Retrato de un clérigo

This small portrait of a clergyman carries the date 1577 but no name. The painter is unknown, though at one time it was catalogued among works linked to El Greco and his circle, which is fitting, since 1577 is the very year El Greco settled in Toledo and began remaking Spanish painting. The sitter is a churchman, sober in dark robes, his face the whole point of the picture. It hangs today in the Lazaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, built from the collection of a single wealthy connoisseur, Jose Lazaro Galdiano, who gathered thousands of such objects and left them to the nation.