GRECO, El
(b. 1541, Candia, d. 1614, Toledo)

The Entombment of Christ

late 1560s
Oil and tempera on panel, 51,5 x 43 cm
Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens

This painting is one of the most attractive pictures of El Greco's Venetian period. The artist's barely disguised borrowings from Italian prints (e.g. the three Marys from a print of the Entombment by Parmigianino) are a notable feature of his Cretan- and Italian period pictures and reflect his formation as a painter in the post-Byzantine tradition accustomed to working from established compositional patterns.