This is where it becomes more intriguing.
It has been a long-standing tradition for artists to hide an image of themselves within the painting.
Here is a very old and great example. Sometimes it's a little like Where's Wally. Nothing's new.
El Greco
The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and the child St. John The Baptist.
Painted1580-85
El Greco, Spanish painter, can be seen in green at the back of the picture.
El Greco, born in Crete in 1541 studied in Venice and later settled in Toledo, Spain.
A truly great artist with a style which came out of the materials that he worked with. His paintings usually have very strong light/dark contrasts as can be seen here.
The painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known by his spanish name El Greco (‘The Greek’), is considered by many to be one of the greatest painters in the history of European art. Relatively little, however, is known about his personal history, particularly the first 25 years or so following his birth in 1541 in Crete. He apparently descended from a wealthy and socially prominent family and early in his career received training in the Byzantine style of painting. This style is concerned with religious expression and more specifically the impersonal presentation of church theology in artistic terms.
His Venetian citizenship (Crete was under the control of Venice) allowed El El Greco at age 27 began the study of painting in Italy. He studied with Titian, who was considered one of the greatest painters of the time and El Greco adopted in his work the Venetian features of bright colours, movement, and dramatic light. For a short period of time, El Greco lived in Rome where he was exposed to the work of Michelangelo, Raphael and Parmigiano. These artists practiced the style of Mannerism, which valued the portrayal of the nude in complex and artificial poses. The figures often have elongated limbs, small heads, and stylized facial features, which can be seen in exaggerated form in El Greco’s later works.
For reasons that remain unclear, El Greco left Italy for Spain in the springtime of 1577 . One of the most accepted explanations for the move was Philip II’s project of building the monastery of San Lorenzo at El Escorial, near Madrid. Despite the rejection of his sole painting for the King and the lack of further royal commissions, his work was highly popular. It was praised by the church and frequently copied well into the seventeenth century.
In 1579, El Greco completed the first of two works that were commissioned for the church of Santo Domingo el Antigua in Toledo. The completion of the second work established a local reputation that would sustain El Greco for the rest of his life. At about the same time, the most recognizable feature of El Greco’s style emerged - the elongation of figures.
The “Burial of Count Orgaz” (1586-88; Santo Tomé, Toledo) shown to the left, is universally recognized as El Greco’s masterpiece. The picture commemorates the burial in 1323 of the Lord of Orgaz, a benefactor of the Church of Santo Tomé, when Saints Augustine and Stephen miraculously appeared and placed the deceased in his sepulcher. This vision is fabricated by an astonishing handling of brilliant colour and radiant light. El Greco’s Mannerist method is nowhere more clearly expressed than here, as the frontal plane is where all of the action takes place.
As his career progressed, the elongation of human figures in El Greco's work became more pronounced. His cultural blend of Greek, Italian, and Spanish, created a unique and inimitable style. After El Greco’s death in 1614, there were no followers who adopted his artistic style; his art was too individual and personal to be recreated.
In this section of the painting El Greco appears (second from right) as a witness to the event.