A Última Ceia

Most people know El Greco for the flame-like, elongated saints he painted in Spain. This little panel comes from long before that, around 1568, when he was a young Cretan newly arrived in Venice and still signing himself Domenikos Theotokopoulos. He had trained on Byzantine icons back home, and in Venice he was absorbing the colour and crowded, dramatic staging of Titian and Tintoretto. You can watch him trying it on here, the disciples packed close around the table, the sharp lights and darks, the figures already beginning to stretch. It would be nearly another decade before he left Italy for Spain and settled in Toledo.