Thunderbolts of Ecstasy

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While it is not clear that El Greco shared their mystical disposition, he found the language to express their religious ecstasies in paint. He also produced a few works of maudlin religiosity. It takes a strong stomach to love his popeyed penitents or some of his more beseeching Virgins. His real-world portraits, among the first in European art to probe psychology, were another matter. Look at his magnificent account of a cardinal who is probably the Grand Inquisitor himself — Nino de Guevara, Spain's Inquisitor General. Armored in his robes, with a mysterious letter dropped at his feet, he unnerves you with a gaze that refuses to meet yours.

In the last years of his life, El Greco was still working at full throttle. The Opening of the Fifth Seal, though unfinished at his death in 1614, remains one of the most startling canvases of the 17th century, a picture that dissolves space and distorts form in ways not seen again until Matisse. Or Picasso, who used it as a model for the broken fabric of space in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Almost 60 years after that, Picasso summed up El Greco in five words: "He was really a painter!" Anyone care to disagree?