7 El Greco – Still Not Well Known?* D omenikos Teotokopoulos, generally known as El Greco, died 400 years ago, on the 7 th of April 1614, at his home in Toledo. A few days earlier, on the 31 st of March of that year, expecting the approaching end of his life, he ceremonially confessed his faith: “I, Domenikos Teotokopoulos, painter, inhabitant of the city of Toledo, while bedridden, struck by illness whose burden God and Our Lord willed to put upon me, being conscious and compos mentis, I hereby confess that I believe in the mystery of the Holy Trinity and in all that is taught by Our Holy Mother, the Roman Catholic Church, in whose belief I live and shall die as a good, faithful Catholic Christian. I declare that due to the grave state of my illness I can neither make nor order my testament to be put in writing, as it should be done in the service of our God, the Lord, and for the salvation of my soul; therefore, having eased my conscience and conveyed to Jorge Manuel Teotokopoulos, son of mine and doña Jerónima de las Cuevas, who is a person worthy of trust and who is of good conscience, of what I know well, so that he can fulfl my will, I hereby transfer my authority to him...”.1 It is possible to fnd the remark on El Greco’s death in the Liber mortuorum of the parish of Santo Tomé in Toledo, of the years 1601–1614, on the 7 th day of April. It occurred soon afer he received the last holy sacraments. Te painter’s funeral took place in the church of the monastery of the Cistercian nuns, Santo Domingo el Antiguo, and had an extraordinary character. Many Toledan brotherhoods took part in it, among others Santa Caridad and Nuestra Señora de las Angustias, as did the inhabitants of the parish of San- to Tomé in Toledo. On the day of the funeral a solemn Mass was sung in the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. In the same sanctuary a solemn Triduum was also celebrated following the funeral of the artist, including a daily Mass sung for his soul, and in the monastic churches of St. Peter the Martyr and of the Holy Trinity ten Holy Masses were celebrated at the privileged altars. Moreover one hundred Holy Masses were said for the soul of El Greco, of which twenty fve Masses were celebrated in the parish church of Santo DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15633/9788374385114.01 * Trans. by Marta A. Urbańska. 1 J. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco. Estudio y catálogo, I: Fuentes y bibliografía, Madrid 2005, p. 283–286.