The Annunciation

This was on El Greco's easel when he died in Toledo in 1614. It was meant for a side altar in the church of the Tavera Hospital, a huge canvas nearly three metres tall, and he left it unfinished. By then his style had grown so elongated and flame-like that younger painters found it strange. The Virgin rises from her prayer stand, caught mid-movement as the angel arrives, and the paint is laid on in loose, visible strokes, the fabrics and the crowd of angels above almost dissolving into light. In the 19th century the picture was cut in two. The lower scene stayed in Spain, while the choir of angels that once floated at the top now hangs in the National Gallery in Athens.