mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Back in November, we had a “Clip Show Edition,” which led to several suggestions of artists and works to cover. Erin suggested El Greco; upon researching him, I discovered that one of his paintings, “A Lady in a Fur Wrap,” is both a mystery and a controversy in the art world. So, without further ado, let’s revisit El Greco’s mysterious woman…
1. “A Lady in a Fur Wrap” differs from El Greco’s other paintings in two significant ways: the skin of the lady is pink, not blue-white, and the subject is, well, a woman. There is no other well-known El Greco portrait of a woman.
2. The identity of the lady is not known with certainty. Based on the intimate and informal nature of the portrait, the apparent age, the time frame when the portrait was completed (1577-1580), and the lack of other portraits of females, though, she is most likely El Greco’s common-law wife, Jeronima de las Cuevas, with whom he had a son.
3. Because “A Lady in a Fur Wrap” is so different from El Greco’s other works, artists and scholars are embroiled in a debate over the painting’s authorship. The UK’s Guardian as well as The New Yorker have discussed the debate, and in 2004, the painting was to be X-rayed in an attempt to better determine authorship.
4. About 170 years ago, the painting was actually exhibited in London as “The Daughter of El Greco.” This further complicates the debate, since there are no reports of El Greco ever having a daughter.
5. For the most part, El Greco’s style puzzled his contemporaries, although Giulio Clovio, the greatest miniaturist of the age, believed El Greco to be “a rare talent in painting.” It was not until the late 18th century that he began to be more widely appreciated. Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, and Jackson Pollock have all reportedly completed paintings after El Greco’s style.
6. While he is known as “El Greco,” his real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos. He signed his paintings in his full name, in Greek letters, and sometimes followed by Kres (Cretan), since he was born in Crete.
7. El Greco once said of Michelangelo, “He was a good man, but he did not know how to paint.” Many artists, though, find fault with El Greco’s own style, leading Antonio Palomino to remark in 1724, “We can define El Greco’s work by saying that what he did well none did better, and that what he did badly none did worse.”
‘Feel Art Again’ appears every Tuesday and Thursday.
Comments (7)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
I love this blog and how it show the details of each artwork that were not known to the common eye. Have you done any Feel Art Again blogs about Caravaggio?
posted by Miss Nae on 12-27-2007 at 6:30 pm
Miss Nae: I have not yet done any posts on Caravaggio, but I will look into his work and perhaps do a post in the near future. Thanks for the suggestion!
posted by Andréa on 12-27-2007 at 7:40 pm
There is another El Greco portrait of a lady entitled, surprisingly enough, “Portrait of a Lady” on exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
posted by Jamie on 12-28-2007 at 12:11 am
There is an El Greco painting at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri titled “St. Mary Magdalene in Penitence” (c. 1580). It is of a woman and, I thought, relatively well known. You should look for an image of it; it’s beautiful.
posted by Emma on 12-28-2007 at 11:17 am
#3 says: “in 2004, the painting was to be X-rayed in an attempt to better determine authorship”… so, what happened? Was it x-rayed? What was determined?
posted by Andy on 12-30-2007 at 4:14 pm
Andy: The only articles I could find on the subject were from early 2004, discussing that the painting was to be x-rayed. I can’t find any from after, so either it was not x-rayed, or nothing new came out of the x-ray. Sorry I can’t clear the subject up more!
posted by Andréa on 12-31-2007 at 3:14 pm
Nice article. “A Lady In a Fur Wrap” is one of my favourite paintings and (fortunately for me) it’s in Glasgow, where I live. I too followed the debate/controversy when it was aired in the national press a few years back but as the writer of the article here says, no progress was made (and as far as I know, the x-ray results, if it ever occurred, were not publicised).
To me, this *does* look like an El Greco, as the figure is slim and the composition brightly (even slightly dramatically) lit with a dark background. It’s not as distorted as some of his other portraits though (which some scholars I believe put down to a kind of tunnel vision which the artist may have suffered). I think though that the argument against El Greco being the artist because this is an unusual work for him doesn’t really logically follow – because he created nothing else like the famous, stormy landscape “View of Toledo” – and yet that was definitely by him!
posted by ColinC on 1-29-2009 at 11:04 am