425. El Greco (Domínikos Theotokópoulos) (1541-1614),

Greek, Spanish, A Cardinal (probably Cardinal

Niño de Guevara), 1600. Oil on canvas, 171 x 108 cm.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Mannerism.

 

 

The primacy of imagination and intuition over the subjective character of creation was a fundamental principle of El Greco's style. El Greco discarded classicist criteria like measure and proportion. He regarded colour as the most important and the most ungovernable element of painting, believing that colour had primacy over form. Francisco Pacheco wrote that the painter liked “the colours crude and unmixed in great blots as a boastful display of his dexterity” and that “he believed in constant repainting and retouching in order to make the broad masses tell flat as in nature”.