The story
In 1577 El Greco, a Cretan painter in his mid-thirties, arrived in Toledo with almost no reputation in Spain, and one of the first large commissions he won was here. The convent of Cistercian nuns dedicated to Saint Dominic of Silos, known locally as Santo Domingo el Antiguo, is among the oldest in the city. Its new church was being built by Diego de Castilla, dean of Toledo Cathedral, with money left by María de Silva, a Portuguese lady who had served the Empress Isabella. El Greco designed the three altarpieces and painted nine canvases for them, finished by 1579.
Most of those paintings have since left. Sales began in the 1830s. The great Assumption of the Virgin from the high altar went to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1906, and the Trinity is in the Prado in Madrid.
Three originals remain in the church. On the high altar are Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, and the Resurrection hangs over a side altar. The nuns keep a small museum of their own in the convent. El Greco himself was buried in the crypt here in 1614, until his son moved the remains to another Toledo church a few years later, where they were lost.
