In El Grecos Concert of Angels. This strange yet "modern" painting is the heavenly section of an "Annunciation", today in the collections of a Madrid bank. The concert of angels upper portion is in Athens Greece at the National museum. It is one of the very last works painted by Greco shortly before he died in Toledo in 1614. Left unfinished, the painting teaches us a lot about the artist's technique. One notices that these angels have no wings. They are the members of a heavenly orchestra, playing period musical instruments, of the sort that the artist must have seen while living in Venice. The instruments are a spinet (a precursor of the piano), a harp, a flute and a viola da gamba. The second angel is holding the score and directing as well as singing. Note the accuracy in capturing the musicians' gestures. The figures have been rendered in swift brushwork, and the angels' robes sway with movement, as if they were swirling tongues of fire. Note also the iridescent palette employed by the painter: the orange in red and green, the gold in blue. Changing even as the light falls on them, such colors were called metanthounta by ancient Greeks. The painting is vibrant with inner life. The Concert may be seen as a precursor of Expressionism.

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In my version the faces have obviously been changed and referenced from my Greek family members. As a painter knows that in painting faces of those you know or commissioned portraiture work there has to be a discipline in creating a likeness and the desire for personal expression or even exaggeration has to be handled or executed carefully if at all. I have taken slight steps in this in the faces. The anonymous angel in the center is an example of not being concerned with those restrictions. The family members are, my wife to the right in dressed in blue with the cello, my two sister in law’s on the left and my mother in law playing the harp. The harp of hair is one of the additions and changes of many in my work. More can be found upon closer examination. In the photo comparison above it can be noted tha they differ temperature and or color from one another. They are digital photo reproductions fo the riginal work and many variables come into play with presenting that format. The two paintings in life are more somewhat the same. I have seen them both and still do. The concert plays on.

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Keith Brookside