The Disrobing of Christ. Contini Bonacossi Collection

When El Greco reached Toledo in 1577, this was the commission that introduced him to Spain. The cathedral chapter hired him to paint the disrobing of Christ for the sacristy, and the result caused a fight almost at once. He asked 950 ducats and, after arbitration, was paid 350. The clergy also objected to what he had put in the frame: the three Marys crowded into the lower left, and a press of tormentors whose heads rise above Christ's own. He was told to remove them. He never did. The painting still shows Christ hemmed in by that jostling crowd, calm in a robe of deep red, while at the lower right a man leans over the cross and bores the hole for the nails. The Toledo picture stayed on the cathedral altar, and it was copied and reduced so often that more than 17 versions survive. This is one of the smaller ones El Greco made himself.