El Greco's Paintings In The Chapel Of San José De Toledo

El Greco’s paintings in the Chapel of San José de Toledo manifested an authenticity between the divine and the human. The altarpieces at the Chapel of Saint Joseph were one of El Greco’s most important commissions. This commission was an opportunity to demonstrate his considerable ability in executing the religious aspirations and taste of his patrons’. A well-known priest of the time, Dr. Martín Ramírez de Zayas decided to provide the family chapel with an ambitious decorative program, without hesitation, he thought of El Greco. The commission was a retable with three altarpieces; distributed in two main and two side altars for the chapel. This important commission for El Greco had a particular date for its completion, the feast of the Assumption,
He was a great exponent of Mannerism, characterized by its high sophistication, and sometimes exaggerated artificial elegance, exalted combinations of intense or hard colors, its complex composition gifted with particular originality, and a technical dynamism and free and fluid line. The lighting invades its scenes, what he achieves is that the material itself emits an intense luminosity from the inside out. The Madonna and Child with Saint Martina and Saint Agnes, exhibit these characteristics. The style of El Greco is greatly influenced by the Venetian chromatic mannerism and the expressiveness of color; the figures become color spots with hardly any drawing, and the shapes are agitated or lengthened. Light becomes a strong element. At the same time, the highlights of the lights with the blues, yellows, reds, or green depict what is of interest to him, pointing out the brightest areas. El Grecos’s Madonna and Child with Saint Martina and Saint Agnes were “painted on fabrics with an unusual compound twill weave in irregular diamond-shaped
El Greco found in Toledo a cultural environment in which to develop his intellectual concerns. In his time he was considered an extravagant that marked his stylistic path without much talent, largely for what was formerly understood as a defect and has now been discovered as a virtue: the unique way he used colors, painted stylized figures and elongated shapes. The unique characteristics that El Greco used in his painting, even allow to identify his paintings, at first sight, are recognized today as a genuine medium that the artist used to give the figures and characters, a strong emotional component, taking the expressiveness of the forms to a higher level. In the Madonna and Child with Saint Martina and Saint Agnes, El Greco demonstrated his great ability and freedom in the use of form, composition, and style as an instrument for defining the divine image. The retables became an emblem for El Greco. His mannerist influence gave him the opportunity to expand his abilities in depicting the sacred stories of religious experience. Within mannerism, El Greco was, perhaps, the only artist who reconciled the extraordinarily creative and experimental impulse that arose from the