engagement with, 63 vs. Heraklion Baptism of Christ, 45–47 Barbaro, Daniele La pratica della perspettiva, 114–20 Ten Books on Architecture (Vitruvius) translation and commentary by, 75, 80, 82, 114 Barber, Charles, 12 Barnabas (saint), in Blinding of Elymas (Raphael), 108 Barocci, Federico, 8, 70 Baronio, Cesare, 132 Basil the Great (saint), On the Holy Spirit, 39 Bassano, Jacopo, 145 Bathàs, Tommaso, 65, 66 Baths of Diocletian (Dosio), 136–37, 137, 142 Baths of Diocletian (Rome) in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 133, 136–38, 139–42 reuse of, 141–42, 190n60 Battle of Cascina (Michelangelo), 183n33 Baudrillard, Jean, 40 Baxandall, Michael, 117, 149 Beatrizet, Nicolas, 191n30 Bellini, Giovanni, 58 Belting, Hans, 38, 40, 121

Likeness and Presence, 10 Belvedere Palace, 133 Bessarion (cardinal), 127 Bible. See Old Testament; specific books Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), 94 Blinding of Elymas (Clovio), 108, 109 Blinding of Elymas (Raimondi), 108 Blinding of Elymas (Raphael), 108–10 blindness in Blinding of Elymas (Raphael), 110 in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 105, 110, 112–20, 122–23 spiritual, 105, 110–11 Bonasone, Giulio, 22, 23, 191n30 Bonastri, Lattanzio, 58 books devotional manuals, 60–62, 179n111 illuminated, Offices of the Madonna (Clovio) as, 128–29, 130–31, 138 owned by El Greco (See library) in Portrait of Giulio Clovio (El Greco), 128–29, 130–31 Bordone, Paris, 50 Borromeo, Carlo, Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae, 165, 168 Borromini, Francesco, 144 Botticelli, Sandro, The Punishment of Korah and the Stoning of Moses and Aaron, 143 Boughton House (Kettering), 49 Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón) (El Greco), 144–49, 146 antiquarian references in, 126–27, 144–49 commission for, 145, 190n68 in Farnese inventories, 126 motivations behind, 126–27 religious meaning of, 145–49 singularity of, 144 Boy Blowing on a Dying Fire (Lycius), 145 Brazen Serpent story, 39–40 Britto, Giovanni, Adoration of the Shepherds, 49 Brown, Jonathan, 176n49 brushwork of El Greco, 34, 56, 84, 127 Buccleuch, Duke of, 49 Buonriccio, Angelico as source for Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 98–99, 104, 110–11, 112 as source for Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 98–99, 102, 104, 122 Burial of Christ (El Greco), 42, 60, 61 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 38

index

Byzantine style altarpieces in, 170 angels in, 20 compositional repetition in, 59 El Greco’s departure from, 4, 5, 9–10, 63 El Greco’s use of, 2, 9, 16, 65 icons in, 65 Luke portrayed as artist in, 16 Calapodas, Giorgio Sideris, 5 Calcagni, Tiberio, 79 Campbell, Stephen, 28, 40 Campi, Bernardino, Victory Crowning the Roman Vestal Tucia, 5 Candia (Crete) Cathedral of St. Titus in, 19 exportation of icons from, 4 El Greco’s move from, 5 Italian art in, 4–5, 175n6 Caraglio, Jacopo, 50 Annunciation, after Titian, 51, 51, 84 Caravaggio, Inspiration of St. Matthew, 22, 23 Caroto, Giovanni, 94 Carpi, Ugo da, St. Veronica Altarpiece, 35, 36 Carracci, Agostino, 94, 185n95 Carracci, Annibale, 94, 185n95 Carracci, Ludovico, 94, 185n95 Carracci family, 9, 70, 94–95, 184n77, 185n95 Cassiani, Niccolò, 177n16 Castiglione, Baldassare, 177n41 Castilla, Diego de, 153, 155, 192n50 Castilla, Francisco de, 159–60 Castilla, Luis de, 153 Catholic Church. See also Council of Trent ancient Rome’s continuity with, 131–32, 138–44, 149 Arch of Constantine in, 143–44 on religious function of images, 8, 9, 11 Cavalieri, Giovanni Battista de’, Urbis Romae aedificiorum, 137, 137, 189n47 Cavalieri, Tommaso, 80–81 Cavallini, Pietro, 11 celestial hierarchy, 22 Cellini, Benvenuto, 25–26, 79 Cennini, Cennino, 89 Libro dell’arte, 67 Cesari, Bernardino, Triumphal Entry of Constantine, 144 Chastel, André, 33 Christ. See also specific works in Agony in the Garden (El Greco), 53

in Baptism of Christ (El Greco), 45 in Christ Before Pilate (El Greco), 53 in Christ Crowning the Christian Soldier (El Greco), 50 in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 105, 112–13 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 102 in Crucifixion (El Greco), 53–55 as light, 111, 112, 120, 149 in Luke’s paintings, 19, 21, 22–23 in Pietà paintings (El Greco), 79–80 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 15–16 in veil of Veronica, 28–37 Christ Before Pilate, Ferrara (El Greco), 52–53, 54, 60, 62 Christ Carrying the Cross (Giorgione or Titian), 11 Christ Cleansing the Temple, Washington, DC (El Greco), 97–123, 100 accuracy of, 102, 104 Alberti’s (Leon Battista) influence on, 99, 102–4 Buonriccio as source for, 98–99, 102, 104, 122 compositional repetition in other versions of, 56, 97 devotional engagement with, 120, 122 gestures in, 102–4, 122 Michelangelo’s influence on, 81, 99 significance of, 97–98 theatrical approach to composition of, 99–104 Christ Crowning the Christian Soldier, Modena (El Greco), 46, 49–50, 63 Christ Crucified (El Greco), 55 Christ Giving the Keys (Perugino), 143 Christ Healing the Blind, Dresden (El Greco), 97–123, 104 Buonriccio as source for, 98–99, 104, 110–11, 112 compositional repetition in other versions of, 56, 97 dating of, 97 devotional engagement with, 113, 114–15, 120, 122–23 gestures in, 105–8, 110, 122 light as metaphor for spiritual illumination in, 110–13, 120, 122–23, 148 Michelangelo’s influence on, 81, 82 perspective in, 111–20, 122–23 Raphael’s influence on, 105–10

significance of, 97–98 theatrical approach to composition of, 104–20 vision in, 105, 112–20, 122–23 Christ Healing the Blind, New York (El Greco), 97–123, 106 antiquarian references in, 132–34, 139 Buonriccio as source for, 98–99, 104, 110–11, 112 compositional repetition in other versions of, 56, 97 dating of, 97 devotional engagement with, 113, 114–15, 120, 122–23 gestures in, 105–8, 110, 122 light as metaphor for spiritual illumination in, 110–13, 120, 122–23, 148 Michelangelo’s influence on, 82 perspective in, 111–20, 122–23 Raphael’s influence on, 105–10 significance of, 97–98 theatrical approach to composition of, 104–20 vision in, 105, 112–20, 122–23 Christ Healing the Blind, Parma (El Greco), 97–123, 107, 135 antiquarian references in, 126, 132–44 Arch of Constantine in, 133, 134–36, 137, 142–44 vs. Assumption of the Virgin, 158–59, 164 Baths of Diocletian in, 133, 136–38, 139–42 Buonriccio as source for, 98–99, 104, 110–11, 112 compositional repetition in other versions of, 56, 97 dating of, 97 devotional engagement with, 113, 114–15, 120, 122–23 in Farnese inventories, 113, 126, 132 gestures in, 105–8, 110, 122 identity of figures in, 132, 188n26 light as metaphor for spiritual illumination in, 110–13, 120, 122–23, 148–49 Michelangelo’s influence on, 82 motivations behind, 126 perspective in, 111–20, 122–23 Raphael’s influence on, 105–10 signature on, 58, 126 significance of, 97–98 spiritual renewal as theme of, 139, 140, 142, 144

