Editing El Greco (section)

===Architecture and sculpture===
El Greco was highly esteemed as an architect and sculptor during his lifetime.<ref name="Griffith">W. Griffith, ''Historic Shrines of Spain'', 184</ref> He usually designed complete altar compositions, working as architect and sculptor as well as painter—at, for instance, the Hospital de la Caridad. There he decorated the chapel of the hospital, but the wooden altar and the sculptures he created have in all probability perished.<ref name="Harris">E. Harris, ''A Decorative Scheme by El Greco'', 154</ref> For {{lang|es|El Espolio}} the master designed the original altar of [[gilded]] wood which has been destroyed, but his small sculptured group of the ''Miracle of St. Ildefonso'' still survives on the lower center of the frame.<ref name="Br" />

His most important architectural achievement was the church and Monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, for which he also executed sculptures and paintings.<ref name="Allardyce">I. Allardyce, ''Historic Shrines of Spain'', 174</ref> El Greco is regarded as a painter who incorporated architecture in his painting.<ref name="Tzonis164">Lefaivre-Tzonis, ''The Emergence of Modern Architecture'', 164</ref> He is also credited with the architectural frames to his own paintings in Toledo. Pacheco characterized him as "a writer of painting, sculpture and architecture".<ref name="Plaka47-49" />

In the [[marginalia]] that El Greco inscribed in his copy of Daniele Barbaro's translation of Vitruvius' {{lang|la|De architectura}}, he refuted Vitruvius' attachment to archaeological remains, canonical proportions, perspective and mathematics. He also saw Vitruvius' manner of distorting proportions in order to compensate for distance from the eye as responsible for creating monstrous forms. El Greco was averse to the very idea of rules in architecture; he believed above all in the freedom of invention and defended novelty, variety, and complexity. These ideas were, however, far too extreme for the architectural circles of his era and had no immediate resonance.<ref name="Tzonis164" />