For centuries, Spanish Renaissance painter El Greco was a non-entity. No one studied his startling, unconventional work hanging high in a gothic cathedral, obscure convents and Spanish museums.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that modern painters rediscovered the artist – born Domenicos Theotocopoulos in Crete then living and painting in Toledo, Spain, from 1577 until his death in 1614. They found inspiration in his bold colours and brush strokes.
Now the city of Toledo is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of its most famous resident with a series of exhibitions, conferences and concerts in the walled, medieval city, as well as in Madrid.
The centrepiece of the commemorations is the biggest ever gathering of El Greco paintings – in an exhibition in Toledo that runs from March 14 to June 14.
More than 100 canvases – many of them painted in the city centuries ago – will be on display in the Santa Cruz Museum and in other famous Toledo buildings such as the cathedral, drawing an expected million visitors.
“Almost all of these paintings left Toledo at the beginning of the 20th century. We are gathering them all from the El Greco diaspora,” said Gregorio Maranon, president of the El Greco 2014 foundation that has been four years preparing anniversary events.
Bringing the paintings from major world museums and private collections has been an expensive project. Maranon would not say how expensive, but said it has been mostly privately financed as Spain’s government has cut spending on arts, seeking to close an enormous hole in its budget and ending an acute fiscal crisis.
Trained in the great painting schools of Rome and Venice, El Greco travelled to Spain to seek patronage of Felipe II at the Spanish court in the palace of El Escorial, in the hills outside of Madrid.
The monarch did not give him a court position but El Greco settled and found work in nearby Toledo, an ancient Spanish capital and religious centre 70 kilometres south of Madrid.
Among the El Greco paintings travelling home to Toledo are The Adoration of the Name of Jesus, on loan from the National Gallery of London; Christ on the Cross with Two Donors, from the Louvre; and View of Toledo, a favourite of writer Ernest Hemingway, who visited it at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Other famous El Grecos have stayed at home in Toledo, such as The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest and the Burial of Count Orgaz. They will hang in their original places in convents and churches around the city.
The biggest masterpiece of the master’s early years in Toledo, The Disrobing of Christ, has hung in the chilly sacristy of the Toledo Cathedral since it was placed there centuries ago.
The three-metre-high painting left the cathedral last year to be restored in Madrid’s national museum, the Prado.
For El Greco restorer Rafael Alonso, it was a deeply emotional task.
He is possibly the most modern of all the great painters of the 16th and 17th centuries
“This was the crowning moment of my career,” Alonso, who has restored some 90 El Grecos, said of his work to revive the original, bright colours of The Disrobing.
“I can’t imagine Christ’s face in any other way except how El Greco painted it in The Disrobing,” he said of the painting, after attending a ceremony where it was rehung in its original place at the end of the long, narrow sacristy, an annex to Toledo’s enormous cathedral.
The Disrobing, commissioned by church officials soon after El Greco arrived in Toledo, shows Jesus in a brilliant red robe, with an elongated neck, and long, slender fingers in a crowd of similarly stretched-out figures that are the painter’s signature.
The informal poses of the people in the painting, the dramatic colours and the loose proportions made the composition innovative for its day though it also reflected influences from different painting schools.
“He is possibly the most modern of all the great painters of the 16th and 17th centuries,” said Maranon.
El Greco absorbed the teachings of the masters of his era of Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese but then reinterpreted them and struck out on his own path, leaving their Renaissance perspective behind.
However, the artists who immediately followed him were not such risk takers and his style remained unique, instead of part of a particular movement.
“He was a forgotten painter, an ‘outsider’ if you will, who was rediscovered,” said Javier Baron, head of the Prado’s 19th-century painters department.
At the beginning of the 19th century, painters made pilgrimages to the Prado to learn from the masterpieces of court painter Velazquez. But later in the century, the El Greco paintings that also hung in Spain’s national museum became a powerful influence on the impressionists, expressionists and the painting schools that followed, from cubist to abstract.
“This occurred with Manet, later with Cezanne, and later with Picasso. The El Greco influence on Picasso is greater than on any other artist, from the beginning to the end of his career,” Baron said.
Works of Picasso and other modern greats will be hung with El Greco paintings to show the huge influence he had on modern painting, in another anniversary exhibition, curated by Baron, at the Prado.
The display of 106 works – 25 by El Greco and the rest by modern painters – will run from June 24 to October 5.
El Greco’s bold style still gives rise to all sorts of wacky questions and theories that art experts rule out, said Leticia Ruiz, head of the Prado’s pre-1700 Spanish painting department.
“Did he have stigmatism, or vision problems? Was he crazy? People are still asking that today,” said Ruiz, speaking in the El Greco room at the museum.
“He’s a painter’s painter,” she said. “He’s not an easy painter. People are either fascinated with him or repelled by him.”