Saint Francis receiving stigmata

El Greco had not been long in Spain when he began painting Saint Francis. Born on Crete and trained in Venice and Rome, he settled in Toledo around 1577 and found a country in the grip of the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church answered the Protestant challenge by pressing the value of penance and private prayer. Saint Francis, the medieval friar who gave up everything, was the ideal image for that mood, and he became El Greco's most repeated subject; he and his workshop turned out version after version for Spanish patrons. This one, from around 1580, shows the moment on Mount La Verna in 1224 when Francis received the stigmata, the wounds of the crucified Christ, appearing on his own body during a vision. El Greco strips the scene down to the kneeling friar in his rough brown habit, his face lifted, the light falling cold and silvery across the drapery.