The Burial of the Count of Orgaz

The Burial of the Lord of Orgaz, popularly called The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, is an oil painting on canvas of 4.80 x 3.60 meters, painted in the Mannerist style by El Greco between 1586 and 1588. It was made for the parish of Santo Tomé in Toledo, Spain, and is preserved in this same temple. It is considered one of the author's best and most admired works.

The painting represents the miracle in which, according to tradition, Saint Stephen and Saint Augustine came down from Heaven to personally bury Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, lord of the town of Orgaz, in the church of Santo Tomé, as a prize for an exemplary life of devotion to the saints, his humility and the charitable works he carried out.

El Greco accepted the commission to carry out the work in 1586, just over two and a half centuries after the events he represented in it. He received detailed guidelines on how the miracle in the lower area of the canvas should appear, but a vague description of the Glory area. The Cretan painter incorporated in the upper zone the representation of the Judgment and the acceptance in Heaven of the soul of the lord of Orgaz. He also charged the burial scene with an air of the present, portraying men of his time in 16th century clothing and placing the events in a service for the dead with the characteristics of the time.

History

Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo was lord of Orgaz (the town of Orgaz was not a county until 1522). He was a very pious man and benefactor of the parish of Santo Tomé. Not in vain the church was rebuilt and expanded in 1300 at his expense. When he died on December 9, 1323 (according to other sources in 1312) he left a mandate that the residents of the town of Orgaz had to comply with in his will that, already generous, would have been enough to perpetuate his memory in the parishioner: "pay each year for the priest, ministers and poor of the parish 2 sheep, 8 pairs of chickens, 2 wine skins, 2 loads of firewood, and 800 maravedís”.

Recently, an important document has been discovered regarding the pictorial tradition of the miracle and the testamentary commission to paint a painting of it in Santo Tomé that, in 1513, Esteban Pérez de Guzmán, Lord of Orgaz, left behind:

The painting that lies in the joy of Santo Tomé, of a miracle that happened there, bent to paint as it is known that this is not a fecho that I die, and that is where the painting used to be in the chapel of do is buried an antecedent of mine and this fulfills my bastions.

_

After more than 200 years, in 1564, Don Andrés Núñez of Madrid, warned of the non-compliance by the inhabitants of the town of Toledo to continue delivering the goods stipulated in the will of their lord and claimed the command before the Royal Court and Chancery of Valladolid.

And when he finally won the lawsuit in 1569 and received what he withheld (a considerable sum for the many years unpaid), he wanted to perpetuate the lord of the town of Orgaz for future generations, commissioning the epitaph in Latin that is found at the foot of the of the painting, in which, in addition to the lawsuit launched by the parish priest, the story of the prodigious event that occurred during the burial of the Lord of Orgaz, two centuries before, is narrated. This tradition that existed in Toledo narrates that in 1327, when the remains of the Lord of Orgaz were transferred from the Augustinian convent —next to San Juan de los Reyes— to the parish of Santo Tomé, Saint Augustine himself and Saint Stephen descended from heaven to place the body in the grave with their own hands, while the admired attendees heard a voice that said "Such a reward is received by those who serve God and his saints."

To preside over the mortuary chapel of Señor de Orgaz, Don Andrés Núñez from Madrid, he commissioned the work to a parishioner and parishioner painter who, at that time, lived, rented, a few meters from there, in the houses of the Marquis of villena. On March 15, 1586, the agreement was signed between the parish priest, his butler and El Greco, in which the iconography of the lower area of the canvas was very precisely set, which would be of great proportions. It was specified as follows: «on the canvas a procession has to be painted, (and) how the priest and the other clergymen who were doing the offices to bury Don Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, lord of the town of Orgaz, and Saint Augustine and Saint Stephen went down to bury the body of this gentleman, one holding it by the head and the other by the feet, throwing it into the tomb, and around many people pretending to be watching, and on top of all this has to be done an open heaven of glory...». The payment would be made after an appraisal, after receiving one hundred ducats on account, and it had to be finished by Christmas of that same year.

