Art of El Greco - Technique and Style - Suggested Byzantine Affinities

Suggested Byzantine Affinities

During the first half of the 20th century some scholars developed certain theories concerning the Byzantine origins of El Greco's style. Professor Angelo Procopiou had asserted that, although El Greco belongs to Mannerism, his roots were firmly in the Byzantine tradition. According to art historian Robert Byron "all Greco's most individual characteristics, which have so puzzled and dismayed his critics, derive directly from the art of his ancestors". On the other hand, Cossío had argued that Byzantine art could not be related to El Greco's later work.

The discovery of the Dormition of the Virgin on Syros, an authentic and signed work from the painter's Cretan period (The iconographic type of the Dormition was suggested as the compositional model for the Burial of the Count of Orgaz for quite some time), and the extensive archival research in the early 1960s contributed to the rekindling and reassessment of these theories. Significant scholarly works of the second half of the 20th century devoted to El Greco reappraise many of the various interpretations of him, including his supposed Byzantinism. Based on the notes written in El Greco's own hand and on his unique style, they see an organic continuity between Byzantine painting and his art. German art historian August L. Mayer emphasizes what he calls "the oriental element" in El Greco's art. He argues that the artist "remained a Greek reflecting vividly the Oriental side of Byzantine culture ... The fact that he signed his name in Greek characters is no mere accident". In this judgement, Mayer disagrees with Oxford University professors, Cyril Mango and Elizabeth Jeffreys, who assert that "despite claims to the contrary, the only Byzantine element of his famous paintings was his signature in Greek lettering". Hadjinicolaou, another scholar who is opposed to the persistence of the El Greco's Byzantine origins, states that from 1570 on the master's painting is "neither Byzantine nor post-Byzantine but Western European. The works he produced in Italy belong to the history of the Italian art, and those he produced in Spain to the history of Spanish art".

The Welsh art historian David Davies seeks the roots of El Greco's style in the intellectual sources of his Greek-Christian education and in the world of his recollections from the liturgical and ceremonial aspect of the Orthodox Church. Davies believes that the religious climate of the Counter-Reformation and the aesthetics of mannerism acted as catalysts to activate his individual technique. According to Davies, "El Greco sought to convey the essential or universal meaning of the subject through a process of redefinition and reduction. In Toledo, he accomplished this by abandoning the Renaissance emphasis on the observation and selection of natural phenomena. Instead he responded to Byzantine and sixteenth-century Mannerist art in which images are conceived in the mind". Additionally, he asserts that the philosophies of Platonism and ancient Neo-Platonism, the works of Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and the texts of the Church fathers and the liturgy offer the keys to the understanding of El Greco's style.

Summarizing the ensuing schorarly debate on this issue, José Álvarez Lopera, curator at the Museo del Prado, concludes that the presence of "Byzantine memories" is obvious in El Greco's mature works, though there are still some obscure issues about El Greco's Byzantine origins needing further illumination. According to Lambraki-Plaka "far from the influence of Italy, in a neutral place which was intellectually similar to his birthplace, Candia, the Byzantine elements of his education emerged and played a catalytic role in the new conception of the image which is presented to us in his mature work". According to Lambraki-Plaka, El Greco employed a deliberately non-naturalistic style and his completely spiritualized figures are a reference to the ascetics of Byzantine hagiography.