Thunderbolts of Ecstasy

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK
The Opening of the Fifth Seal (The Vision of St. John) , 1608-1614

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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?