The work lasted until the end of 1587, probably for the anniversary of the miracle and the feast of Saint Thomas. In a first appraisal, El Greco estimated his work at 1,200 ducats, "without the garnish and adornment" an amount that seemed excessive to the good and practical parish priest (compared to the 318 of the Expolio and the 800 of the San Mauricio of El Escorial). He claimed the parish priest and tried to renegotiate the reduction and two new painters challenged the enormous painting at 1700 ducats. Faced with the new disaster, the priest and butler appealed, and the Archiepiscopal Council decided to return to the first price. El Greco then felt offended and threatened to appeal to the Pope and the Holy See, but he agreed due to the foreseeable delays and procedural costs; On May 30, 1588, the council accepted the resignation of the painter to appeal and resolved that the parish pay him the 1,200 ducats, an agreement that was reached on June 20 by both parties and the debt was settled in 1590.

Theological dimension of the painting

The painting represents the two dimensions of human existence: below, death; above, heaven, eternal life. El Greco excelled in capturing in the painting what constitutes the Christian horizon of life in the face of death, illuminated by Jesus Christ.

In the lower part, the center is occupied by the corpse of the lord, which will be deposited with all veneration and respect in his tomb. For such a solemn occasion two saints have come down from heaven: the bishop Saint Augustine, one of the great fathers of the Church, and the deacon Saint Stephen, the first martyr of Christ.

In the biblical tradition the body is buried, returned to the earth from which it came, waiting to be transfigured by the final resurrection. The human body, which the Son of God took upon becoming a man, is no longer the prison of the soul, but matter animated by the spirit, matter that will be definitively transformed in the resurrection.

At this burial, two main characters look straight ahead, inviting those who observe to enter into the admirable mystery that their eyes contemplate: El Greco and his son, who points his finger at the central character and in turn at hell, making a whole journey that connects with the viewer.

Between heaven and earth, the bond is the immortal soul of the lord of Orgaz, figured as a fetus that an angel carries to heaven, through a kind of maternal vulva that will give birth to life eternal from heaven Death thus appears as a birth, as a birth into the eternal light in which the saints live. Painful trance, but full of hope.

At the top, the painter depicts heaven, the happy life of the blessed. Jesus Christ appears glorious, luminous, dressed in white, enthroned as judge of the living and the dead: he is the Lord of life and of the history of men. His ability to judge men with mercy is reflected in his serene face and in his right hand that sends the apostle Peter, head of his church, to open the gates of heaven for the soul of the late count.

The mother of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, maternally welcomes the soul of the Lord who reaches heaven: In this birth to eternal life, God has entrusted Mary with the task of mother. She is, for Christians, the maternal face of God.

The blessed gaze fascinated and adoring at Jesus Christ.

The painting as a whole invites the viewer to contemplate a Christian mystery: man was born for life. Man is not a being for death. And even when he has to cross the threshold of death, he does not do it alone, but with him to help him is Jesus Christ, redeemer of man, his most holy Mother, who is also their mother, and all the saints in heaven, his older brothers. Men, thus, are members of the family of saints, so that they may live their way in this life in a holy way.

In this masterpiece, El Greco has managed to convey a message of hope: the hope that springs from the good news of Jesus Christ, Lord of life and history, according to Christians.

The characters

Of these matters, this is the one that has surely been written about the most about the painting. It is certain that El Greco used the faces of the aristocratic characters of the time to immortalize them in The Burial, both in the earthly and in the heavenly part, which is anachronistic because the burial takes place almost three hundred years before. (From the anachronism of El Greco, let us remember El Expolio found in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Toledo).

There have been many conjectures to identify the characters of the time portrayed in the painting, but only two or three characters can be definitively affirmed.

• The semi-arrodillated child first to our left. It's Jorge Manuel, the son of the Greco, when he was 10 years old. A handkerchief coming out of his clothes testifies to him, as he indicates the date of his birth.
• The canoe beard character, on the other side of the scene, with the almost profile face. It is Antonio de Covarrubias, a Toledan humanist, close friend of the Greco.

Let us distinguish between the earthly and heavenly parts, perfectly delimited by El Greco and between which it occurred to him to leave a “detail” of union between the two planes, the crucifix that presides over the burial.

The earthly part

At the bottom, we find the burial scene. The mourning and seriousness in the countenances stands out above all else. All lips are sealed. Contrast the crowd with which the characters are located, with the order of the upper part. Some faces are not complete. We can distinguish between the characters in the front row and the row of knights in a later shot.

Detail of the earthly part.

