El Greco

El Greco was a painter, sculptor, and architect born in Crete, then part of the Republic of Venice, who trained in the Cretan icon-painting tradition before moving to Venice and Rome and finally settling in Toledo, Spain, in 1577, where he spent the rest of his career. His mature style, seen in works such as The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, The Disrobing of Christ, and the View of Toledo, fused Byzantine pictorial traditions with Venetian color and Mannerist composition into a highly personal idiom of tortuously elongated figures, dramatic light, and spiritual intensity. Largely overlooked for centuries after his death, El Greco was rediscovered in the early twentieth century and is now regarded as one of the great masters of the Spanish Renaissance and a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism.