Premium
Greeks abroad: (as)signing artistic identity in early modern E urope
Author(s) -
Casper Andrew R.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
renaissance studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1477-4658
pISSN - 0269-1213
DOI - 10.1111/rest.12014
Subject(s) - homeland , identity (music) , multiculturalism , painting , style (visual arts) , meaning (existential) , politics , greeks , art , key (lock) , aesthetics , sociology , history , media studies , literature , art history , classics , political science , law , philosophy , computer science , computer security , epistemology , pedagogy
The language and wording used in the signatures of paintings by D omenikos T heotokopoulos (‘ E l G reco’) reveal a self‐conscious construction of cultural identity in the early modern era. This paper argues that E l G reco, an artist born in C rete who later worked in V enice and R ome for nearly ten years, and then for the rest of his career in T oledo, S pain, used his signature as a means to broadcast his artistic brand as a G reek other during his decades‐long estrangement from his homeland. Regardless of where he worked or of the style that his paintings adopted, he always and without exception drafted his signatures in G reek, while at key moments of his career, especially during his frequent transitions from one city to the next, he appended his name with a declarative ‘ C retan’ in order to make it unmistakable that the viewer is looking at the work of a foreigner. In so doing, E l G reco's use of language – a topic never taken into consideration with regards to the meaning of its deployment in his signatures – reveals much about the politics of cultural identity in the multicultural societies in which he worked.