The front row characters

• The child. El Greco portrays his son in The BurialHe wore it in a gala dress, a gorilla. It does not seem the place indicated for a child who obviously does not follow the ceremony with the attention of serious adults. For what it seems, the game of the child, in this case, is to repair on the flower of the Dalmatism of San Esteban and signal it to us, although in fact, at best, simply what it does is to show us to the central character of the painting. From his pocket comes a paper reading "Domenico Theotocopuli 1578".
• San Esteban. Hold the Lord of Orgaz on our left. It is the first martyr of the Church. Represented by a young man with diaconal dalmatics in which he has embroidered the scene of his own martyrdom, contrasting with the black robes of the knights.
• The Lord of Orgaz. Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo was born in this city in the middle of the centuryXIII, he was lord of the village of Orgaz, mayor of Toledo and notary of King Don Sancho el Bravo. It is represented with its hardened steel armor appears in the lower middle of the frame. It's gonna be deposited in the tomb. His soul appears in the picture as if it were a sigh that enters into heaven by a cloud channel. It is worth noting the rich cenephs painted on the armor. Here the Greco has been sober.
• San Agustín. Hold the Lord of Orgaz on our right. He is one of the Fathers of the Church. Beloved, in this case, with rich liturgical clothing of bishop embroidered in gold, touched with mitra, also embroidered. In the Catholic iconography it is easy to recognize St. Augustine, as an old man, with his beard, his staff—which on this occasion does not carry—and his cape. The richness of his cape allows us to observe that the painter has portrayed St. Paul, St. James the Major and St. Catherine of Alexandria. It is shown that the face of Saint Augustine corresponds to that of Cardinal Quiroga.
• Cura with flirt. On his back he ignores the burial itself, contemplating — no doubt — how the soul enters into heaven. Nor is the priest who celebrates the burial. It is believed that it was Pedro Ruiz Durón, an econ of the parish.
• Cura that celebrates the responsibility. Figure coated as such, with black rain layer with gold. A portrait of Saint Thomas with a carpenter's squadron, a black skull, is seen in the layer. Without a doubt, he must represent Don Andrés Núñez of Madrid, the parish priest of Santo Tomé who is in charge of the work to Greco.
• Character bearing the processional cross. It seems that it is shown that the face corresponds to the beneficiary of the parish of Sao Tome Rodrigo de la Fuente.

Row of Knights

Each one has its own expression. There are those who follow the funeral ceremony carefully, others who do not, those who look at us and have been like this for almost three hundred years and those who look at the sky, as if wanting to know where the soul is going and even those who are distracted. or, perhaps, asleep before such a sad moment. Among them are clerics, nobles and lawyers. We will recognize the latter by their turtlenecks (among them Antonio de Covarrubias), others are knights of the Order of Santiago (by the red cross embroidered on their black bib).

• The gentleman first on the left. It is believed that it could be the butler of the church, Juan López de la Quadra.
• Two friars talking. One is Franciscan and another Augustinian.
• Another Dominican friar.
• The gentleman looking in front, third on the right, on the left of the crucifix. It is the other letter of the composition, it could be Diego de Covarrubias, the brother of the one mentioned above and who died in 1577, which would explain his mustia ancianidad.
• The gentleman looking in front. There's a gentleman, inside the line, above St Stephen looking in front, without fear, with the white complexion. To the right of the Dominican friar. He's a Greco self-portrait.
• The gentleman of Santiago who shows his two hands. Perhaps one of the most expressive characters in the picture. Represents those who were the descendant of the lord of Orgaz, other authors say that he would be the mayor of Toledo, for being the most important person among the nobles.
• Group of gentlemen. A platoon of young gentlemen's heads, black with gorgueras, with an expression of elegant altivez. A good portrait gallery.
• Knight between Antonio de Covarrubias and priest with flirt. Francis of Pisa, a scholar who wrote about the miracle of the Lord of Orgaz.

Some authors dare to identify among the characters Miguel de Cervantes himself, who lived in Toledo in those years. Or those who think they see Manusso, El Greco's brother, among those portrayed.

The heavenly part

Detail of Glory.

At the top, the necessary seriousness of the moment persists, surrounded by cloud. It corresponds to the imaginative construction of poets and artists. The characteristic forms of El Greco accentuate the beauty of the otherworldly; the cold and at the same time intense and dazzling tone of the color and lighting underline the belonging to another realm.

