Le Couronnement de la Vierge

In November 1597 El Greco signed a contract to decorate a brand-new chapel in Toledo, the Capilla de San Jose, and to paint its altarpieces himself. This Coronation of the Virgin was made for the top of that altar, set directly above a larger picture of Saint Joseph leading the Christ child by the hand. Mary rises into a ring of light and music to be crowned, the figures stretched tall and weightless in the way that had become El Greco's signature in Spain. He was meant to finish by 1598 but ran into 1599. Both paintings are still in the chapel he designed them for, in the frames he planned around them.