Le Christ Sauveur

El Greco painted this in his last years, in a Toledo that was losing its footing. The court had settled in Madrid half a century earlier, the crown expelled the Moriscos between 1609 and 1614, and the city's silk trade and its population were both shrinking. He was running a busy workshop with his son Jorge Manuel and died in debt in 1614. The picture belongs to an apostolado, the set of thirteen half-length canvases showing Christ together with the twelve apostles, a commission he took on more than once for Toledan patrons. The set kept in the museum named after him was left largely unfinished. Only three of its pictures were carried through to the end, this Christ, Saint Peter and Saint Paul.