211

index

Christ Healing the Blind, Parma (continued) theatrical approach to composition of, 104–20 vision in, 105, 112–20, 122–23 Christ Healing the Blind, Washington, DC (El Greco), 133 Christianity. See also Catholic Church ancient Rome’s continuity with, 131–32, 138–44, 149 Arch of Constantine in, 143–44 Christiansen, Keith, 188n17 Cicero, 90, 184n67 On Invention, 89 Cimabue, 67 Cleansing of the Temple, Minneapolis (El Greco), 74, 96, 97–123, 101 accuracy of, 102, 104 Alberti’s (Leon Battista) influence on, 99, 102–4 Buonriccio as source for, 98–99, 102, 104, 122 compositional repetition in other versions of, 56, 97 devotional engagement with, 120, 122 gestures in, 102–4, 122 Michelangelo’s influence on, 81, 82, 99 signature on, 58 significance of, 97–98 synthesis of artistic styles in, 73–75, 95 theatrical approach to composition of, 99–104 Cleansing of the Temple, Washington, DC (El Greco). See Christ Cleansing the Temple, Washington, DC (El Greco) Clement VII (pope), 143 Clovio, Giulio Blinding of Elymas, 108, 109 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 73, 74 El Greco’s introduction to Farnese by, 6, 125, 128 El Greco’s portrait of (See Portrait of Giulio Clovio) Michelangelo’s works owned by, 76, 161, 182n16, 182n18 as miniaturist, 6, 7 Offices of the Madonna, 128–29, 130–31, 138 reputation of, 74 Colonna, Vittoria, 68–69, 160–61 colorido, El Greco’s use of term, 83–84 colorito, El Greco’s use of term, 83–84 color palette of Michelangelo, 80, 82, 88

212

of Titian, 74, 75, 83–87 color palette of El Greco, 82–92 in Baptism of Christ, Heraklion, 45, 47 El Greco’s writings on, 82–84 integration of disegno and, 88–92 in Portrait of Giulio Clovio, 127 in St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, 86–87 Titian’s influence on, 74, 75, 83–87 Comanini, Gregorio, Il Figino overo del fine della pittura, 28 commissions of El Greco for Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón), 145, 190n68 for Disrobing of Christ (Espolio), 152, 153 for Martyrdom of St. Maurice, 58, 151–52 for Santo Domingo el Antiguo, 4, 152, 153, 155, 190n13 shortage of, in Italy, 125, 126, 151, 188n1 compositional repetition by El Greco with Christ Healing the Blind, 56, 97 with Cleansing of the Temple, 56, 97 vs. copies, 56 in devotional panel paintings, 44–45, 56–59 examples of, 56 motivations for, 58–59 signatures and, 58 compositions of El Greco. See also specific works evidence of development in, 45–47, 59 prints used as inspiration for, 4, 5 retrospection in, 156–57 Constantine (Roman emperor), 143–44 Contarini, Luigi, L’antiquità di Roma, 20 Conte, Jacopino del, 73 Convento de Capuchinas (Toledo), 29 Coornhert, Dirck Volkertsz., Balaam and the Angel, 5 copies vs. compositional repetition, 56 vs. images of images, 38 made by apprentices, 58 in Santo Domingo el Antiguo, 155 Cormack, Robin, 45, 47 Correggio Adoration of the Magi, 5 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 182n3 El Greco on, 75, 83 Vasari on, 93

Cort, Cornelius, 185n15, 189n31 Cossío, Manuel, 144, 163 costruzione legittima, 114 Council of Florence-Ferrara, 64 Council of Nicaea, Second, 9, 11, 29, 39 Council of Trent on altarpieces, 172 definition of icons used by, 10, 11 on emotions of viewers, 104 on Eucharist, 164, 169 El Greco’s copy of canons of, 176n48 Jubilee of 1575 after, 32 lack of guidance by, on appearance of images, 63 Luke as artist and, 20 on religious function of images, 8, 9, 11, 39, 98, 122 tabernacles after, 165 Toledo’s implementation of, 171 Counter-Reformation. See also Council of Trent Catholic victory in, 144 depictions of martyrs in, 133 crescent moon, in Assumption of the Virgin (El Greco), 159–60 Crete art of (See Byzantine style) demand for icons from, 65 Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco) painted in, 1–4 emigration to Venice from, 5–6, 175n21 exportation of icons from, 4 El Greco’s departure from, 5 El Greco’s life in, 1–5 Historical Museum of, 43, 51 Italian art in, 4–5, 175n6 Creto-Venetian school, 6 Crociferi, Church of the (Venice), 157 Crucifixion (Angeli), 53, 54, 56 Crucifixion, Ferrara (El Greco), 52–56, 54, 60, 62 cultural identity of El Greco, 4 Cypriot, John, 66 da Lucca, Pietro, Arte del ben pensare e contemplare la Passione del nostro Signor Jesu Christo, 60 Damaskinos, Michael, 6, 65 Madonna del Rosario, 65, 66 Danaë (Titian), 92 Daniele da Volterra, 7

index

Danti, Egnatio, 118–20, 187n66, 187n74 Day (Michelangelo), El Greco’s study after, 81, 81 De anima (Aristotle), 119, 187n74, 188n78 De coelesti hierarchia (Pseudo-Dionysius), 22, 120 del Bene, Giovanni, Passione del nostro signore Iesu Christo, 62 D’Elia, Una Roman, 9, 84 Dempsey, Charles, 9, 91, 184n77 De multiplicatione specierum (Bacon), 119, 187n74 De re aedificatoria (Alberti), 186n52 Descritione (Palladio), 20, 189n43 De’ veri precetti della pittura (Armenini), 67 devotional engagement with altarpiece by El Greco, 170–73 artistic style as related to, 63–70 with Flemish vs. Italian paintings, 68–69 with icons, 10, 11 images in, role of, 60–62 with Luke’s paintings, 19–20 manuals on, 60–62, 179n111 medieval vs. Renaissance modes of, 59–60 with narratives by El Greco, 113, 114–15, 120–23 with panels by El Greco, 43, 59–71 perspective in, 113, 114–15 physical damage as evidence of, 15 synthesis of artistic styles for, 92 with veil of Veronica, 32–33 devotional manuals, 60–62, 179n111 devotional panel paintings by El Greco, 43–71. See also specific works as artful icons, 38–41, 43–44, 59, 70 compositional development in, 45–47, 59 compositional repetition in, 44–45, 56–59 cost of, 43, 59 devotional practices in design of, 43, 59–71 Greek style in, lack of, 66–68, 71 Italian style in, 43, 56, 63–71 small size of, 43, 59 texts used in conjunction with, 60–62 in triptych format, 45–56, 60–63 “devout style” of painting, 9, 69, 70 Dialogo della pittura (Dolce), 7, 10 Dialogo di pittura (Pino), 88–89 Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori de’ pittori circa l’istorie (Gilio da Fabriano), 21–22, 69–70, 99–102 Didi-Huberman, Georges, 37

