Saint Francis with Brother Leo

Saint Francis was one of the subjects El Greco and his workshop in Toledo repeated most often, and this composition, with Francis holding a skull while his companion Brother Leo kneels and prays beside him, survives in more than a dozen versions. That is why this canvas in the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral carries two histories. It hangs there as El Greco's own, catalogued as his work of around 1605. The American scholar Harold Wethey, in his 1962 catalogue of the painter, listed it instead among the pictures of his school, painted by assistants from the master's model. How such repeats were possible is recorded by the painter and writer Francisco Pacheco. Visiting El Greco in 1611, he was shown a room holding small oil versions of everything the old painter had made in his life.