SPEAKER 1: We're in
the Prado looking at El Greco's "Adoration
of the Shepherds." This is a painting that he
did very late in his career. It was about 1612, 1614. SPEAKER 2: And one that had
personal significance for him, since it was for
his family chapel. SPEAKER 1: It's a wild painting. SPEAKER 2: Well, all
El Grecos are wild, but he clearly gets wilder
later in his career. SPEAKER 1: He maybe
felt freer because it was personally related. SPEAKER 2: The figures
are incredibly elongated. The positions of their
bodies make no sense. There's just enormous
license with naturalism here. Naturalism, in
fact, doesn't even seem to be a requirement, even
though we're just coming really out of the Renaissance here. I mean, even by
Mannerist standards-- because we're basically in
the period of Mannerism, moving into the Baroque--
this is extreme. SPEAKER 1: Well,
El Greco was Greek. And he was trained, actually,
as a Greek icon painter. And of course, the
Byzantine tradition was a tradition
that was concerned with distorting the body
for symbolic purpose. And so I think there
is a kind of license that comes from that tradition. Now, El Greco gets to Spain. And he does these paintings
in Toledo for the most part, by way of Italy,
where he really does train in the Renaissance style. So he understands contemporary
art at this point. I mean, he really understands
what people are doing. But he's also willing to let go. Look what he's done. He's removed virtually any
reference to actual space. We have almost no
sense of real depth. We have a little bit of a barrel
vault right behind the Virgin Mary, but besides that,
it's all clouds and light. SPEAKER 2: And
movement-- if you look at the structure of the
painting, the composition, the Christ child occupies the
center of about five or six figures, almost provides
the light source, almost as though it was a fire
in the center of those figures that they were all
warming their hands by. SPEAKER 1: I think actually
that idea of fire is perfect. The figures feel like flames. In fact, the light
seems to be flickering. Everything seems
to be transient, and nothing seems to be fixed. Even the human
bodies themselves, as you mentioned before,
seem completely mutable. SPEAKER 2: I think that this
pictorial language that we're describing represents the
spiritual, the transcendent, otherworldly. SPEAKER 1: The church
was really trying to combat the threat
of the Reformation. And I think that,
especially in Toledo, you have a very severe reaction,
a Counter-Reformation taking the Council of Trent
doctrine very seriously. SPEAKER 2: So the
church is really looking to reform
itself, to inspire faith in believers in a
new and powerful way. And I think El Greco's paintings
were able to achieve that. One of the things
that he's doing is using color in a way that's
really, I think, unprecedented. We have neon oranges,
and greens, and blues, and golds that I don't
think I've ever seen before. SPEAKER 1: It really
won't be until Delacroix in the 19th century that
somebody is as bold with color. And even Delacroix, I think,
is muted in comparison to this. SPEAKER 2: We also have these
very stark contrasts of light and dark, and figures
that are very close to us, and this amazing foreshortening. I mean, look at those
angels up in the sky. I mean, we're seeing them
from these remarkable angles. SPEAKER 1: There's a
sense in El Greco's work, and especially in the
"Adoration of the Shepherds," that the divine is with us
in the most complete way. That is, it completely
infuses the physical world in a way that more traditional,
more representational Renaissance painting, and
even Mannerist painting, doesn't quite achieve. There is a sense that
the divine actually is a physical force that runs
as a current through the space that El Greco defines.