• Central Angel. In the central part of the picture appears the angel who “takes care” of the soul of the lord of Orgaz, subjecting it to the heavenly presence, between clouds. The soul is represented as a chrysalis, shaped as a child.
• Jesus Christ. In the place with more light of the picture it occupies who is Light of the world. It appears gloriously, dressed in white, as a judge of the living and the dead, as ordering Saint Peter to open the gates of heaven.
• The Virgin. His gesture is to welcome the Lord of Orgaz who comes to heaven.
• St. John the Baptist.
• The blessed of the right side. They look at Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul appears, of violet, James the Greater, St. Thomas, the head of the church and the squadron, of green and yellow. In the row Sto begins. Thomas closes it Philip II (who had not yet died and what he wanted to show as a lack of resentment of the painter by the monarch who had despised him). In this appeal of characters, some authors have wanted to identify Pope Sixtus V, the Archbishop of Toledo, Gaspar de Quiroga or his predecessor, Juan Pardo de Tavera.
• Group tenue. Under the bliss, there is a trio of tenuous figures, formed by a naked man and two women, one of whom is Mary Magdalene, by her jar of perfume, the other woman could be, in good logic, Martha. And the man, following the subject, Lazarus. Others talk about this character like that of St. Sebastian.
• San Pedro. Left, yellow and unequivocal keys in your hand.
• The characters on the left side. The main characters of the Old Testament are added to contemplation: King David, with his harp; Moses, with the tables of the law and Noah, with the ark.
• Angel playing right. Not looking down.
• Souls of children on the left

Pictorial aspects of the painting

Oil on canvas. 4.80 x 3.60 m. Translation of the signature: “Dominico Theotocopuli, 1578” (date of birth of El Greco's son, not the start of the work).

El Greco paints him in full artistic maturity. It has architectural rigor and extraordinary unity despite the two parts into which it is divided. In this work all the elements of the painter's mannerist language are present: elongated figures, vigorous bodies, implausible foreshortenings, bright and acid colours, arbitrary use of light and shadow to mark the distances between the different planes, etc.

When El Greco settled in Toledo, he reached that pictorial maturity that he dragged from his time in Italy and the workshops of the best painters of the time. It is then when El Greco points out new forms where the bodies are distorted, filled with mystical rapture: the postures, the looks...

That El Greco painted a series of contemporary royal figures of his is the first collective portrait in the history of Spanish art. And there are those who have seen a classic composition in the complete composition of the painting: the knights, vertical on the ground, would be the columns of a portico; above them, a triangular pediment that would be formed by the clouds that converge at the vertex of the Father.

The painting is influenced by Italian painting of the Last Judgments, from Titian's Holy Burials of Christ. And also influences of the thoughts of the time on the visionary and idealized construction of the celestial glory from on high.

El Greco includes life-size characters in the painting, paintings within the painting—the martyrdom of Saint Stephen and the saints in the pluvial cape of the bishop and the parish priest.

The canvas did not pose many problems, even in spite of the measurements that it finally had and which were not scarce and which represented a challenge for its author. The size and difficulties that the realization of such a canvas entailed, as well as the brilliant way that El Greco demonstrated when it came to solving them, not to mention the prestige that he possessed at the time.

The author literally adhered to what was stipulated in the contract and that forced him to represent a fact described in detail. Complying with that (earthly part) El Greco represented the heavenly part with more freedom, composing a very personal scene. The upper part does not conform to visible reality and the colors do not respond to those of nature itself, which gives the painting added interest.

There is an evident anachronism and implausibility with the mixture of characters that in reality were more than 200 years apart, not including the saints and characters from the heavenly part.

It is curious how El Greco also paints the Lord of Orgaz in luxurious armor, not humbly wrapped in a shroud or a mendicant's habit, as he really was.

It is also curious, as a consequence of mannerism, that there is no depth in the scene, so we do not observe the ground, nor the background, nor can we almost affirm that the scene is represented outdoors or inside a crypt.

Light exists almost exclusively at the top. In the lower one, the light comes from the garments.

The location of the location

The place occupied by El Greco's painting is its original location. It was conceived for this place and has remained there for four centuries. Before the burial site of the Lord of Orgaz, it was the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, an invocation and image that would have presided over the new structure of the chapel, typical of the XVI, probably designed by the master of the cathedral, Nicolás Vergara el Mozo, as a naked and classic square space topped by a sepulchral dome.

