Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation

In the Toledo of the 1590s, a generation after the Council of Trent told Catholics to answer the Reformation with penitence and prayer, no holy figure was in more demand than Francis of Assisi, the friar who had given up everything. El Greco painted him again and again. At least a dozen versions of this very composition came out of his workshop, which tells you how steadily Toledo's churches and private patrons wanted it. Here Francis kneels in a rocky hollow in his rough brown habit, a book set nearby for study and a skull in his hands as a plain reminder that death is coming. El Greco lights the figure from no clear source, so that the grey sky and the pale skull seem to glow from within.