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Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos (October 1541 – 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco, was born in Crete. He was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, often adding the word Κρής (Krḗs), which means "Cretan". 			 
The primacy of imagination and intuition over the subjective character of creation was a fundamental principle of El Greco's style. El Greco discarded classicist criteria such as measure and proportion. He believed that grace is the supreme quest of art, but the painter achieves grace only by managing to solve the most complex problems with ease. El Greco regarded color as the most important and the most ungovernable element of painting and declared that color had primacy over form. El Greco became best known for his work in Toledo, Spain after 1577 where he completed many of his outstanding paintings such as The Assumption, Pentecost, Christ in the Garden, The Apocalypse, The Apostles, and View of Toledo. His work anticipates nineteenth and twentieth century styles, expressing realism, as opposed to the more classic designs of the early Renaissance. 
An €0,85 commemorative stamp was issued by the Vatican in honor of El Greco's anniversary. Reproduced on the stamp is a small painting of the face of Jesus Christ, part of the Vatican Museum collections, but found in the Apostolic Palace which is not open the public. (It is assumed that the painting of the face of Jesus Christ was the work of El Greco. Research could not identify whether he was responsible for the painting.) The stamp was issued in sheets of ten stamps.

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