El Greco: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz
That’s a pretty odd sounding name. But let’s not hold it against the owner. Though, there is indeed something orgiastic in the happenings above the funeral, and I mean that in the strict formal sense, without any cynical attempts at blasphemy. The artistic confusion taking place in the celestial scene (the painting is located in the Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo) appears like the exact opposite of the appropriately grave conduct below: disorderly, joyfully inspiring, fantastical and fanciful to the point of being bizarre. There is great sense to such distribution of imaginative chaos and order; after all, the artist may have well witnessed analogous processions, and could have had the privilege of depicting from memory, whereas the only guide for the metaphysical scene above the physical one might have been only his fantasy. And as long as he stayed within the catholic doctrinal framework, pure invention was probably encouraged.
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