L'Adoration des mages

Before he was El Greco, he was Domenikos Theotokopoulos, a young icon painter on the Venetian-ruled island of Crete. He made this small Adoration there around 1566 and signed it in Greek, by the hand of Domenikos. You can see the two worlds he stood between: the gold-ground manner of the Byzantine icons he trained in, already loosening under the crowded, twisting compositions of Venetian painters like Tintoretto, whose work reached Crete through prints. Within a few years he would leave for Venice, then Spain, and become the elongated, visionary painter the world remembers. This early panel he painted on a piece of wood salvaged from an old chest.