Seek those things that are above

Something extraordinary and rare is happening in London: we have an incomparable El Greco exhibition in our midst. It doesn’t really matter that it’s being staged in the rebarbative dungeon-like rooms of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury wing basement, for even those inconsiderate walls are alive with the strange music of El Greco’s vision. For a few months the dungeon becomes a sacred crypt, filled with the fluttering spirits of El Greco’s agonies, ecstasies and visitations, with a wild chant that cannot be stilled. Against such strong magic we are powerless: along with El Greco’s saints and sinners our gaze drifts inevitably heavenwards.

The artist John Craxton has spent more than 50 years in close study of El Greco, and has lived much in Crete, the island from which El Greco himself hailed. He believes that the artist’s upbringing in Crete was crucial to his development as a painter, that he was very much a Cretan painter, rather than a Greek Byzantine one.