Domēnikos Theotokopoulos’s Arte Moderna alla Greca

Abstract This chapter is focused upon the written legacy of Domēnikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco). His extensive annotations to his copies of Vasari’s and Vitruvius’s major works provide a rich resource for understanding his arts. In particular, they give significant insights into Theotokopoulos’s desire to reclaim the value of the maniera greca that had been cast aside at the very foundation of this Vasarian history. In seeking to build an alternative model for art and its history, Theotokopoulos sought to remember and to reclaim what he identified as a Greek understanding of art and to propose it as an alternative ground for a new art.