Der gekreuzigte Christus, verehrt von Stiftern

By around 1590 El Greco had been settled in the Spanish city of Toledo for over a decade, painting for its churches and monasteries. This crucifixion was made for a chapel in a monastery of the Hieronymite order there, and one of the men who paid for it had himself put into the picture. Two living Toledo gentlemen kneel at the foot of the cross, in the exact places usually kept for the Virgin Mary and Saint John, gazing up at the dead Christ. One of them was a canon of the monastery. Behind the pale body El Greco piled up a sky of dark, swirling storm clouds lit from within, so the figure seems to hang against moving weather rather than a fixed background.