Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist

By about 1600 El Greco had been settled in Toledo for nearly 20 years, running a busy workshop that turned out devotional pictures for Spanish churches and private chapels hungry for exactly this kind of image. Counter-Reformation Spain wanted art that moved people to feeling, and he gave it a style no one else had, figures stretched tall as candle flames, lit from within, set against a sky of bruised cloud. Here Christ hangs with Mary and John close below, the three of them lifted into a dark, restless heaven rather than any earthly hill. He returned to this subject many times, and versions like this one left his shop with assistants finishing passages after his design. The colours are the giveaway of his hand, the acid greens and deep reds laid over grey, glowing faintly as if the paint itself were the source of light.