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with several versions of
View of Toledo
(1597-99). His masterpiece is undoubtedly
The Burial of Count Orgaz
(1586), a painting
of grand proportions preserved in the
church of San Tomé in Toledo.
When El Greco's paintings involved spe-
cific persons, such as his portraits, the exe-
cution is realistic, but he gives free rein to
his spiritual impulses when moving beyond
literal representation. For example, in
The
Burial of Count Orgaz
the lower portion of
the canvas, representing the earthly plane,
contains natural figures (including, it is
believed, El Greco himself and his son); the
upper portion of the canvas, offering a view
of heaven, takes greater liberty with the
imagery, particularly in the elongated man-
ner in which bodies are painted. Similarly
the
View of Toledo
does not offer a literal
landscape but a mixture of symbolism and
mysticism. Despite the popular notion that
the distortions of perspective and figure in
many of his paintings resulted from astig-
matism, there is no reliable evidence that
El Greco had any visual abnormality.
Rather his links to medieval Byzantine tra-
dition, modified by his experience of Ital-
ian figure painting, interacted with his
intense personal spirituality to create an
artistic impulse that often transcended the
norms of imagery.
El Greco was, according to contemporary
records, an arrogant, contentious, and opin-
ionated individual who followed his own
inclinations and notions of the way to pres-
ent exalted situations on canvas. Fortu-
nately for his career his approach found
favor among the more open-minded mem-
bers of Toledo's elite.
The respect in which El Greco was held
until the end of his life gave way to antago-
nism and later neglect during the mid-17th
century, as tastes changed. It was not until
the 19th or even the beginning of the 20th
century that he accumulated the endorse-
ments of modern painters that helped to
elevate him to the stature he has since
enjoyed. He is now firmly established as
one of the three or four greatest painters
that Spain can claim.
Grijalva, Juan de
(1480-1527)
Spanish explorer
Grijalva owed his opportunity for fame and
fortune and the loss of any prospect of
attaining them to the same man, his fellow
Segovian D
IEGO
V
ELÁZQUEZ
DE
C
UÉLLAR
.
Arriving in H
ISPANIOLA
in 1508, Grijalva
joined Velázquez in the conquest of C
UBA
,
in 1511. During the next few years he part-
nered with the brutal soldier P
ÁNFILO
DE
N
ARVÁEZ
and the benevolent clergyman
B
ARTOLOMÉ
DE
L
AS
C
ASAS
in bringing the
interior of the island into submission. By
1517 Velázquez, now governor of Cuba,
had grown impatient with the failure of
earlier probes sent out toward the North
American mainland. He commissioned
Captain Grijalva, with four ships and sev-
eral hundred soldiers, to explore the
unknown coast that lay to the west.
Between January and September 1518 Gri-
jalva became the first Spaniard to touch the
coast of what is now M
EXICO
, an area to
which he gave the name Santa María de las
Nieves. He also negotiated with several
Indian tribes and through them received
messages from Moctezuma, the ruler of the
Aztec Empire. Grijalva also surveyed the
coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. However,
although he had been authorized to initiate
a settlement, he deemed it imprudent to
establish a Spanish colony without a fuller
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