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[1323-60]
 Image source: museoelprado.es | Baptism of Christ is a painting by El Greco, painted towards the end of his life in Toledo, and completed by his son Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli. It is now in the Hospital de Tavera in Toledo. Viewers can evidently see the dynamic, elongated features and their upward movement. The art describes the Baptism of Christ with the main charcters being Jesus and John the Baptist. The two are in the company of three winged angels all standing in a natural scene that represents the landscape of River Jordan. [Source: el-greco.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Baptism of Christ | 1608-1614 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| El Greco [completed by his son] | 1541-1614, aged 72 | Spanish painter Toledo | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-61] | |
| Hospital de Tavera, Toledo Spain | 350 x 144 |
| Another late El Greco painting, this one was for a side-altar of the church of Saint John the Baptist outside the walls of Toledo. Before 1908 was referred to as Profane Love. The scholar Manuel B. Cossio had doubts about the title and suggested instead the Opening of the Fifth Seal. The Metropolitan Museum, where the painting is kept, comments: the picture is unfinished and much damaged and abraded. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Opening of the Fifth Seal, The | 1609-14 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| El Greco (Domenkos Theotocopoulos) | 1541-1614, aged 72 | Spanish painter Toledo | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-62] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 225 x 199 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Interest in the story of Laocoön, a mythical priest of Troy, developed after an ancient, monumental sculpture representing him and his two sons was unearthed in 1506 in Rome. Suspecting trickery, Laocoön had warned his countrymen not to accept the wooden horse left outside Troy by the Greeks and had hurled his spear at it to prove that it was hollow. Thus the priest incurred the wrath of the gods, for desecrating an object dedicated to the goddess Athena. El Greco depicted serpents, sent by the angry gods, engaging Laocoön and one son in a mortal struggle, while a second son lies already dead at his father’s side. The identity of the unfinished figures on the right continues to be debated; perhaps they represent the gods themselves supervising their vengeance. [Source: nga.gov] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Laocoön | 1610-14 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| El Greco (Domenkos Theotocopoulos) | 1541-1614, aged 72 | Spanish painter Toledo | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-63] | |
| National Gallery of Art, Washington DC USA | 84 x 113 |
| Landscape paintings are often meant to document the look of a particular time in a particular place, to freeze a single moment and preserve it for eternity. El Greco’s View of Toledo does not do that. Although the large church is placed in the correct place in the city, El Greco changed the locations of several other buildings, proving that documentation was not the artist’s primary concern. Rather than telling us what Toledo looked like, here, El Greco communicates what the city feels like. Toledo becomes the means through which the artist expresses an interior psychological state, and perhaps, a view about the nature of man’s relationship with the divine. [Source: khanacademy.org] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| View of Toledo | 1610 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| El Greco (Domenkos Theotocopoulos) | 1541-1614, aged 72 | Spanish painter Toledo | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-64] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 48 x 43 |
 Iamge source: Wikimedia commons | Perseus Freeing Andromeda is a 1611 oil on canvas painter by the Dutch Mannerist painter Joachim Wtewael. A preparatory drawing for it also survives in the Albertina in Vienna, reprising the pose in the same artist’s St Sebastian Bound to a Tree for Andromeda. In the final painting he used a less curving and more supple pose for Andromeda. Since 1982 it has been in the collection of the Louvre in Paris. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Perseus freeing Andomeda | 1611 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Wtewael, Joachim | 1566-1838, aged 72 | Dutch painter, Utrecht | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-65] | |
| Musée du Louvre, Paris France | 180 x 150 |
| This night scene is set in a narrow, irregular space, a sort of grotto with a gabled opening in the back, consisting of two semi-circular arches. Mary holds her newborn Son, naked on her lap, while Saint Joseph and three shepherds surround them, expressing their fervent devotion to the child. A kneeling ox also contemplates the baby. The compositional ellipse is closed at the top by a group of angels very close to the holy family. They express Heaven’s pleasure at the birth of the Redeemer. [Source: museodelprado.es] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Adoration of the Shepherds, The | 1612-4 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| El Greco (Domenkos Theotocopoulos) | 1541-1614, aged 72 | Spanish painter Toledo | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-66] | |
| Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid Spain | 319 x 180 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | The painting portrays Minerva, who has just cast off her weapons to put on a dress, which was unusual for her. In perspective in the background are a spear, an olive tree, and an owl, the usual attributes of the warrior goddess. It was executed in Rome, to which the artist pays homage by the dome of St. Peter’s shown in the background. [Source: galleriaborghese.beniculturali.it] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Minerva Dressing | 1613 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Fontana, Lavinia | 1552-1614, age 62 | Italian painter | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-67] | |
| Galeria Borghese, Rome Italy | 154 x 115 |
| This painting is by two famous Flemish masters: Rubens and Brueghel. They made several versions of this type of painting, which were intended as showpieces that combined the best of both artists. Although Brueghel was responsible for the composition, Rubens started the painting. Very sketchily, in thin paint, he painted Adam and Eve, the tree, the horse and the serpent. Then Brueghel took on the plants and animals, which he painted with encyclopaedic precision in finishing paint. [Source: mauritshuis.nl] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, The | 1615 | Oil/Panel | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Brueghel the Elder, Jan | 1568-1625, aged 57 | Flemish painter | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1323-68] | |
| Mauritshuis, The Hague | 74 x 115 |
 Image source: janbrueghel.net | Calypso was a nymph in Greek mythology, who lived on the island Ogygia. This island was so hidden that no man would find it twice. Calypso was the daughter of Atlas so she was placed on the island and not allowed to leave. In the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus comes to her island after escaping from the sea, and the death of his men. Odysseus stayed with her for seven years. But then the god Hermes came and told her that the gods said that she had to let Odysseus go. Calypso promised Odysseus immortality if he stayed, but he wanted to go back to his wife Penelope, and left her. [Source: wikiwand.com] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Fantastic Cave with Odysseus and Calypso, The | c1616 | Oil/Panel | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Brueghel the Elder, Jan | 1568-1625, aged 57 | Flemish painter | Mannerism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | ||
| Vienna Academy of Fine Arts | 80 x 115 |
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