The artist we know as El Greco was born in Crete in 1541 and died in Toledo in 1614 after almost forty years working in the city. Dr Colin Bailey will examine the painter’s early years in Venice, where he settled when he was still in his teens; the importance of his short sojourn in Rome; and his productive and lucrative career in Spain. Demand for his highly distinctive pictures was so great that he employed his son and a team of assistants to help supply local religious institutions with images in his idiosyncratic style and to free him up to concentrate increasingly on portraiture.