Diocletian (Roman emperor), 136 Dionysius of Fourna, 18 directionality, optical, 118–19 Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (Paleotti), 39–40 disegno El Greco’s integration of color and, 88–92 of Michelangelo, El Greco influenced by, 76, 80–82 Zuccaro on, 26–28 disegno interno, 27 Disrobing of Christ (Espolio) (El Greco), 152, 153 divine illumination, light as metaphor for, 110–13, 120, 122–23, 148–49 divine inspiration angels in delivery of, 21–28 art as form of, 24–28 divinity of painting, 15–41 angels in, 20–28 Luke’s identity as artist and, 18, 20, 28 in origins of artistic ideas, 24–28 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 15–28 veil of Veronica and, 28–37 Zuccaro on, 26–28, 177n52 Dolce, Ludovico on color and disegno, 89, 90–91 Dialogo della pittura, 7, 10 on Last Judgment (Michelangelo), 7 on tripartite division of painting, 90, 184nn66–67 Vasari criticized by, 93–94 Domenichi, Lodovico, 99 Dominico Greco. See Greco, El Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco), xiv, 2 vs. Assumption of the Virgin, 1–4, 156–57, 160 Michelangelo’s influence on, 76 prints used as inspiration for, 5 signature on, 2 Dosio, Giovanni Antonio Arch of Constantine, 134–36, 135, 137 Baths of Diocletian, 136–37, 137, 142 Libro delle antichità, 134–36 doves in Annunciation, Modena (El Greco), 51 in Baptism of Christ (El Greco), 45 drama. See theatrical approach to narratives drawing. See disegno; specific works due regole della prospettiva pratica, Le (Vignola), 118–20, 187n66

Dürer, Albrecht Adam and Eve, 50 Agony in the Garden, 53 Holy Trinity, 160, 161 Large Passion series, 53 Last Judgment, 179n11 on perspective, 187n60 Small Passion series, 53, 179n11 Eden, Garden of, in Expulsion from Paradise (El Greco), 50 Edgerton, Samuel, 188n82 Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland in, 190n70 Eikones (Lucian), 91 El Greco. See Greco, El Elymas, in Blinding of Elymas (Raphael), 108–10 emotion Alberti (Leon Battista) on depictions of, 103, 185n21 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 102, 103–4, 122 of viewers, Council of Trent on, 104 Encounter of Christ and Veronica (Zuccaro), 121 Epistulae morales (Seneca), 89 Erythraean Sibyl (Michelangelo), 148, 148 Escorial (Spain), 26, 58, 151 Escutcheon with St. Veronica’s Veil (El Greco), 29, 30, 33, 153, 164, 168–69, 172, 192n60 Espolio (El Greco). See Disrobing of Christ (El Greco) Ettlinger, Leopold, 143 Eucharist, in Santo Domingo el Antiguo retablo, 164–69, 173 Euclid, 118, 119 Evangelist, the. See Luke Eve, in Expulsion from Paradise (El Greco), 50 Expulsion from Paradise, Modena (El Greco), 46, 50, 50, 62–63 Fable (El Greco), 145, 147 Farnese, Alessandro (cardinal) antiquarianism of, 131–32 Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón) (El Greco) and, 190n68 in Christ Healing the Blind, Parma (El Greco), 132 commissions by, 125, 126, 188n1 El Greco’s introduction to, 6, 125, 128

213

index

Farnese, Alessandro (continued) El Greco’s split with, 6, 7, 125 Offices of the Madonna (Clovio) and, 128, 131 piety of, 132, 188n23 portraits of, 127, 132 Vignola as architect of, 187n66 Farnese, Alessandro (nephew), 132 Farnese, Ranuccio, 127 Farnese Hercules, 132, 189n31 Farnese Hours. See Offices of the Madonna Farnese Palace (Rome) art collection of, 76, 113, 126, 127, 132 Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco) at, 113, 126, 132 Farnese Hercules at, 132 El Greco at, 6, 73, 88, 125–26 El Greco influenced by, 125–26, 131–32 inventories of, 113, 126 Muziano at, 88 Titian at, 125 Vignola at, 187n66 Father of Disegno (Zuccaro), 26, 27 Felini, Pietro Martire, Trattato nuovo delle cose maravigliose dell’alma città di Roma, 20 Ferrara, Pinacoteca Nazionale in, 52 Ferrara Triptych (El Greco), 52–56, 53, 54 composition of, 52–55 dating of, 56 devotional engagement with, 60–62 prints used as inspiration for, 53, 55–56 vs. Scenes of Christ’s Passion (Klontzas), 55–56 significance of triptych format of, 48 Figino overo del fine della pittura, Il (Comanini), 28 figures, Alberti’s (Leon Battista) call for variety in, 103, 105 Finaldi, Gabriele, 190n68 Fiorentino, Rosso, 50 Flemish painting, vs. Italian painting, 68–69 Flight into Egypt (El Greco), 86–87 Florence Accademia del Disegno in, 8 Madonna dell’Impruneta in, 19 Palazzo Vecchio in, 163 Santissima Annunziata in, 11, 23 Fontana, Giovanni Battista, 51–52 frames in El Greco’s paintings of veil of Veronica, 34–35, 37 of Modena Triptych (El Greco), 55

214

Francia, Francesco, 9 Franco, Battista, 83, 93, 95 Peter Healing the Lame, after Raphael, 108, 108 Franco, Giovanni Battista, 5, 50 Freedberg, David, 10, 121 frontality, 69, 157 Gabriel (archangel) in Annunciation (El Greco), 51 in Annunciation (Titian), 86 Gamucci, Bernardo, Le antichità della città di Roma, 137, 137–38, 139, 142, 189n40, 189n43 Garden of Eden, in Expulsion from Paradise (El Greco), 50 Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in, 56 Gerald of Wales, Speculum ecclesiae, 178n65 Gerson, Jean, I quattri libri della imitatione di Giesu Christo, 62 gesture(s) Alberti (Leon Battista) on, 102–3, 105 in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 105–8, 110, 122 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 102–4, 122 Gesù, church of the (Rome), 164 Gilio da Fabriano, Giovanni Andrea on accuracy, 99–102, 104 Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori de’ pittori circa l’istorie, 21–22, 69–70, 99–102 on frontality, 69, 157 on Laocoön, 133 on Last Judgment (Michelangelo), 7 on perspective, 113 Giordano da Rivalto, 64 Giorgione, 94, 184n80 Christ Carrying the Cross attributed to, 11 Giotto, 67, 68 Giovane, Palma, 66 Gloria (Titian), 189n31 God, as first creator of images, 29 “god of painting,” Pino’s formula for, 12, 88–90, 92, 95 Goffen, Rona, 75, 79 gold in Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco), 2 in Modena Triptych (El Greco), 45 gold frames, of Modena Triptych (El Greco), 55

