Quote
"I hold the imitation of colour to be the greatest difficulty of art."
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El Greco"..using abstraction and avoiding literal illusionism, the artist [= El Greco] diverts the mind to the spiritual essence.. .El Greco made it clear that his heavenly figures are not members of the material world."
Doménikos Theotokópoulos, most widely known as El Greco, was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. El Greco was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters often adding the word Κρής, which means "Cretan" in Ancient Greek.
"I hold the imitation of colour to be the greatest difficulty of art."
"Now, in order to claim some knowledge of painting, Vitruvius speaks of the consideration of the perfect human body and about how good sculptors and painters in order to make it give it a height of ten faces, and I say that according to them they have read and they say that this proportion is based on knowledge of measurement and that it happens that without it it is not possible to have proportion or consideration because those who are not cognizant of this do not count."
"El Greco showed me in 1611 a cupboard full of clay models made by him to serve him in his work, and, a marvel beyond compare, the originális of every picture he had ever painted in his life, all in oils, on smaller canvasses, collected together in a hall which his son showed me by his orders."
"Anyway, I would not be happy to see a beautiful, well-proportioned woman, no matter from which point of view, however extravagant, not only lose her beauty in order to, I would say, increase in size according to the law of vision, but no longer appear beautiful, and, in fact, become monstrous."
"..by a Dominico Greco.. ..who paints excellent things in Toledo, is a painting of Saint Maurice and his soldiers, which he made for the altar of the Saints, and is now in the Chapter House; it did not please His Majesty, but that is not surprising, for it pleased few, although it is said it is of much art and that there are many excellent things by his hand."
"[El Greco confined to his bed] holding, believing and confessing the Faith of the Holy Church of Rome in whose Faith I have lived and die, as a faithful and Catholic Christian because of the gravity of my sickness I was unable to make a will and gives power to Jorge Manuel Teotocopuli my son, and of Dona Jerónima de las Cuevas [his wife he never married], who is a person of honesty and virtue [to make his testament, arrange his burial, and pay his debts, and the] remainder of my possessions to go to Jorge Manuel, as universal heir"