The Pentecost

By 1600 El Greco had spent nearly 25 years in Toledo, and his painting had drifted somewhere no one else was going, figures stretched tall and lit by a cold flame that belongs to no ordinary daylight. This was one of six large canvases for the high altar of a new Augustinian college church in Madrid, assembled that July by men sent from his Toledo workshop. It shows the moment described in the Book of Acts, when tongues of fire settle on the Virgin and the apostles. Look to the right edge, at the bald, bearded man turning to meet your eye. Scholars think that face is El Greco himself, or his close friend Antonio de Covarrubias.