Portrait of a Sculptor

In 1577 a painter who signed his work in Greek arrived in Toledo. Doménikos Theotokópoulos, born on Crete and trained in Venice and Rome, was in his mid-thirties and starting over in Spain, hoping for work from King Philip II. Portraits were part of how a newcomer built a circle, and this is one of his first Spanish ones. The sitter is a bearded man the picture's title has long called a sculptor, though his name was never securely recorded. One old proposal is Pompeo Leoni, a sculptor to the Spanish court, but nothing confirms it. What is sure is the handling, the quiet closely watched head and the restraint El Greco carried from Titian's Venice, before the stretched figures and cold light of his later Toledo manner took hold. He spent the rest of his life in that city and died there in 1614, and this portrait comes from his very first Spanish years.