Secrets, Those I discovered About El Greco

Hidden in every painting by the great 16th century Spanish painter El Greco are these geometric grids. Seems that this geometry formed the basis for the proportioning of every one of his canvases.


As far as I have discerned in my investigations he was the only painter to take this extra step. That is to say all European artists were using geometry, for the optical illusions they were creating, but not so for harmonizing the canvas proportions with its visual contents as El Greco was doing. The grids varied widely, Many based on unit squares.


When you compare paintings and grids, 'Laocoon' at first glance may seem the same proportions as 'Christ Healing the Blind'. Nor would you with a straight edge suspect you could derive this triangle grid you see here from grids of squares as I had accomplished in my exploration of the proportions of 'Laocoon'.



What astonishes me and blows my mind is that there is a kind of cosmology to this. El Greco had a vision of reality that entailed this secret making of geometric grids. His religious beliefs encompassed the philosophies and mysticism of the ancient geometers. To my mind, two metaphysical points of views stand out: those of Socrates and Pythagoras. Mysterious to me is why he kept his planar grids, the ones that most certainly are not sheer accidents, coincidences. Not only do they precisely determine the proportions of his canvases, but are marvelously adhered to. We view the imagery in elegant conformity to its elegant patterns / symmetries.