El Greco (1541-1614)
Cristo en la cruz (Christ on the Cross)
c.1600–1610
Oil on canvas, 193 x 116 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
El Greco (Spanish for “the Greek”) was trained on his native island, Crete, as a painter of small-scale devotional images (icons). In the late 1560s he moved first to Venice, where he may have worked with Tintoretto (1518-1594), and then to Rome. Finally, he settled in Toledo, Spain. Tintoretto‘s influence is visible here in the colors and in the elongated figural proportions. The graphic depiction of blood, however, may reflect the Spanish interest in Christ’s sufferings as a subject for meditation. (CMA)