El Greco’s paintings in the Chapel of San José de Toledo manifested an authenticity between the divine and the human. The altarpieces at the Chapel of Saint Joseph were El Greco’s most important commissions. This commission was an opportunity to demonstrate his considerable ability in executing the religious aspirations and taste of his patrons’. Dr. Martín Ramírez de Zayas decided to provide the family chapel with an ambitious decorative program, without hesitation, he thought of El Greco. The commission was a retable with three altarpieces; two main and two side altars for the chapel. This important commission for El Greco had a single date for its completion, the feast of the Assumption. The building of the chapel and the commission of the…show more content… 3). In any case, it is clear that El Greco was aware of the new trends created around Saint Joseph and its iconography since he describes it as strong, vigorous and attractive in his paintings. The first two works remain even today within the chapel in Toledo, while the last two works are part of the 17th Century Spanish Paintings Collection in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. El Greco had on his style some influences of the Renaissance, as well as his tutor Titian. Scholars recognized that El Greco with his knowledge of sculpture and architecture, managed to project his works in combination with the space that surrounded them, thus achieving a unique style in this type of decorative scheme. El Greco was the Spanish artist who most deeply and faithfully knew how to translate into images a dramatic idea of religious experience. For this essay, I will focus on the iconographic interpretation of El Greco’s Madonna and Child with Saint Martina and Saint Agnes. How El Greco's work configures a personal and intellectualized world where painting, used as an instrument for defining the divine image, is manifested through unlimited freedom in the treatment of form, radically lighting and original chromatic
