The Coronation of the Virgin

El Greco painted this around 1591, by which point he had settled for good in Toledo, in central Spain. He had trained far away, as an icon painter on the island of Crete, then worked in Venice and Rome before Spain became his home. Here the Virgin is crowned queen of heaven by God the Father and Christ together, the dove of the Holy Spirit above them and a row of saints watching from below. He borrowed the arrangement from a print by the German artist Albrecht Durer, then stretched the figures and lit them in his own way, tall and flickering. It was the first time he took up this subject, one he would return to and paint again.