El Greco was born in Crete. He became a master in this art form before following in the footsteps of other Greek artists and travelling to Venice to further his studies. Moving on to Rome, El Greco opened a workshop and spent a great deal of time developing his style, adopting elements of both Mannerism and the Venetian Renaissance. However, it was after relocating to Toledo, Spain that El Greco truly blossomed. There he received several major commissions and produced his best known paintings. The artist gained notoriety for his highly expressive and visionary religious works and rarely ventured away from this genre. When he did, however, he created compelling portraits, landscape paintings, mythological works and sculptures. Those produced during his later years are particularly notable for their undulating forms, epic scale and expressive distortions. El Greco regarded color as the most important element of painting, and declared that it had primacy over form. In his ma
