El Greco's achievement of his personal maniera

[摘要] English: Domenicos Theotocopoulos, generally known as El Greco, was born in Crete in 1541. Beforehe left his native island he was a competent, late Byzantine painter. In his late twenties, he wentto Venice, where he learnt the craft of Western painting, most probably in Titian's workshop.He left Venice in 1570 and became an independent painter in Rome before departing for Spainin 1576, where he may have sought the patronage of Phi lip II, from whom he initially receivedcommissions. After a brief stay in Madrid, he took up residence in Toledo where he practised asa religious painter in the service of the post- Tridentine Roman Catholic Church, and producedhis most distinctive paintings in a manner that is unique in the Renaissance tradition.The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how El Greco achieved his personal manner ofexpression or maniera and, more specifically, what this very distinct, personal manner ofexpression or ultima maniera entailed. Part I (Chapter 1) is an overview of the life of the artistand the contexts in which he acquired his knowledge of ltalian Renaissance artistic practice andhis painterly skills. Part II deals with the general ideas and ideals that informed ItalianRenaissance art (Chapter 2), and then goes on to focus on those aspects which specificallyinformed El Greco's apprenticeship in the Western painterly tradition (Chapter 3), as well as hisown ideas on the art of painting. To arrive at an evaluation of the development of his personalmanner of expression, the Part III is devoted to the analysis of selected paintings executed inVenice and Rome in which the characteristics of his later manner of expression are already inevidence (Chapter 4). A further chapter (5) is devoted to two important works painted duringhis early years in Toledo in which his manner of expression, although reminiscent of the formsfavoured by Italian Mannerist painters, is already uniquely transformed into a personal vision.The main focus of the dissertation is chapter 6 of Part IV which contains an analysis of theangelic figures which are so predominant in El Greco's oeuvre. The selected paintings are dealtwith under nine sub-headings in which the actions of the depicted angels are broadly categorised.The analyses focus on the distinctive forms of the angelic figures, their interaction with otherfigures and the meanings that the compositions acquire through the way in which they arerepresented. In this regard, some of El Greco's most renowned paintings, such as the Burial ofthe Count of Orgaz and two versions of the Baptism of Christ, are reinterpreted and re-evaluated.While he does not deviate radically from traditional iconography in the representation of mostof his themes, El Greco's most innovative contribution to sixteenth-century painting is theexpansion and transformation of the formal qualities he derived from Mannerism. Withincreasing skill he infused angelic and many human figures with movement by turning them intoopen-ended, elongated spiral forms, and creating the verticality characteristic of hiscompositions. This manner of representation acquires a symbolic meaning in which religious andartistic concerns are unified. As such, El Greco's angelic figures exemplify a key element of hismanner of expression and artistic vision. They become metafigures, as stated in the concludingchapter which summarizes the characteristics of his ultima maniera.

[发布机构] University of the Free State