gold leaf, in Baptism of Christ (El Greco), 45 Gossaert, Jan, St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, 21, 21, 22–23 grace light as metaphor for, 110, 120, 123, 148–49 vision associated with, 120 Greco, El. See also Italian phase; specific genres and works as icon painter, 1, 9–10, 13 as Italian painter, 155, 156 life of, 1–8 multicultural identity of, 4 names of, 1 Greek language, El Greco’s signature in, 2, 6 Greek style El Greco’s rejection of, 12, 66–68, 71, 87 Vasari on, 67–68 Greenstein, Jack, 140 Gregory of Melissenos, 64 Gregory the Great (saint), 102 Gregory XIII (pope), 88, 98, 144, 182n20 Grosseteste, Robert, 119 Guicciardini, Luigi, 33, 178n80 guild, painters’, of Rome, 6–7 Guise, Charles de, 127 Gumppenberg, Wilhelm, Atlas Marianus, 177n16 Haimendorf, Christoph Fürer von, 52 Hall, Marcia, 86, 121, 152, 191n21 The Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 8 Heemskerck, Maerten van Balaam and the Angel, 5 St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, 23, 24 Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, 133–34, 134 Held, Jutta, 140 Heraklion (Crete), Historical Museum of Crete in, 43, 51. See also Baptism of Christ (El Greco) history painting. See istoria; narrative paintings Hodegetria compositional repetition in portrayal of, 59 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 15–16, 65 Hollanda, Francisco de, 28, 68, 69, 70, 90, 185n93 Holy Face (van Eyck), 36, 36 Holy Spirit in Annunciation, Modena (El Greco), 51

index

in Baptism of Christ (El Greco), 45 Holy Trinity (Dürer), 160, 161 Honthorst, Gerrit von, 145 Humfrey, Peter, 170 icons. See also artful icon; specific works vs. altarpieces, 153, 169–73 as artificial images, necessity of, 37, 40–41 compositional repetition in, 59 definitions of, 10, 11, 121 exportation from Crete, 4 functions of, 10, 64 El Greco’s identity as painter of, 1, 9–10, 13 vs. narrative paintings, 120–21, 188n86 stylistic neutrality of, 64–65 transparency of, 10, 38, 64 uniform appearance of, 64 idea, artistic definition of, 24 divine implantation of, 24–28 Idea del tempio della pittura (Lomazzo), 26, 91 Idea de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti (Zuccaro), 26–28 identity of El Greco as icon painter, 1, 9–10, 13 as Italian artist, 155, 156 multicultural, 4 idols in Old Testament, 37 vs. religious images, 39–41, 179n107 Ildefonsus (saint), 155, 161 illuminated books, Offices of the Madonna (Clovio) as, 128–29, 130–31, 138 illustrated books, El Greco’s collection of, 138 images God as first creator of, 29 images of, 38 imagination, in devotional practices, 60–62 Imitatio Christi, 62 Immaculate Conception, in Assumption of the Virgin (El Greco), 159–60, 166 inscriptions on St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, 18–19, 21 on View of Mount Sinai, Modena, 51 Inspiration of St. Matthew (Caravaggio), 22, 23 Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae (Borromeo), 165, 168 intellectuals, artists as, 127–30 inventory of works, El Greco’s maintenance of, 56–58

Isaiah, book of, 110 Isidore of Seville, 110 istoria (history painting). See also narrative paintings Alberti’s (Leon Battista) influence on, 99, 102–4, 105, 122 Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco) as, 99–104 devotional engagement with, 121 importance of accuracy of, 99–102, 104 Italian art central vs. northern modes of, 91, 92–95 in Crete, 4–5, 175n6 devotional engagement with, 63–67 vs. Flemish art, 68–69 national style of, creation of, 184n79 in Spain, 172, 192n79 Italian language, El Greco’s use of, 155 Italian phase of El Greco (1567–76). See also Rome; Venice; specific genres and works artists with most influence on, 73–74 assistants in, 58 number of works produced during, 56 vs. other Cretan immigrant painters, 6 portraits in, 127 reasons for end of, 7–8 shortage of commissions in, 125, 126, 151, 188n1 stylistic development in, 1–4, 9, 97, 156–57 triptychs as dominant format in, 47–48 Italy. See also specific cities Cretan population of, 5 Spanish invitation to artists of, 151–52, 155, 190n4 Jesuits, 179n111, 180n43 John, Gospel of, 98, 102, 105, 110–11, 112, 139 John (saint), in Peter Healing the Lame (Raphael), 108 John Chrysostom (saint), 168 John the Baptist (saint), in Baptism of Christ (El Greco), 45, 47 Juan of Austria, 188n26 Jubilee of 1575, 32–33, 178nn76–78 Kemp, Martin, 91 Kettering (England), Boughton House in, 49 Kingston (Ontario), Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University in, 47. See also Adoration of the Shepherds, Kingston (El Greco)

Klontzas, Georgios, 51 Scenes of Christ’s Passion, 55, 55–56, 180n23 Koerner, Joseph Leo, 35 Labacco, Antonio, Libro appartenente a l’architettura nel qual si figurano alcune notabili antichità di Roma, 138 language Greek, El Greco’s signature in, 2, 6 Italian, El Greco’s use of, 155 Laocoön, 132–33, 189n31 Large Passion series (Dürer), 53 Last Judgment (Dürer), 179n11 Last Judgment (Michelangelo) critics of, 7, 32, 69, 76, 80, 99 vs. St. Sebastian (El Greco), 163 Last Supper (Raimondi), 5 Last Supper (Raphael), 5 Lateran (Rome), 139, 191n46 laurel in Allegory of Painting (Lomazzo, attributed to), 26 in Father of Disegno (Zuccaro), 26 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 15, 18, 26 symbolism of, 26 Lavin, Irving, 77–79 Lee, Rensselaer W., 184n66 Lentulus, Publius, 29–32 Leonardo da Vinci, 40, 76 Leoni, Pompeo, 129 Lepanto, Battle of (1571), 32 Leyden, Lucas van, Agony in the Garden, 53 library of El Greco Le antichità della città di Roma (Gamucci) in, 138, 189n43 antiquarian books in, 138 canons of Council of Trent in, 176n48 De coelesti hierarchia (Pseudo-Dionysius) in, 22 Le due regole della prospettiva pratica (Vignola) in, 118 illustrated books in, 138 inventories of, 114, 138, 177n32 La pratica della perspettiva (Barbaro) in, 114, 116–17 Il secondo libro di prospettiva (Serlio) in, 111, 138 Ten Books on Architecture (Vitruvius) in, 75, 80, 82, 114

215

index

library of El Greco (continued) Vite (Vasari) in, 68, 75, 76, 80–81, 83, 93–94, 182n3, 184n85 Libro appartenente a l’architettura nel qual si figurano alcune notabili antichità di Roma (Labacco), 138 Libro dell’arte (Cennini), 67 Libro delle antichità (Dosio), 134–36 Lievens, Jan, 145 light in Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón) (El Greco), 144–49 Christ as, 111, 112, 120, 149 in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 110–13, 120, 122–23, 148–49 eye’s reception of, 110, 111, 119–20 as metaphor for divine grace, 110, 120, 123, 148–49 as metaphor for spiritual illumination, 110–13, 120, 122–23, 148–49 in vision, 119–20 Ligorio, Pirro, 59 Likeness and Presence (Belting), 10 linear perspective, 114, 117–18 Lingo, Stuart, 8, 70 Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo Allegory of Painting attributed to, 26, 27, 177n47 Idea del tempio della pittura, 26, 91 Trattato del arte de la pintura, 26 Longinus (saint), spear of, 33, 178n77 Lotto, Lorenzo, 76 Lucian, Eikones, 91 Luke the Evangelist (saint), 15–28. See also St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child angels in representations of, 21–25 as artist, 15–28 in legitimization of religious art, 18, 20, 28 works attributed to, 19–20, 177n16, 177n18, 177n23 writers’ vs. artists’ conceptions of, 22–23 lust, in Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón) (El Greco), 144 Lycius, Boy Blowing on a Dying Fire, 145 Madonna dell’Impruneta, 19 Madonna del Rosario (Damaskinos), 65, 66 madonneros, 6 Madrid (Spain) El Greco’s move to, 151 Museo del Prado in, 86, 145, 153

