Mater dolorosa

El Greco had settled in the Spanish city of Toledo, a stronghold of the Counter-Reformation, where the Church wanted images that would move ordinary people to prayer. A Mater Dolorosa, the Mother of Sorrows, was made for exactly that. It shows the Virgin alone and half length, grieving over the coming death of her son, close enough to feel like a private companion in prayer. El Greco gives her a young, narrow face with large dark eyes and stretches the figure in the elongated way that is his signature, so that the grief seems to lengthen her whole body. Devotional images like this sold well enough that his busy Toledo workshop turned out several of them, and versions of the composition survive today in more than one collection.