Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent online lecture from the National Gallery on El Greco. Sian Walters led us clearly through the life and work of the 16th century artist El Greco. She made good use of pictures from the gallery’s own collection but did widen her examples with great illustrations. I hadn’t realised that El Greco spent time in Venice and may have spent time training with Titian. Walters was very good at pointing out where the influence of this time might be seen in his work from the use of colour to specific poses or compositions. She spent quite a bit of the time looking at the great altarpieces in Toledo and talked about how the Counter-Reformation city influenced his work and how and why he reverted to some of his original Greek Orthodox training.   I had only known the basics about El Greco before this talk and it certainly filled some of the gaps in my knowledge. I also got some good tips of how to visit Toledo and where to stay!

Interesting display at the National Gallery bringing together their El Greco’s to mark the loan of a Crucifixion with two donors from the Louvre. The show included a good cross section of his career works for a small learned audience, to small devotional pieces and the great altar piece.    I’m never quite sure if I like El Greco! Some of the work like this altar piece is exquisite but I am not so sure about the religious works with elongated figures like “Christ driving traders from the Temple” shown here. I think I need to know more. It was lovely to see this Crucifixion which falls into the great Spanish genre of long thin studies of Christ on the cross with dark backgrounds. This one is unusual in adding donors and there are beautifully painted figures. The figure on the left wears the finest thin vestment and the lace on the collar of the other figure is beautifully rendered.