216

Museo Lázaro Galdiano in, 56 Mancini, Giulio, 7, 58, 75–76, 80 Mandylion of Edessa, 28 Mantegna, Andrea, 140 Manuel, Jorge, 138 Marcellus (pope), 127 Marliani, Bartolomeo, Urbis Romae topographia, 189n47 Martin, Gregory, 32 Martyrdom of St. Maurice (El Greco), 58, 151–52 martyrs, depictions of, 133 Marvels of Rome, 188n18 Mary. See also specific works in Adoration of the Shepherds (El Greco), 49 in Assumption of the Virgin (El Greco), 156, 158, 159 in Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco), 156 in Luke’s paintings, 19–20, 21, 22–23 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 15–16 mass production, by El Greco’s workshop, 58 materiality of images, in medieval vs. Renaissance art, 38 Matthew, Gospel of, 98, 102, 110 Maxentius (Roman emperor), 143 Medici, Giuliano de’, 76 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 142–43 Medici tombs, 161 medieval art materiality of images in, 38 religious function vs. artistic virtues of, 10 medieval era, devotional practices in, 59–60 Meditatione Passionis Christi, 62 Meditatione Vitae Christi, 62 Meditationi pie et divoti sopra la vita et passione di Giesu Christo (Tauler), 62 Michelangelo approach to religious art, 9 Battle of Cascina, 183n33 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 73 Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco) influenced by, 81, 82, 99 color palette of, 80, 82, 88 Day, 81 disegno of, 76, 80–82 Erythraean Sibyl, 148, 148 on Flemish vs. Italian painting, 68–69 El Greco influenced by, 74, 75–83, 88, 160–63, 172–73 El Greco’s criticism of, 7, 75–76



El Greco’s study of, 4, 76–77, 82, 126 El Greco’s writings on, 75, 80–81 on Laocoön, 133 Last Judgment, 7, 32, 69, 76, 80, 99, 163 narrative and iconic functions merged by, 121 Night, 76 owners of works of, 76 Pietà, Florence, 76–80, 79 Pietà, Rome, 76 Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, 160–61, 161 Resurrection, 161 Risen Christ, 161 rivalries of, 75 Rondanini Pietà, 80 in Santa Maria degli Angeli, 141–42 on St. Veronica Altarpiece (Carpi), 35 on Titian, 92–93 vs. Titian, styles of, 92–95 Trinity, 191n30 Vasari on, 77, 79, 80–81, 92–94 Victory, 163 Minerva, in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 99 miniatures by Clovio, 6, 7 El Greco as painter of, 6–7 originals of all El Greco paintings kept as, 56–58 miracles performed by paintings, 11–12 attributed to Luke, 19, 20 icons vs. narratives, 120, 188n86 models, El Greco’s use of, 58 Modena Triptych (El Greco), 45–52, 46, 47 dating of, 45–47, 51–52, 56 devotional engagement with, 62–63 vs. Ferrara Triptych, 52 gold frames of, 55 Italian style in, 43, 56 location of creation of, 56 prints used as inspiration for, 45, 47, 50, 51–52 significance of triptych format of, 47–48 Molanus, Johannes, 159 Monegro, Juan Bautista, 163, 165, 192n50 Montagna, Benedetto, Agony in the Garden, 53 Montaigne, Michel de, 32 moon, in Assumption of the Virgin (El Greco), 159–60 Murano, Santa Maria degli Angeli in, 51, 84 Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (Geneva), 56

index

Museo del Prado (Madrid), 86, 145, 153 Museo de Santa Cruz (Toledo), 29 Museo Lázaro Galdiano (Madrid), 56 Muziano, Girolamo, 88 Myron, 145 Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (Angeli), 5 Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (Schiavone), 5 Nagel, Alexander, 9, 37–38, 40, 80, 140, 157, 191n49 narrative paintings Alberti’s (Leon Battista) influence on, 99, 102–4, 105, 122 vs. icons, veneration of, 120, 188n86 by Tintoretto, 99 narrative paintings by El Greco, 97–123. See also specific works accuracy of, 99–102, 104 as artful icons, 99, 120–23 devotional engagement with, 113, 114–15, 120–23 gestures in, 102–8, 110, 122 light in, 110–13 origins and significance of, 97–99 perspective in, 111–20, 122–23 National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh), 190n70 national Italian style, 184n79 Natural Histories (Pliny), 89, 145 naturalism Alberti (Leon Battista) on, 37, 131 color in, role of, 82–83, 84 and devotional engagement, 63 in paintings of veil of Veronica, 29 in St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 16 Nicodemus, 64, 79, 80 Night (Michelangelo), 76 Offices of the Madonna (Clovio), 128–29, 130–31, 138 Old Testament Brazen Serpent story in, 39–40 idolatry in, 37 on vision, 110 one-point perspective, 105, 111, 117, 118 On Invention (Cicero), 89 On Painting (Alberti), 89, 99, 102–4, 114 On the Holy Spirit (Basil the Great), 39 optics, 114–20

Orsini, Fulvio art collection of, 76, 126, 127 and Boy Blowing an Ember (El Greco), 145, 190n68, 190n75 and El Greco’s commissions in Spain, 153 as supporter of El Greco, 126 Orthodox Church, 9, 64, 65 Pacheco, Francisco, 56, 76 painters’ guild of Rome, 6–7 painting(s). See also specific works as divine activity (See divinity) Luke as patron saint of, 18 miracles performed by, 11–12 tripartite division of, 90, 184nn66–67 Palazzo Altemps (Rome), 58 Palazzo Farnese (Rome). See Farnese Palace Palazzo Vecchio (Florence), 163 Palencia (Spain), cathedral at, 163 Paleotti, Gabriele, 26, 92 Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, 39–40 Palladio, Andrea, 115, 129 L’antichità di Roma, 189n43 Descritione, 20, 189n43 Palma, Jacopo, 76 Palma il Vecchio, 163 panel paintings. See devotional panel paintings Panofsky, Erwin, 18, 114, 121, 187n60 Pantheon (Rome), 189n35 Panvinio, Onofrio, 131 Paravicino, Hortensio Félix, 1, 2 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale in, 94 Parmigianino, 75 Resurrection, 5 Passione del nostro signore Iesu Christo (del Bene), 62 Passion relics, veil of Veronica as, 32–33, 178n68 patronage, and artistic style of icons, 65. See also commissions Paul (saint), in St. Veronica Altarpiece (Carpi), 35 Paul IV (pope), 98 Paul V (pope), 177n23 performative approach to religious art, vs. substitutional approach, 37–38 periaktoi, 115, 186n52 perspective, 111–23 Alberti (Leon Battista) on, 114 Barbaro on, 114–20

