Toledo was home to the Greek-born painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos for half his life and nearly all his working life, so it seems reasonable to find a museum there dedicated to his life and work.
That was certainly the idea that motivated the Marquis de la Vega Inclan, a Toledo native, to buy what he though was the decayed remains of El Greco’s home to restore as a museum and memorial—the first of its kind in Spain. He succeeded in his goal, even though it turns out the house was not the one El Greco had lived in.
Some of the rooms in the old house, such as the kitchen above, have been reconstructed as they might have been in the 16th century, furnished with fittings the Marquis acquired from other old houses. The house is linked to a a 20th-century extension built to house the galleries with a large collection of the master’s paintings.
One of the principal exhibits is an Apostolate, a set of thirteen paintings depicting Jesus and eleven of the twelve apostles; Judas is replaced by St Paul. It is one of several such sets El Greco painted; another is in the sacristy of Toledo’s cathedral.
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Hung together as they were meant to be, six of the saints face toward the right and six to the left, with Jesus at the center. Unlike other paintings of the era, El Greco keeps the backgrounds neutral focusing attention on the strong faces and figures, as in the image of St Simon.
This St Matthew by Luis Tristan, a popular painter of Apostolates, hangs opposite El Greco’s; it may have been owned by him at one point.
El Greco is known to have painted two landscapes—an unusual subject at the time—and one of them is at the El Greco Museum, the View and Plan of Toledo, which highlight the city’s then-newest buildings, including the Hospital de Tavera, now an art museum, in the foreground, angels in the sky and a Roman god blessing the Tagus River.
His other landscape, which is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, shows the city’s older buildings in more detail against the dramatic background of a storm at night. A print of this picture, borrowed from a library when I was a teenager has been in my mind for almost 70 years and is likely the reason I ended up visiting Toledo.
Two portraits of members of the same family share a wall. One is of Diego Covarrubias y Leiva, a jurist and bishop, the other, also a jurist, is his nephew Antonio, best-known for having been painted by his close friend, El Greco. Another El Greco portrait of Antonio hangs in the Louvre. El Greco arrived the year Diego died, and the portrait is likely based on a similar work by the court painter Alonso Sanchez Coello.
St Bernardino of Siena in an impressive setting…
Aside from the collection in the El Greco Museum, Toledo is a treasure house of his works. Not far from the museum, the huge painting The Burial of the Count of Orgaz is in the St Thomas Church; the Santo Domingo el Antigua Convent has original altarpiece panels, and the sacristy of the cathedral has several major paintings as well as a complete Apostolate.
