Porträt eines Dominikaner- (oder Trinitarier-)Mönchs

This friar has never been firmly named. The white tunic under a black cape belongs to both the Trinitarian and the Dominican orders, so even his community is uncertain, and for a time the sitter was identified as the painter-friar Juan Bautista Maino on little real evidence. What is clear is the world he came from, Toledo around 1600, a city thick with religious houses where El Greco found many of his sitters among the clergy. He works almost without colour, building the gaunt face out of ochres and greys against a plain brown ground, so attention falls on the expression rather than the dress. The portrait hangs today in the Prado in Madrid.