THE EL GRECO ENIGMA

The painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known by his Spanish name El Greco (“The Greek”), is widely acknowledged as being one of the greatest painters in the history of European art.

Records indicate that he was born in Crete in 1541, into a wealthy and socially prominent family. Early in his career he received training in the Byzantine style of painting. This style is concerned with religious expression and more specifically the impersonal presentation of church theology in artistic terms.

At the age of 27, El Greco travelled to Italy where he continued his artistic training. Among his teachers were Titian, one of his greatest contemporaries. Through his influence, El Greco adopted the Venetian features of bright colours, movement, and dramatic light in his work.

For a short period of time, El Greco lived in Rome where he saw the works of Michelangelo, Raphael and Parmigianino. These artists practised the style of Mannerism, which valued the portrayal of the nude in complex and artificial poses. The figures often have elongated limbs, small heads and stylised facial features, which can be seen in exaggerated form in El Greco’s
later works.

El Greco left for Spain in 1577 and despite the lack of royal commission his work was very popular. In 1579, El Greco completed the first of two works that were commissioned for the church of Santo Domingo el Antigua in Toledo and established a local reputation that would sustain him for the rest of his life.

At about the same time, the most recognisable feature of El Greco’s style emerged – the elongation of figures.

“The Burial of the Count of Orgaz” (1586-88; Santo Tomé, Toledo) is universally recognised as El Greco’s masterpiece. This vision is fabricated by an astonishing handling of brilliant colour and radiant light. El Greco’s Mannerist method is nowhere more clearly expressed than here. As his career progressed, the elongation of human figures in El Greco’s work became more pronounced. This can be seen in his classic “Saint Martin and the Beggar”.

IS EL GRECO'S UNIQUE STYLE EXPLAINED BY ASTIGMATISM?

It has been suggested that El Greco suffered from astigmatism. This suggestion is based on the unidirectional elongation in the perception of objects that astigmatism characteristically induces and the observation that viewing one of El Greco’s paintings through a cylindrical lens with the proper power and orientation eliminates the distortions.

However, there are several arguments against this theory. Firstly, El Greco’s tendency for elongation may be simply stylistic and traceable back to both the Byzantine and Mannerist eras. Secondly, El Greco’s elongated distortions did not simply occur in one direction as would be expected with astigmatism. Thirdly, in “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz” (see left), the vertical distortions are not uniform; there are normally proportioned figures as well as distorted ones. Fourthly, El Greco’s distortions progressed over his career. However, astigmatism does not normally increase in severity with age.

Fifthly, while the axis of astigmatism normally changes with age from the vertical axis (with-the-rule astigmatism) to the horizontal axis (against-the-rule astigmatism), there was no indication of this change in El Greco’s work. Lastly, and perhaps most conclusively, X-ray analyses of some of El Greco’s works reveal that the underlying figures were painted in normal proportions. On those grounds it might be more reasonable to conclude that the artist’s distorted tendencies should be attributed to a purposeful style rather than astigmatism. Yet it may also be that there is an alternative optical defect at work.

THE KERATOCONUS THEORY

The elongations of the figures and the Manneristic approach in his paintings first begin to appear in those works he did at around 30 years of age, immediately after his arrival in Italy. This style becomes prominent in the depiction of the burial of the Count of Orgaz, where the figures of the angels are stressed, that is, in figures which come from his fantasy rather than from living models. The elongation of the figures is demonstrated more obviously in his later works. These elements are consistent with keratoconus, a progressive corneal disorder, which has a very high prevalence among Eastern Mediterranean populations.

Patients with keratoconus first notice its effects when they are around 30. If there is no acute progression causing a substantial decrease in vision during the first two to three years, keratoconus has a slow progression and continues until the age of 40-50 years. The landmark of this period is the appearance of the so-called “irregular astigmatism”, which elongates and distorts the objects, but in an irregular way. Εl Greco’s “evolutionary Mannerism”, as I would call it, perfectly fits the profile of chronic, progressive, subclinical keratoconus. Unfortunately, only topographies and resolution of El Greco’s corneal and optical system’s wavefront aberrations could resolve this enigma.