We are at the foot of the temple, although conveniently separated from the current space reserved for liturgical acts, the land belongs to the temple. Until the beginning of the last XX century, this area was separated by a fence and a curtain. Currently, a more consistent separation allows the visit of those who contemplate this work of art without their presence disturbing and disturbing the faithful who participate in the acts that the parish celebrates a few meters away.

Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo was buried in this same place, chosen by himself as the most remote and humble area of the church, as well as the materials of his burial: next to the last and most remote wall of the choir and simply rough stone. A simple chapel was built here until 200 years later, when the parish priest Don Andrés Núñez of Madrid ordered it to be renovated, making it bigger and more beautiful, leaving the tomb in the middle and wanting the miracle to be known to all.

There are those who say they hear Gregorian chants, heavenly light, the aroma of incense —which do not exist— while in this place.

The church

The church of Santo Tomé is mentioned in the XII century, although its current configuration was undertaken at the beginning of the century XIV by the Lord of Orgaz himself, who added the current Christian bell tower to the old Muslim minaret.

Santo Tomé is a church with a Mudejar tower, a copy of that of San Román. It contains glazed ceramic and inlaid Visigothic niche and a kicked cross. Its latest —magnificent— restoration has restored all its splendor to one of the most beautiful towers in Toledo and it took place in the year 2000.

Inside the temple, an altarpiece from the XVI century, Plateresque, and two Baroque ones, a marble baptismal font from the XVI century, a beautiful image of the Virgin in marble from the XIII, three interesting canvases by Tristán, a student of El Greco and two precious sculptures from the school of Alonso Cano.

Conservation

Mainly because it has not been moved from its original location, the painting is in an excellent state of preservation.

In 1672 it had its first cleaning.

In the middle of the s. XIX was somewhat neglected, hanging without any type of support in the lower part, correcting itself shortly after with a suitable framing.

In 1943 it was found that it was still in adequate conservation, although it was observed that the painting yellowed in all its colors due to a not entirely transparent varnish.

Subsequently, there is no mention of the poor state of conservation of the canvas, although some criticisms referring to the lighting and the state of the church of Santo Tomé were conveniently corrected as can now be seen.

In 1975, after a thorough scientific study, a remarkable restoration was undertaken by ICROA. In addition, together with this process, it was dismantled from its original location and arranged in the place that can now be seen. It was then that the room occupied by the visit to the painting of the temple was definitively separated, through a definitive separation, eliminating some curtains that simply differentiated the two rooms and that prevented worship with visits to the work.

Other representations

The work has given rise to numerous paintings derived from or inspired by its subject matter and style.

The Burial of the Lord of Orgaz is a painting attributed to Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli (son of El Greco), commissioned by the Professed House of the Company of Jesus of Toledo, where the part is reproduced bottom of his father's painting. This work has been in the Museo del Prado since 1901.

From the 18th century there is an oil painting by Miguel Jacinto Meléndez (1679-1734), —who was named chamber painter of Felipe V in the year 1712—of this same matter entitled Burial of the Lord of Orgaz, very different from the treatment that the Cretan gave him. The painting, a sketch for a large oil painting that Meléndez was unable to execute due to his death, is kept in the warehouses of the Museo del Prado.

The burial of the lord of Orgaz (c. 1625) by Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli	Burial of the Lord of Orgaz (1734) by Miguel Jacinto Meléndez

Andrés de la Calleja, a student of Miguel Jacinto Meléndez, made the definitive painting of the Burial of the Lord of Orgaz on the previous sketch to fulfill the commitment acquired by Meléndez with the now-defunct church of San Felipe the Real de Madrid, convent of Augustinian friars. This painting has been lost.

In 1977, the Valencian Josep Renau Berenguer made a photomontage of El Greco's painting, which he titled Return to the mother, where he inscribed this legend: «The painter's job is to put a little light in all darkness." It is on deposit at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art.

Pablo Picasso, seduced by The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, showed the influence this painting produced on him when he painted The Burial of Casagemas in 1901, motivated by the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas, this allegorical painting began to show his passage to the "blue period" of his painting. The division of the space in the painting into two parts, earth and sky, body and soul, recalls that of The Burial of the Count of Orgaz by El Greco. Picasso also published a book of poetry in 1970 entitled The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, the prologue of which was written by the poet Rafael Alberti, and the French translation was made by the writer Alejo Carpentier who included a special text.