CRETE AND TOLEDO

These works embody/reflect Clark's admiration for the works of El Greco, which lead to the major exhibition 'In the Footsteps of El Greco.'
El Greco was born in Crete and working as an icon painter, he travelled to Italy, where he was influenced by the Venetian school of Titian and Tintoretto, before finally moving to Toledo in Spain and the painting of most of his major works.

(1)

Village Church - Crete
This shows the church's simple interior, its darkness, icons and wall paintings. All of which would have nourished El Greco's imagination.

(4)

Palm Sunday, Crete
The great 20th Century Cretan novelist Nikos Kazantzak describes, in 'Christ Recrucified' a number of village people taking part in their Passion play. In this painting, set in the same hot, dry, rocky landscape, a man with a donkey carries simple flowers for Palm Sunday; while in the central grotto an icon shows Christ's own entry into Jerusalem, also on a donkey.

(2)

 Cathedral at Rethymnon
The large, rich interior of this building in Rethymnon (which some authorities identify as El Greco's birthplace) shows the Iconostasis screen of a Greek Orthodox Church, once again with its candles, paintings and lights.

(3)

St Luke and the Vision of El Greco
Reference is being made here to El Greco's transition from icon painter to Venetian influenced oil painter. St Luke is painting the Madonna (as in one of El Greco's early icons) with the Cretan landscape behind, while above is his 'Madonna of the Assumption' in the much freer Venetian influenced style.

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Anthony Clark ©2008  

(5)

El Greco's bed: The Dream (Toledo)
Here is the bed of El Greco the visionary, over which hovers the image of an angel from one of his masterpieces

 'The Burial of Count Orgas', while musicians emerge in the

background as if from a dream.

(6)

The Spirit of El Greco - Toledo Cathedral
A bouquet flies in time and space to be united with El Greco's angels in the magnificence of Toledo's gothic Cathedral.