Antonio de Covarrubias

El Greco (1541-1614)

• CE00015
• c. 1600
• Oil on canvas

An excellent example of El Greco's contribution to the Spanish history of portraiture, establishing himself as the introducer in our country of the psychological portrait, that is, of the portrait that shows something as subtle and difficult to capture as the inner life of people.

In this case the portrayed is Antonio de Covarrubias and Leiva, close friend of the prestigious painter and a well-known jurist himself. Upon the death of Don Diego de Castilla in 1584, he helped El Greco enter the ecclesiastical and intellectual circles of Toledo. Domenico praised him in a note to Vitruvius:

Salto de línea "that Antonio de Covarrubias (one would think a miracle of nature) in which not only the eloquence and elegance of Cicerion and a perfect knowledge of the Greek language are housed, but also an infinite kindness and patience and this makes him shine in such a way that disturbs the view and prevents me from continuing ".

Salto de línea The painter represented him as a man of advanced age and with a certain movement characteristic of his vitality or, perhaps, of his inner restlessness, reflection of the deafness that he suffered during his life. For Leticia Ruiz "it is a work that shows the great entity of the portraits made by El Greco, the sobriety in the presentation, where he recovers both the Venetian teachings and the sense of the Spanish court portrait".Salto de línea

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