St Dominic in prayer

El Greco painted this in Toledo in the late 1580s, the same years he was at work on The Burial of the Count of Orgaz for the church of Santo Tome. Spanish patrons then wanted saints shown in the act of private prayer, the kind of image the Council of Trent had recommended a generation earlier. Dominic, the Castilian preacher who founded the Dominican order in the 13th century, kneels before a crucifix with nothing around him but rock and sky. El Greco came back to this composition repeatedly and versions left his workshop over many years, which is why the same kneeling figure turns up in Boston, in Spanish churches and in private hands. This one has been in a Madrid collection.