El Greco / View of Mt. Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine

General Text

Although the work is unsigned, it can reliably be attributed to Domenicos Theotocopoulos and assigned to his Venetian period. It is a landscape depicting the three highest peaks of Mt Sinai, with groups of pilgrims making their way towards the Monastery of St Catherine, which dominates the scene. Yet more than being an ordinary landscape, the work is suffused with a transcendental, spiritual quality, created by the use of colours and perspective, plasticity and symbolism. This atmosphere is augmented by the rendition of human figures and landscape details, the diagonal axes of the composition and the intense chiaroscuro.

Details

Click on the highlighted areas to learn more about the work



<<Back