The story
In Monforte de Lemos, a town in inland Galicia, stands a long granite building that people call the Escorial of Galicia. It is primarily a school. Cardinal Rodrigo de Castro, archbishop of Seville and a member of the family of the Counts of Lemos, founded it as a Jesuit college, and work began in 1593 to plans by the Jesuit architect Andrés Ruiz and the Milan-born Vermondo Resta. The Jesuits were expelled in 1767, the Piarist fathers took over in 1873, and children still have lessons here.
What brings art lovers is the old sacristy, now a small picture gallery with two paintings by El Greco. The Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Lawrence dates from the late 1570s, around the time he arrived in Spain. Saint Francis with Brother Leo, a later work, shows the two friars meditating on death. Beside them hang five panels of saints linked to the Florentine painter Andrea del Sarto, and the cardinal's own glove is on display among his belongings.