in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 111–20, 122–23 and devotional engagement, 113, 114–15 origins of term, 117 Serlio on, 111–12, 114–17 in theater scenery, 114–17 Perugino, Pietro, 9 Christ Giving the Keys, 143 Peter (saint) in Peter Healing the Lame (Raphael), 108 in St. Veronica Altarpiece (Carpi), 35 Peter Healing the Lame (Raphael), 105–8 Philip II (king of Spain) in El Greco’s move to Spain, 7, 151–52 Italian artists invited to Spain by, 151–52, 155, 190n4 Martyrdom of St. Maurice commissioned for, 58, 151–52 in Portrait of a Sculptor (El Greco), 129 Philiscus, 145 pie, Le (Buonriccio), 98. See also Buonriccio, Angelico Pientini, Angelo, 178n76 Pietà, Florence (Michelangelo), 76–80, 79 Pietà, New York (El Greco), 76–83, 78 compositional repetition in other versions of, 56 mastery of disegno in, 81 synthesis of artistic styles in, 76–83, 88 Pietà, Philadelphia (El Greco), 76–83, 77 compositional repetition in other versions of, 56 signature on, 58, 80 synthesis of artistic styles in, 76–83, 88 Pietà, Rome (Michelangelo), 76 Pietà for Vittoria Colonna (Michelangelo), 160–61, 161 Pilate, in Christ Before Pilate (El Greco), 53 pilgrimages, to Rome, 32–33, 178n76 Pinacoteca Nazionale (Ferrara), 52 Pino, Paolo Dialogo di pittura, 88–89 on “god of painting,” 12, 88–90, 92, 95 Vasari criticized by, 93–94, 184n89 Pius IV (pope), 7, 98, 139 Pliny, 79 Natural Histories, 89, 145 Poirier, Maurice, 91 Porta, Giovanni della, 129 Portrait of an Architect (El Greco), 124, 129, 129–30

217

index

Portrait of a Sculptor (El Greco), 129–30, 130, 188n17 Portrait of Giulio Clovio (El Greco), 127–31, 128 ambition revealed in, 127–29 attribution of, 127, 129 book depicted in, 128–29, 130–31 in Cleansing of the Temple, Minneapolis, 73 motivations behind, 126, 128–29, 149 Orsini as owner of, 126 vs. other portraits by El Greco, 129–30 signature on, 130 significance of, 127–28 Titian’s influence on, 127 Portrait of Giulio Romano (Titian), 188n14 portraits by El Greco. See also specific works of artists, 127–30 lost, 127 overview of subjects of, 127 postures, in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 105–8, 110 pratica della perspettiva, La (Barbaro), 114–20 Preboste, Francisco, 58 Primaticcio, Francesco, 94 prints. See also specific works El Greco’s reliance on, for compositional inspiration, 4, 5 of veil of Veronica, 35 prototypes Council of Trent on, 10, 11 devotional engagement with (See devotional engagement) icons as conduits to, 10, 11, 64, 121 in narrative paintings, 121 repetition of, in panel paintings, 45, 56–59 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite De coelesti hierarchia, 22, 120 on icons vs. idols, 179n107 Lomazzo influenced by, 26 Pseudo-Melito, 158 Pulzone, Scipione, 8 Punishment of Korah and the Stoning of Moses and Aaron, The (Botticelli), 143 Puppi, Lionello, 188n26 putti in Adoration of the Shepherds, Kingston (El Greco), 49 in Erythraean Sibyl (Michelangelo), 148 in St. Luke Painting the Madonna and Child (Vasari), 23

218

quattri libri della imitatione di Giesu Christo, I (Gerson), 62 quattro libri de la humanità di Christo, I (Aretino), 84 Raimondi, Marcantonio Blinding of Elymas, 108 Last Supper, 5 Raphael Alberti’s (Leon Battista) influence on, 105 Blinding of Elymas, 108–10 Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco) influenced by, 105–10 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 73–74 on divine implantation of artistic ideas, 25, 177n41 gestures used by, 105–10, 122 El Greco on, 75 Last Supper, 5 narrative and iconic functions merged by, 121 owners of works of, 76 Peter Healing the Lame, 105–8 Peter Healing the Lame (Franco) after, 108, 108 Sistine Madonna, 25, 25 Spasimo di Sicilia, 11 St. Luke Painting the Madonna attributed to, 25, 25 synthesis of artistic styles by, 184n72 Transfiguration, 191n23 religious art. See also specific types and works Council of Trent on, 8, 9, 11, 39, 98, 122 devotional engagement with (See devotional engagement) vs. idols, 39–41, 179n107 Italian views on, 1, 4 Luke in legitimization of, 18, 20, 28 Paleotti on types of, 39 religious functions vs. artistic virtues of, 8–9, 10–11 substitutional vs. performative approach to, 37–38 veil of Veronica in legitimization of, 28–29 religious narratives. See narrative paintings religious panel paintings. See devotional panel paintings Renaissance devotional practices in, 59–71 sense of time in, 140

Renaissance art vs. medieval art, materiality of images in, 38 religious function vs. artistic virtues of, 10 Resurrection (El Greco), 155, 161, 162, 166–68 Resurrection (Michelangelo), 161 Resurrection (Parmigianino), 5 retrospective compositions, 156–57 rhetoric, tripartite division of, 90 ricordi, 58 Ridolfi, Carlo, 91 Ringbom, Sixten, 121 Risen Christ (Michelangelo), 161 Robertson, Clare, 188n23 Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic Church Romano, Giulio, 143, 188n14 Rome. See also specific buildings and sites Accademia di San Luca in, 26, 88, 177n52 Luke’s paintings revered in, 20 painters’ guild in, 6–7 pilgrimages to, 32–33, 178n76 sack of (1527), 32, 33, 178n84 veil of Veronica on display in, 32–33, 178n75, 178n77 Rome, ancient, 131–49 in Adoration of the Magi (El Greco), 132 architecture of, 133–44 in Boy Blowing an Ember (Soplón) (El Greco), 126–27, 144–49 in Christ Healing the Blind, Parma (El Greco), 126, 132–44 Christianity’s continuity with, 131–32, 138–44, 149 in Offices of the Madonna (Clovio), 131, 138 sculpture of, 132–33 Rome, El Greco in (1570–76) arrival of, 6, 125 debate over duration of stay, 7 departure of, 151 diversity of output of, 126 documentation of, 6–7, 125 formative influence of, 2–4, 126 in painters’ guild, 6–7 religious motivations behind works of, 126–27 Rondanini Pietà (Michelangelo), 80 Rubens, Peter Paul, 145 sacred art. See religious art Sacred Image in the Age of Art, The (Hall), 8 Salviati, Cardinal, 33

index

Salviati, Francesco, 184n83 Sancta Sanctorum (Rome), 68 Sandoval, Bernardino de, Tratado del officio ecclesiastico canonico, 164, 165, 166, 169, 171–72, 192n53 San Fantin, Church of (Venice), 163 Sangallo, Giuliano da, sketch of the Temple of the Sibyl, 133–34, 134 San Giorgio dei Greci (Venice), 5, 6, 66 San Giovanni in Laterano (Rome), 21, 144 San Marco (Venice), Virgin Nicopeia at, 20, 177n18 San Rocco, church of (Venice), 11 San Salvador (Venice), 51 Sansovino, Francesco, 11 Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, 20 Sansovino, Jacopo, 163 Santa Leocadia, church of (Toledo), 29 Santa Maria degli Angeli (Murano), 51, 84 Santa Maria degli Angeli (Rome), 141, 141–42 Santa Maria della Pace (Rome), 20 Santa Maria della Salute (Venice), 19 Santa Maria Formosa (Venice), 163 Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (Venice), 90, 157, 164 Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome) paintings attributed to Luke in, 20, 177n23 Pietà (Michelangelo) in, 79 tabernacle at, 191n46 Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (Rome), 161 Santissima Annunziata (Florence), 11, 23 Santo Domingo el Antiguo (Toledo), El Greco’s works at, 152–73, 154. See also Assumption of the Virgin Adoration of the Shepherds, 155, 160, 166, 167 as artful icons, 153, 170–73 commission for, 4, 152, 153, 155, 190n13 compensation for, 190n13 devotional engagement with, 170–73 Escutcheon with St. Veronica’s Veil, 29, 30, 33, 153, 164, 168–69, 172, 192n60 Eucharist as theme of, 164–69, 173 functions of altarpieces vs. icons and, 153, 169–73 Michelangelo’s influence on, 160–63, 172–73 originals replaced by copies, 155 overview of components, 153–55 Resurrection, 155, 161, 162, 166–68 significance of, 152–53, 155

