The Assumption of the Virgin

When El Greco painted this, he had just arrived in Toledo with everything to prove. He was a Greek from Crete who had trained in Venice and Rome, and then, around 1577, gambled on moving to Spain, where he was almost unknown. This towering Assumption, the Virgin swept up to heaven on a crescent moon while the apostles crowd around her empty tomb below, was the centrepiece of his very first Spanish commission, an altarpiece for the convent church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. It was by far the largest canvas he had ever attempted. The gamble paid off, and Toledo became his home for the rest of his life. The painting stayed in Spain for centuries, until the American artist Mary Cassatt helped arrange its sale in 1904, which is how it eventually reached Chicago.