Baptism of Christ

In 1608 El Greco, by then about 67 and long settled in Toledo, signed a contract to paint three altarpieces for the Hospital de Tavera, a great charitable hospital on the edge of the city. It was the largest job of his life, and his last. He died in 1614 with the work unfinished, and his son Jorge Manuel completed parts of this Baptism afterward. By this point El Greco had pushed his style about as far as it would go. The bodies stretch and flicker like flames, heaven and earth blur into one restless field of colour, and the paint is handled so freely that later viewers sometimes mistook it for something modern. It hangs today in the church of that same hospital, where it was always meant to stand.