St. Benedict, 153 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 153 St. John the Baptist, 153, 155, 164, 166 St. John the Evangelist, 153, 155, 164, 166, 190n11 structural framework of, 163–64 tabernacle, 164–68, 169–70, 192n50 Trinity, 150, 153, 158, 160, 160–61, 166, 172–73 Sanuto, Marino, 33 Saul, in Blinding of Elymas (Raphael), 108–10 Savonarola, Fra, 22 scaenae frons, 115 scaenographia, 114–18 Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 115, 116 scena tragica, 111, 112, 115–17 Scenes of Christ’s Passion (Klontzas), 55, 55–56, 180n23 Schiavone, Andrea, Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, 5 sciagraphia, 116–17 sculpture. See also specific works ancient Roman, 132–33 in Portrait of a Sculptor (El Greco), 129–30 Sebastiano del Piombo, 83 secondo libro di prospettiva, Il (Serlio), 111–12, 112, 114–17, 116, 138 self-portraits, paintings of Luke as, 18 self-referential nature of Pietà (El Greco), 80 of Pietà (Michelangelo), 79 of St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 16–19, 38, 41, 130 Seneca, Epistulae morales, 89 Serlio, Sebastiano Il secondo libro di prospettiva, 111–12, 112, 114–17, 116, 138 Il terzo libro nel qual si figurano, 138 Shearman, John, 177n41 sight. See blindness; vision signature of Carpi, 35 of Damaskinos, 65 of van Eyck, 36 signature of El Greco on Assumption of the Virgin, 2, 155–56 brushstrokes of, 34 on Christ Healing the Blind, Parma, 58, 126 functions of, 34 Greek language of, 2, 6

on multiple versions of compositions, 58 on Pietà, Philadelphia, 58, 80 on Portrait of Giulio Clovio, 130 as signal of artificiality, 34, 36, 41 on St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, 18, 19, 58, 130 on veil of Veronica paintings, 33–34, 36, 41, 58 on View of Mount Sinai, Modena, 51 Silva, María de, 153 Sistine Chapel (Vatican), 143, 148, 191n46. See also Last Judgment (Michelangelo) Sistine Madonna (Raphael), 25, 25 skiagraphia, 116–17 Small Passion series (Dürer), 53, 179n11 social status, of artists, 129–30 Socrates, 22, 23 Solomon, Temple of, 143, 189n50 Soplón (El Greco). See Boy Blowing an Ember (El Greco) Spain. See also specific cities El Greco’s first commissions in, 4, 151–52, 153 El Greco’s move to, 4, 7–8, 151–52 Italian art in, popularity of, 172, 192n79 Spasimo di Sicilia (Raphael), 11 spectacle, power of, 172 Speculum ecclesiae (Gerald of Wales), 178n65 spiritual illumination, light as metaphor for, 110–13, 120, 122–23, 148–49 spiritual renewal, in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 139, 140, 142, 144 St. Benedict (El Greco), 153 St. Bernard of Clairvaux (El Greco), 153 Steinberg, Leo, 79, 80 St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Madrid (El Greco), 56, 57, 86–87 St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Naples (El Greco), 56, 57, 58, 86–87 St. John the Baptist (El Greco), 153, 155, 164, 166 St. John the Evangelist (El Greco), 153, 155, 164, 166, 190n11 St. Luke Painting the Madonna (Raphael, attributed to), 25, 25 St. Luke Painting the Madonna and Child (Vasari), 23, 24 St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (Gossaert), 21, 21, 22–23 St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (El Greco), 15–28, 17 angel in, 15, 16, 20–28

219

index

Byzantine style in, 16, 65 composition of, 15–16 conception of artist’s role in, 16–18, 41 devotional engagement with, 15 inscription on, 18–19, 21 laurel crown in, 15, 18, 26 vs. Portrait of Giulio Clovio, 130 prints used as inspiration for, 5 self-referential nature of, 16–19, 38, 41, 130 signature on, 18, 19, 58, 130 vs. veil of Veronica paintings, 33–34 St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child (Heemskerck), 23, 24 Stoichita, Victor, 35 Stomer, Matthias, 145 St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome), 33, 76 St. Peter’s Basilica, Old (Rome), 35 St. Sebastian (El Greco), 161–63, 163 St. Titus, Cathedral of (Candia), 19 St. Veronica, Madrid (El Greco), 29, 30, 33 signature on, 33–34, 36, 41 St. Veronica, Toledo (El Greco), 29, 31 St. Veronica Altarpiece (Carpi), 35, 36 St. Veronica Displaying Her Veil (El Greco), 192n60 St. Veronica’s Veil (El Greco), 14, 29, 31 signature on, 33–34, 36, 41 styles. See artistic style(s) substitutional approach to religious art, vs. performative approach, 37–38 sudarium. See Veronica, veil of synthesis of artistic styles by Raphael, 184n72 Renaissance art theory on, 88–92 by Tintoretto, 91 by Titian, 90–91 synthesis of artistic styles by El Greco, 73–95 in Annunciation paintings, 84–87, 88 art theory as motivation for, 88–92, 95 in Cleansing of the Temple, Minneapolis, 73–75 concern for religious decorum in, 75–76, 80 criticism of Vasari and, 92–95 in devotional engagement, 92 integration of disegno and colorito in, 88–92 intentionality of, 74–75 Michelangelo’s influence on, 74, 75–83, 88 in Pietà paintings, 76–83, 88 religious motivation for, 92 Titian’s influence on, 74, 75, 83–87, 88

