Blake Gopnik has a very readable description and biographical article on El Greco as he writes about the El Greco's show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Gopnik has some excellent points on how El Greco's works were designed to be viewed a particular way, barely lit, often high above and viewed from below, and thus why they seem so unusual to us today in well-lit museum viewings.

As I recall, even during his time he was brought in front of the Inquisition to explain the peculiar elongations of some of his Christ paintings. He must have convinced them, as they didn't fry him for breaking some Inquisition rule about how Christ should be depicted (as the largest figure in any canvas, as I recall).

El Greco is one of my favorite artists of all times, and I also like his commercial acumen. His depiction of Christ Cleasing the Temple was so popular that he copied himself several times and practically every museum in Europe has a version of it - some of which are of dubious pedigree. Here's the NGA's version and the London's National gallery has this one, and the Institute of Arts in Minneapolis has this version and, the Frick has this one and I don't know who owns this one.

In art school, we had a class where we had to copy a master's work, and I painted a huge lifesized copy of The Annunciation, which strangely enough, I sold years later to someone in Spain when I lived there in the mid 80s.

This is one master who would have loved the digital revolution and the ability to make loads of reproductions from your originals!

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