Portrait of Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva (El Greco) Portrait of Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva (El Greco) Portrait of Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva (Spanish: Retrato de Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva ) is a painting by El Greco, from 1600. It is an oil on panel 68 cm x 57 centimeters. It is on display at the El Greco Museum, Toledo in Spain. After his apprenticeship in Venice and Rome, El Greco, turned to the production of portraits, among which is this half-length bust on an undefined background. El Greco did not have to meet in person the theologian Diego de Covarrubias, he died the same year
Art of El Greco "odd". The phrase "sunk in eccentricity", often encountered in such texts, in time became his "madness". With the arrival of Romantic sentiments, El Greco's works were examined anew. To French writer Théophile Gautier, El Greco was the precursor of the European Romantic movement in all its craving for the strange and the extreme. French Romantic writers praised his work for the same "extravagance" and "madness" which had disturbed 18th century commentators. During the operation of the Spanish Museum in Paris, El Greco was admired as the ideal romantic hero and all the romantic stereotypes (the gifted, the misunderstood, the marginal,