ABSTRACT
For a month in the summer of 1983 and for three months in the summer of 1985 I was a visiting researcher at the Greek Institute of Venice. On both occasions I examined a large number of Cretan notarial and government documents of the sixteenth century as part of my research on another Cretan personality of the period, the less famous but no less interesting composer and musician Frangiskos Leontaritis (c. 1518-1572), also dubbed ‘il Greco’. Although he was not the initial focus of my interest, as I examined the official documents of the period I came across several references to Manousos Theotokopoulos and his family. I also came across one source, previously unknown to scholarship, concerning Domenikos Theotokopoulos, which I present in this study. I hasten to add that the fact that I did not find other references to El Greco should not be taken to imply that such references do not exist or that they may not be discovered in the future: I do not claim to have carried out an exhaustive study of all the Cretan notarial and government documents of the sixteenth century, which amount to some 500,000 and could hardly be thoroughly examined by a single individual in the space of four months. Nevertheless, the law of probabilities would suggest that I should have come across more references to El Greco – though not as many as to his brother, who was highly active on both the private and social levels – than this single occurrence. If not the product of mere accident, the scarcity of archival references to El Greco’s presence in Crete may be due to periods of absence from Candia prior to 1567; equally, however, it could be due to a deliberate desire on his part to avoid becoming over-involved in the trivialities of daily life. Indeed, as we have already seen, there are plenty of examples of artists of Candia appearing only once in the archival records.1 The content of the document that supplies us with new information on El Greco is roughly the same as that contained in the document concerning the dispute in the painters’ guild of Candia, which we looked at above.2 By order of the Duke of Crete,3 following a petition submitted by Manousos and maestro Domenikos Theotokopoulos through their agents, on 28 September 1563 the comandador Giorgis Abramos visited his colleague (whom we have already encountered) Maneas Balestras, Maneas’s son Konstantinos, and their wives, and conveyed to them an injunction of the Duke requiring them (or any of their kin) to refrain from harassing in any way whatsoever the families and other members of the households
1 See above, p. 24 note 11. 2 See Appendix 1, text 1.
