The Fable

El Greco painted this soon after settling in Toledo around 1580, a Greek trained in Venice now making his way in Spain, and it is far from the towering altarpieces he is known for. A boy leans in to blow on a glowing ember, his face lit orange by the flame he is coaxing to life. The motif came from a story in Pliny the Elder, and El Greco had painted the boy on his own once before. Here he adds two companions, a grinning fool and an ape, old emblems of folly and vice. Most readings take the picture as a warning, the flaring ember standing for kindled lust and the two watchers for where it leads. The whole scene survives only by the light of that single coal.