Editing El Greco (section)

===Posthumous critical reputation===
[[File:Trinidad El Greco2.jpg|thumb|''The Holy Trinity'' (1577–1579, {{nowrap|300 × 178 cm}}, oil on canvas, {{Lang|es|[[Museo del Prado]]|italic=no}}, Madrid, Spain) was part of a group of works created for the church "Santo Domingo el Antiguo".]]

El Greco was disdained by the immediate generations after his death because his work was opposed in many respects to the principles of the early [[baroque]] style which came to the fore near the beginning of the 17th century and soon supplanted the last surviving traits of the 16th-century Mannerism.<ref name="Br" /> El Greco was deemed incomprehensible and had no important followers.<ref name="Plaka49">M. Lambraki-Plaka, ''El Greco{{snd}}The Greek'', 49</ref> Only his son and a few unknown painters produced weak copies of his works. Late 17th- and early 18th-century Spanish commentators praised his skill but criticized his antinaturalistic style and his complex [[iconography]]. Some of these commentators, such as [[Antonio Palomino]] and [[Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez]], described his mature work as "contemptible", "ridiculous" and "worthy of scorn".<ref name="BrownFou">Brown-Mann, ''Spanish Paintings'', 43<br />* E. Foundoulaki, ''From El Greco to Cézanne'', 100–101</ref> The views of Palomino and Bermúdez were frequently repeated in Spanish [[historiography]], adorned with terms such as "strange", "queer", "original", "eccentric" and "odd".<ref name="Foundoulaki100">E. Foundoulaki, ''From El Greco to Cézanne'', 100–101</ref> The phrase "sunk in eccentricity", often encountered in such texts, in time developed into "madness".{{efn|name=J}} Still, his paintings influenced [[Diego Velázquez|Velazquez]], who positioned the main characters of his paintings in the same manner as El Greco, and painted the folds in the clothes in a similar fashion.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Carl |first=Klaus |url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Mtj2AAAAQBAJ&pg=PT60 |title=Velasquez |date=2013-03-15 |publisher=Parkstone International |isbn=978-1-78160-637-7 |pages=60 |language=en}}</ref>

With the arrival of [[Romanticism|Romantic]] sentiments in the late 18th century, El Greco's works were examined anew.<ref name="Plaka49" /> To French writer [[Théophile Gautier]], El Greco was the precursor of the European Romantic movement in all its craving for the strange and the extreme.<ref name="Russel1">J. Russel, [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5DC1739F93BA25754C0A964948260 Seeing The Art Of El Greco As Never Before]</ref> Gautier regarded El Greco as the ideal [[romantic hero]] (the "gifted", the "misunderstood", the "mad"),{{efn|The myth of El Greco's madness came in two versions. On the one hand Gautier believed that El Greco went mad from excessive artistic sensitivity.<ref>T. Gautier, {{lang|fr|Voyage en Espagne}}, 217</ref> On the other hand, the public and the critics would not possess the ideological criteria of Gautier and would retain the image of El Greco as a "mad painter" and, therefore, his "maddest" paintings were not admired but considered to be historical documents proving his "madness".<ref name="Foundoulaki100" />}} and was the first who explicitly expressed his admiration for El Greco's later technique.<ref name="Foundoulaki100" /> French art critics [[Zacharie Astruc]] and [[Paul Lefort]] helped to promote a widespread revival of interest in his painting. In the 1890s, Spanish painters living in Paris adopted him as their guide and mentor.<ref name="Russel1" /> However, in the popular English-speaking imagination he remained the man who "painted horrors in the Escorial" in the words of [[Ephraim Chambers]]' ''[[Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences|Cyclopaedia]]'' in 1899.<ref>Talbot Rice, ''Enjoying Paintings'', 164</ref>

In 1908, Spanish art historian [[Manuel Bartolomé Cossío]] published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works; in this book El Greco was presented as the founder of the Spanish School.<ref name="Brown43">Brown-Mann, ''Spanish Paintings'', 43<br />* E. Foundoulaki, ''From El Greco to Cézanne'', 103</ref> The same year [[Julius Meier-Graefe]], a scholar of French [[Impressionism]], traveled in Spain, expecting to study [[Diego Velázquez|Velázquez]], but instead becoming fascinated by El Greco; he recorded in 1910 his experiences in ''Spanische Reise'' (''Spanish Journey'', published in English in 1926), the book which widely established El Greco as a great painter of the past "outside a somewhat narrow circle".<ref>Talbot Rice, ''Enjoying Paintings'', 165</ref> In El Greco's work, Meier-Graefe found foreshadowing of modernity.<ref>J.J. Sheehan, ''Museums in the German Art World'', 150</ref> These are the words Meier-Graefe used to describe El Greco's impact on the [[artistic movements]] of his time:

{{blockquote|He [El Greco] has discovered a realm of new possibilities. Not even he, himself, was able to exhaust them. All the generations that follow after him live in his realm. There is a greater difference between him and Titian, his master, than between him and Renoir or Cézanne. Nevertheless, Renoir and Cézanne are masters of impeccable originality because it is not possible to avail yourself of El Greco's language, if in using it, it is not invented again and again, by the user.|[[Julius Meier-Graefe]]|''The Spanish Journey''<ref name="Meier458">[[Julius Meier-Graefe]], ''The Spanish Journey'', 458</ref>}}

