Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation

El Greco painted this in Toledo around 1605, in a Spain still shaped by the Catholic reforms that followed the Council of Trent. The church wanted images of private prayer and plain penitence, and no saint fit that mood better than Francis of Assisi, the friar who gave up his family's wealth to live in poverty. El Greco returned to him more often than to any other figure. He and his crowded Toledo workshop produced roughly 100 versions of Francis at prayer, this one largely from the master's own hand. The saint kneels in a coarse grey habit in a dim cave, his hands joined and his eyes lowered. Beside him a skull sits on a closed book, the reminder of death that a friar at meditation was meant to keep before his eyes.