Adoration of the Magi with Camels

When El Greco painted this small panel in 1568 he was not yet El Greco. He was Domenikos Theotokopoulos, a young painter trained in the icon workshops of Crete and newly drawn to Venice. Both worlds show in it. The gold-touched, crowded manner comes from Byzantine tradition, while the warm colour and the loose grouping are things he was picking up from Venetian painters like Titian. The camels at the edge give the picture its name, marking the long journey of the Magi. Years before Toledo and the tall, flickering saints that made him famous, he was working at panel size, in a style still half rooted in the icons he grew up copying.