Burial of the Count de Orgaz

2000 Diset (68 x 98)
Burial of the Count de Orgaz
El Greco
Production Date 1999

The dark colors made this difficult, but the Educa style piece cut made it manageable. It has a 4-time repeat cut, so we had to swap several pieces in the end--I hope we found them all🙏

From Britannica:

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, a large and luminous oil painting, was created between 1586 and 1588 by the Greek-born artist El Greco. This painting, commissioned for and located in the church of Santo Tomé in Toledo, Spain, is widely considered to be El Greco’s masterpiece. The Burial of the Count of Orgaz immortalizes a local legend in Toledo, Spain.

El Greco was active in Rome and Venice, where he inevitably encountered the prevailing painterly styles of the period dominated by Titian and Tintoretto. His use of Venetian coloring and the distortions of his elongated figures are considered to prefigure Expressionism. In 1577 El Greco moved to Toledo, long a religious and cultural center of Spain, and he remained there for the rest of his life.

The magisterial The Burial of the Count of Orgaz commemorates the death of the patron of the Santo Tomé church, the devout Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, who had died some 250 years earlier. According to legend, when he was laid to rest, St. Augustine and St. Stephen appeared and placed his body in the tomb. The picture is divided into two parts, with heaven above and earth below. As the pallid corpse in a suit of armor is lowered into the ground, his soul is seen flying toward the lap of Christ at the precipice of heaven.

The sour tones of mustard yellow, cherry red, and inky blue create a stark contrast to the black background that engulfs the scene in darkness. A face in the back row of the crowd of contemporary nobles of Toledo, staring out of the painting, is thought to be a self-portrait of El Greco. The child standing to the lower left, carrying a torch, is thought to be the artist’s son. Written on the handkerchief protruding from the boy’s pocket is the artist’s cleverly placed signature.