The Pictorial Art of El Greco: Transmaterialities, Temporalities, and Media (Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700)

The Pictorial Art Of El Greco: Transmaterialities, Temporalities, And Media Investigates El Grecoâ (tm)s Pictorial Art As Foundational To The Globalising Trends Manifested In The Visual Culture Of Early Modernity. It Also Exposes The Figurative, Semantic, And Allegorical Senses That El Greco Created To Challenge An Italian Renaissance-centered Discourse. Even Though He Was Guided By The Unprecedented Burgeoning Of Devotional Art In The Post-tridentine Decades And By The Expressive Possibilities Of Earlier Religious Artifacts, Especially Those Inherited From The Apostolic Past, The Author Demonstrates That El Greco Forged His Own Independent Trajectory. While His Paintings Have Been Studied In Relation To The Italian And Spanish School Traditions, His Pictorial Art In A Global Mediterranean Context Continues To Receive Scant Attention. Taking A Global Perspective As Its Focus, The Book Sheds New Light On El Grecoâ (tm)s Highly Original Contribution To Early Mediterranean And Multi-institutional Configurations Of The Christian Faith In Byzantium, Venice, Rome, Toledo, And Madrid. This book investigates El Greco's pictorial art as foundational to the globalising trends manifested in the visual culture of early modernity. It also exposes the figurative, semantic, and allegorical senses he created to challenge an Italian Renaissance-centered discourse. Even though he was guided by the unprecedented flowering of devotional art in the post-Tridentine decades and by the expressive possibilities of earlier religious artifacts, especially those inherited from the apostolic past, the author demonstrates that El Greco forged his own independent trajectory. While his paintings have been studied in relation to the Italian and Spanish school traditions, his pictorial art in a global Mediterranean context continues to receive scant attention. Taking a global perspective as its focus, the book sheds new light on El Greco's highly original contribution to early Mediterranean and multi-institutional configurations of the Christian faith in Byzantium, Venice, Rome, Toledo, and Madrid Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Prototypal Images Reaffirmed in Early Modern Painting 2. Spanish Miraculous Images, Sacred Narratives, and Aesthetic Goals 3. El Greco’s The Purification of the Temple 4. Reinventing the Nude in an Age of Censorship 5. The Dialogue of Classical and Devotional Cultures in El Greco’s Laocoön of Toledo Bibliography Index

Ton de Leeuw's lifetime engagement with music, European and Oriental, gives this book its unique insight into what constitutes true modernity and innovation