Le Christ portant la croix

A few years before this, around 1577, the painter known as El Greco, the Greek, born on Crete and trained in Venice and Rome, had settled for good in Toledo. Spain in these years was the heartland of the Counter-Reformation, and its clergy and private patrons wanted images that pulled the believer into close, personal devotion. This picture is one answer to that demand. It tells no story. There are no soldiers, no crowd, no road to Calvary, only Christ against a dark sky, embracing the cross rather than buckling under it and turning his eyes upward. El Greco painted the subject many times over for Toledo's faithful. The tears on the face catch what little light there is, an image meant to be met one worshipper at a time.