El Greco (1541–1614) was a Cretan-born painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco left his birthplace for Venice in 1567, never to return. El Greco's three years in Venice profoundly influenced his style. In 1577, he emigrated to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until the end of his life.
El Greco's artworks are thus divided into three main periods:
El Greco was mainly a painter but a few sculptures, including Epimetheus and Pandora, have also been attributed to him.[1] This doubtful attribution is based on the testimony of Pacheco, who claimed to see a series of wax, stucco, and wooden figurines in his studio, but these may have been models like those used in the Italian workshops (like the one El Greco himself had created in Italy). The figures illustrated recall certain nudes in paintings by El Greco in their elongated proportions, but their naturalism and the accentuated musculature of the male figure are regarded by certain researchers as surprising for El Greco.[2] Among the surviving El Greco works are four drawings;[3] three of them preparatory works for the altarpiece of Santo Domingo el Antiguo and the fourth a study for one of his paintings, The Crucifixion.[4]