Der heilige Dominikus im Gebet

El Greco worked in Toledo through the hard, fervent years of the Counter-Reformation, when the Spanish Church wanted images that would pull a viewer straight into private prayer. Saint Dominic, the 13th-century friar who founded the Dominican order and spread the rosary, was a subject he returned to again and again, painting several versions for different patrons. He strips the scene almost bare. The saint kneels alone before a plain wooden cross set on a rock, wrapped in the black and white Dominican habit, his face lifted in appeal. Behind him there is no room, no altar, nothing to fix him in the world, only a low horizon and a sky of torn cloud and cold, broken light.