Le Baptême du Christ

El Greco made this Baptism in Toledo around 1598, and it was not meant to stand alone. It pairs with an Adoration of the Shepherds that hangs beside it in the same Roman gallery today, and both were likely worked out as ideas for a large altarpiece he was building for a college church in Madrid. You can feel that they are thinking pieces. The figures stretch upward, the bodies lengthen and twist, the colours flare acid and cold at once, as El Greco tests on a small scale the surging vertical rhythm he wanted at full height. Christ kneels in the river while John pours the water and the heavens open above them in a rush of angels, the whole scene tipped up toward the light rather than settled on the ground.