El Greco - Laocoön [c.1610-14]

El Greco - Laocoön [c.1610-14], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The powerful and enigmatic Laocoön is El Greco's only surviving treatment of a mythological subject. The story relates how the hero, a priest in Troy, attempted to warn his countrymen of the Trojan Horse, whose hollow body concealed Greek soldiers. Laocoön was punished by the gods, who sent serpents out of the sea to kill him and his two sons.

A famous ancient sculpture of Laocoön, which El Greco must have seen, was unearthed in Rome in 1506. Like it, El Greco's painting depicts the climactic moment when the bearded priest struggles for life. One son lies dead, and the other will soon succumb. But El Greco placed these mythological characters and the Trojan Horse against the backdrop of Toledo. At the right stand two figures, perhaps gods viewing the scene. They are complicated by a third head and the leg of an unfinished figure. These mysterious figures and the view of Toledo have prompted many speculations about El Greco's intention. Is this a reference to a contemporary religious controversy, a moralizing allegory, or an allusion to the tradition that Toledo was founded by descendants of the Trojan heroes? Probably it is impossible to know. It may simply be that El Greco was motivated to match the virtuosity of a famous ancient statue with his own masterful invention.

[Oil on canvas, 137.5 x 172.5 cm]

El Greco - The Vision of Saint John [1608-14]

El Greco - The Vision of Saint John [1608-14], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The painting, unfinished at El Greco's death and listed in a postmortem inventory, depicts a passage in Revelation describing the opening of the Fifth Seal and the distribution of white robes to "those who had been slain for the work of God and for the witness they had borne." It is cut down from a large altarpiece commissioned in 1608 for the church of the hospital of Saint John the Baptist in Toledo. The missing upper part may have shown the Sacrificial Lamb opening the Fifth Seal.

The broad open brushwork is characteristic of El Greco's late style. The picture is much damaged. Much admired by twentieth-century artists, the picture was studied in Paris by Picasso when he was working on ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ and it was sketched by Jackson Pollock.

[Oil on canvas, top truncated, 222.3 x 193 cm, with added strips 224.8 x 199.4 cm]