To the English artist and critic [[Roger Fry]] in 1920, El Greco was the archetypal genius who did as he thought best "with complete indifference to what effect the right expression might have on the public". Fry described El Greco as "an [[old master]] who is not merely modern, but actually appears a good many steps ahead of us, turning back to show us the way".<ref name="Kimmelman" /> English author [[W. Somerset Maugham|William Somerset Maugham]], in 1938, wrote "I do not doubt that he was one of the greatest painters that ever lived. I think ''[[The Burial of the Count of Orgaz|The]]'' ''[[The Burial of the Count of Orgaz|Burial of the Count Orgaz]]'' is one of the greatest pictures in the world".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Maugham |first=W. Somerset |url=https://archive.org/details/donfernandoorvar0000maug/mode/2up |title=Don Fernando |date=1990 |publisher=New York: Paragon House |isbn=978-1-55778-269-4 |orig-date=1935}}</ref> According to American artist [[William Alexander Griffith]], in 1925, El Greco was everywhere regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time, having achieved the high honor of a classification and is called the "supreme example of the baroque in painting".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffith |first=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DytGAAAAMAAJ& |title=Great Painters and Their Famous Bible Pictures |date=1925 |publisher=W.H. Wise & Company |pages=184 |language=en |quote=...El Greco (The Greek) was hardly more than a name even to historians of art. Today he is everywhere regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time, having achieved the high honor of a classification and is called the "supreme example of the baroque in painting".}}</ref> A 1914 ''[[Literary Digest]]'' article noted, El Greco was "ranked by some critics not only as Spain's greatest artist, but as one of the five or six greatest painters of all time".<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.gr/books?id=ee3hu9xQmDwC&pg=PA1046 |title=Literary Digest |date=1914 |publisher=Funk and Wagnalls |pages=1046 |language=en |chapter=A "Modern" Painter Who Died 300 Years Ago |quote=Early in April, the Spanish city of Toledo celebrated, with a solemn funeral service, the tercentenary of the death of Domenico Theotocopouli, better known as El Greco, and now ranked by some critics not only as Spain's greatest artist, but as one of the five or six greatest painters of all time}}</ref>

During the same period, other researchers developed alternative, more radical theories. The ophthalmologists August Goldschmidt and Germán Beritens argued that El Greco painted such elongated human figures because he had vision problems (possibly progressive [[astigmatism]] or [[strabismus]]) that made him see bodies longer than they were, and at an angle to the perpendicular;<ref name="Firestone">Chaz Firestone, [http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p7488 ''On the Origin and Status of the "El Greco Fallacy"''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140317105422/http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p7488 |date=17 March 2014 }}</ref>{{efn|This theory enjoyed surprising popularity during the early years of the twentieth century and was opposed by the German [[psychologist]] David Kuntz.<ref name="HelmTe93-94">R.M. Helm, ''The Neoplatonic Tradition in the Art of El Greco'', 93–94<br />* M. Tazartes, ''El Greco'', 68–69</ref> Whether or not El Greco had progressive astigmatism is still open to debate.<ref name="Grierson">I. Grierson, ''The Eye Book'', 115</ref> Stuart Anstis, Professor at the [[University of California]] (Department of Psychology), concludes that "even if El Greco were astigmatic, he would have adapted to it, and his figures, whether drawn from memory or life, would have had normal proportions. His elongations were an artistic expression, not a visual symptom."<ref>S. Anstis, ''Was El Greco Astigmatic'', 208</ref> According to Professor of Spanish John Armstrong Crow, "astigmatism could never give quality to a canvas, nor talent to a dunce".<ref name="Crow">J.A. Crow, ''Spain: The Root and the Flower'', 216</ref>}} the physician Arturo Perera, however, attributed this style to the use of [[marijuana]].<ref name="Tazartes68-69">M. Tazartes, ''El Greco'', 68–69</ref> Michael Kimmelman, a reviewer for ''[[The New York Times]]'', stated that "to Greeks [El Greco] became the quintessential Greek painter; to the Spanish, the quintessential Spaniard".<ref name="Kimmelman" />

Epitomizing the consensus of El Greco's impact, [[Jimmy Carter]], the 39th President of the United States, said in April 1980 that El Greco was "the most extraordinary painter that ever came along back then" and that he was "maybe three or four centuries ahead of his time".<ref name="Russel1" /> Historian Eric Storm, who sees the "rediscovery" of El Greco as "as one of the most important events of its kind in art history" summarized:

{{Blockquote|text=Thanks to authors such as [[Julius Meier-Graefe|Meier-Graefe]] and groundbreaking modern artists like [[Pablo Picasso|Picasso]], [[Franz Marc]], and [[Wassily Kandinsky|Kandinsky]], in less than fifty years El Greco was eventually proclaimed to be one of the greatest painters ever.|author=Eric Storm|title=''The Discovery of El Greco: The Nationalization of Culture Versus the Rise of Modern Art (1860-1914)''|source=p. 191}}