Granvelle, Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de (1517–
1586) Burgundian aristocrat and churchman
He became bishop of Arras (1540), archbishop of Malines
(1560), and cardinal (1561). PHILIP IIappointed this loyal
servant of the Spanish Hapsburg monarchy president of
the council of state of the Netherlands, where he advised
the regent, MARGARET OF PARMA, and was known for his
strict religious orthodoxy and defense of political abso-
lutism. His opposition to Dutch pleas for political reforms
and religious toleration made him so unpopular that he
was removed from the Netherlands (1564) and sent to
serve Philip in various capacities in Italy (1565–79). One
of his successes there was the Italy League that took on the
Ottoman fleet at LEPANTO(1571). Finally, as secretary of
state in Spain (1579–86) he directed the campaign against
the Dutch and negotiated the union of the Portuguese and
Spanish crowns (1580). Granvelle was also a great patron
of artists, both on his own behalf and for Charles V and
Philip II. He was a personal friend of the sculptor Leone
LEONIand of TITIAN, and was a noted collector, many of
whose treasures passed (1597) after his death into the col-
lection of RUDOLF II.
Grazzini, Anton Francesco (1503–1584) Italian writer,
poet, and dramatist
Grazzini was born in Florence; otherwise little is known
of his early life and education. One of the founders of the
Accademia degli Umidi (1540), which worked to promote
the vernacular in literature, he adopted the name “Il
Lasca” (Roach). In 1582 he helped found the ACCADEMIA
DELLA CRUSCA. He is remembered for the realistic novelle
about Florence collected in Le cene (The Suppers), which
was not published until 1756. To contemporaries he was
best known as a poet of burlesque verses and Petrarchan
lyrics. He also wrote seven comedies and edited the poetry
of Francesco BERNI(1548) and others.
Great Schism The division in Western Christendom in
the period 1378–c. 1430, when rival popes existed at
Rome and at Avignon in southern France.
See also: AVIGNON, PAPACY AT
Greco, El (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (1541–1614)
Spanish painter
Born in Crete, El Greco (the Greek) was the most out-
standing Spanish artist of the 16th century and one of the
last great painters of the Renaissance. First apprenticed as
a painter of religious works in the Greco-Byzantine tradi-
tion, El Greco combines in his early works standard el-
ements of Orthodox icons with awareness of Italian
trends: an undated Dormition of the Virgin in the church of
the Koimesis tis Theotokou on the Aegean island of Syros
uses the conventional 15th-century Orthodox iconogra-
phy of the subject but the figures are treated in a way that
shows consciousness of the mannerist trends in contem-
porary Venetian painting, while an Adoration of the Magi
(?late 1560s; Benaki Museum, Athens), painted in the egg
tempera favored by Byzantine iconographers shows a
Western approach to perspective. He studied under TITIAN
in Venice during the 1560s, inheriting from him his taste
for sensuous color and also absorbing the influences of
BASSANO, MICHELANGELO, and, above all, TINTORETTO. Por-
traits and paintings on biblical subjects survive from this
time. It is said that he had to leave Italy after offending the
Roman art establishment by offering to repaint Michelan-
gelo’s Last Judgment.
By the time he moved (1577) to Toledo in Spain El
Greco had rejected the three-dimensional space and
solidly depicted figures of the High Renaissance and was
building his own very individual style from a fusion of
Venetian Renaissance and Florentine-Roman mannerist
styles (see MANNERISM). At Toledo, where many of his
paintings still remain, he embarked upon an important se-
ries of religious paintings, beginning with two altarpieces,
a Trinity and an Assumption, and the painting The Dis-
robing of Christ (1579; Toledo cathedral). The Dream of
Philip II, also known as The Adoration of the Name of Jesus
(c. 1580; Escorial; see Plate VII), and St. Maurice (1582;
Escorial) represented attempts to attract Philip II’s patron-
age but they were rejected, as their stormy harsh colors
and emotional intensity were regarded as eccentric and
not conducive to devotion. Relying on commissions in
Toledo, where he spent the rest of his life, El Greco con-
tinued to move away from naturalism in order to express
the hallucinatory quality of his supernatural vision as an
artist. This is seen most clearly in such mature works as
The Burial of Count Orgaz (1586; Santo Tomé, Toledo), The
Agony in the Garden (c. 1597–1603), and The Assumption
(1613). He also demonstrated his penetrating psychologi-
cal insight in several portraits, including those of Cardinal
Guevara (c. 1600) and Félix Paravicino (1609), visionary
landscapes such as Toledo (c. 1595–1614), and one mytho-
logical subject, Laocoön (c. 1610).
Although he was too individual an artist to have many
direct artistic heirs, apart from his own son Jorge Manuel
Theotokopouli (1578–1631), El Greco has nonetheless
had an impact upon the art of the last hundred years, with
modern artists finding an affinity with his figural distor-
tion and concentration upon the imaginary and spiritual
aspects of art.
Further reading: Léo Bronstein, El Greco (London:
Idlehurst, 1951; concise ed. Thames & Hudson, 1991);
David Davies et al, El Greco (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2003).Greek studies Knowledge of Greek had practically dis-
appeared in western Europe by the eighth century CE. For
the next 500 years Europe depended on translations of
Greek works into Latin, either made directly by such late
antique writers as Boethius or from Arabic versions of theGGrreeeekk ssttuuddiieess 2 22211