La Anunciación

By 1603 El Greco was in his sixties and long settled in Toledo, and this round panel comes from what turned into his last great decorative job. The town of Illescas, between Toledo and Madrid, hired him to furnish the whole chapel of its charity hospital, the altarpiece, sculptures, and several paintings of the Virgin, this Annunciation among them. The work ended in a long quarrel over how much it was actually worth, El Greco against the hospital brotherhood. What he delivered belongs to his final manner, the figures stretched tall and lit by a cool, unearthly glow, the space more spiritual than real. He painted it as a tondo, a circle, to sit inside the architecture he had designed for the chapel himself.