220

tabernacles examples of, 191n46 vs. images, 165, 192n49 of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, 164–68, 169–70, 192n50 Tauler, Johannes, Meditationi pie et divoti sopra la vita et passione di Giesu Christo, 62 Teatro Olimpico (Vicenza), 115, 116 Temple of the Sibyl (Tivoli), 133–34, 134 Temple of Vesta (Tivoli), 133–34, 134 temporal elasticity, 140–42 Ten Books on Architecture (Vitruvius), 75, 80, 82, 111, 114, 116 terzo libro nel qual si figurano, Il (Serlio), 138 theater scenery, perspective in, 114–17 theatrical approach to narratives accuracy in, 99–102, 104 Alberti (Leon Battista) on, 102–3, 105 in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 104–20 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 99–104 gestures in, 102–8, 110, 122 perspective in, 111–20 Theotokopoulos, Domenikos. See Greco, El three-dimensional space, 111, 113–18 Tibaldi, Pellegrino, 93 Tiepolo, Giovanni, 177n18 time elasticity of, 140–42 Renaissance sense of, 140 Tintoretto, Jacopo ancient Roman casts owned by, 189n31 Assumption of the Virgin, 157–58, 159 El Greco influenced by colors of, 83–87 El Greco’s writings on, 75, 83, 95 narrative paintings by, 99 Philip II’s invitation to, 190n4 in San Giorgio dei Greci project, 66 synthesis of artistic styles by, 91 Titian Adoration of the Shepherds, 49 Annunciation, Murano, 51, 84–86 Annunciation, Venice, 84, 84–86 Annunciation (Caraglio) after, 51, 84 approach to religious art, 9 Assumption of the Virgin, 90–91, 157, 157, 158, 164, 191n21 Christ Carrying the Cross attributed to, 11 in Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 73



color palette of, 74, 75, 83–87 Danaë, 92 at Farnese Palace, 125 Gloria, 189n31 El Greco influenced by colors of, 74, 75, 83–87, 88 El Greco’s study of, 6, 125, 126, 127 El Greco’s writings on, 75, 83 vs. Michelangelo, styles of, 92–95 Michelangelo on, 92–93 models used by, 58 Pietà (Michelangelo) and, 79 Portrait of Giulio Romano, 188n14 synthesis of artistic styles by, 90–91 Vasari on, 83, 92–93, 94–95, 184n80 Tivoli Temple of the Sibyl at, 133–34, 134 Temple of Vesta at, 133–34, 134 Toledo (Spain). See also Santo Domingo el Antiguo cathedral of, 152, 153 church of Santa Leocadia in, 29 Convento de Capuchinas in, 29 Council of Trent’s doctrines in, 171 El Greco’s move to, 152 Museo de Santa Cruz in, 29 Transfiguration (Raphael), 191n23 translators, artists as, 102 transparency of icons, 10, 38, 64 of picture plane, 37, 131 transubstantiation, 165, 166, 168, 169 Tratado del officio ecclesiastico canonico (Sandoval), 164, 165, 166, 169, 171–72, 192n53 Trattato del arte de la pintura (Lomazzo), 26 Trattato nuovo delle cose maravigliose dell’alma città di Roma (Felini), 20 Trinity (El Greco), 150, 153, 160 Assumption of the Virgin in relation to, 158, 160, 166 Michelangelo’s influence on, 160–61, 172–73 Trinity (Michelangelo), 191n30 triptychs, Cretan artists’ use of, 55 triptychs by El Greco, 45–56. See also specific works Adoration of the Shepherds, Kingston, as part of, 47–49 Baptism of Christ, Heraklion, as part of, 44, 47–49

index

devotional engagement with, 60–63 as dominant format in Italian phase, 47–48 Triumphal Entry of Constantine (Cesari), 144 truth. See accuracy two-dimensional illustrations, 115–18 Urbis Romae aedificiorum (Cavalieri), 137, 137, 189n47 Urbis Romae topographia (Marliani), 189n47 van Eyck, Jan, Holy Face, 36, 36 vanishing point, 114 Varchi, Benedetto, 11 Vasari, Giorgio on Angelico, 181n76 art theory after, 92–95 attributions of miraculous paintings by, 11 biases of, 83, 92–95 on Carpi, 35 on central vs. northern Italian style, 92–95 on Clovio, 131, 182n16 critics of, 92–95 on “devout style,” 9 on disegno vs. colorito, 88–89, 92 El Greco’s annotations in copy of, 68, 75, 76, 80–81, 83–84, 93–94, 182n3, 184n85 El Greco’s writings on, 92–94 on Greek style, 67–68 on Michelangelo, 77, 79, 80–81, 92–94 on Raphael, 11, 184n72 on Rome as artists’ destination, 6 Spain influenced by, 192n79 St. Luke Painting the Madonna and Child, 23, 24 on Tintoretto, 83, 183n44 on Titian, 83, 92–93, 94–95, 184n80 Vassilaki, Maria, 45, 47 Vatican, Sistine Chapel at, 143, 148, 191n46. See also Last Judgment (Michelangelo) Vechnyak, Irina Barskova, 189n35 veil of Veronica. See Veronica, veil of Venetia città nobilissima et singolare (Sansovino), 20 Venice. See also specific buildings and sites vs. central Italy, artistic styles of, 91, 92–95 Cretan immigrants in, 5–6, 55, 175n21

Venice, El Greco in (1567–70) arrival of, 5–6 departure of, 125 documentation of, 5 formative influence of, 2–4 Veronese, Paolo, 94, 95, 190n4 Veronica (saint) in creation of veil, 28 origins of name of, 29, 178n65 Veronica, veil of, 28–37 Christ in creation of, 28–29, 34 exhibition of, in Rome, 32–33, 178n75, 178n77 in legitimization of religious art, 28–29 original vs. copy of, 33 as Passion relic, 32–33, 178n68 in sack of Rome (1527), 33, 178n84 as true image of Christ, 28–29, 33 Veronica, veil of, El Greco’s paintings of, 29–37. See also specific works as artificial images, 34–37, 38, 41 conception of artist’s role in paintings of, 16, 33–34, 41 signatures on, 33–34, 36, 41, 58 Vicenza, Teatro Olimpico in, 115, 116 Vico, Enea, 5, 53 Victory (Michelangelo), 163 Victory Crowning the Roman Vestal Tucia (Angeli), 5 Victory Crowning the Roman Vestal Tucia (Campi), 5 View of Mount Sinai, Heraklion (El Greco), 51, 52, 126 View of Mount Sinai, Modena (El Greco), 46, 51–52 Vignola, Jacopo da, 164 Le due regole della prospettiva pratica, 118–20, 187n66 Virgin Mary. See Mary Virgin Mesopanditissa, 19, 19, 176n14 Virgin Nicopeia, 20, 177n18 vision. See also blindness in Christ Healing the Blind (El Greco), 105, 112–20, 122–23 light in, 119–20 mechanics of, 114–20

as metaphor for spiritual knowledge, 110–13, 122–23 perspective as codification of, 114 Vite (Vasari). See Vasari, Giorgio Vito, Domenico, 108 Vitruvius on baths, 139 on scaenographia, 114 Ten Books on Architecture, 75, 80, 82, 111, 114, 116 Walters Art Museum (Baltimore), 55 Washing of the Feet, Ferrara (El Greco), 52–53, 53, 60, 62 Waterhouse, Ellis, 74 Wethey, Harold, 6, 95, 132, 136–37, 145, 188n17 Weyden, Rogier van der, 18 Willumsen, Jens Ferdinand, 7 window, as paradigm for artistic representation, 131 Wolf, Gerhard, 38 Wood, Christopher, 37–38, 140 workshop of El Greco, 58 Zanfurnari, Emanuele, 65 Zeri, Federico, 8 Zeuxis, 89 Zuccaro, Federico Allegory of Painting attributed to, 177n47 Assumption of the Virgin, 158 and Cleansing of the Temple (El Greco), 185n15 Encounter of Christ and Veronica, 121 Father of Disegno, 26, 27 Idea de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti, 26–28 narrative and iconic functions merged by, 121 on painting as divine activity, 26–28, 177n52 Philip II’s invitation to, 190n4 Vasari criticized by, 94, 95 Vasari on, 184n83 Zuccaro, Taddeo, Assumption of the Virgin, 158

221