Saint Jean-Baptiste et saint François d'Assise

El Greco ran a busy workshop in Toledo, and the Barcelona museum that owns this canvas records a notable share of workshop hands in it alongside his own. It was painted around the turn of the 17th century, and it puts two ascetics together, John the Baptist, who lived in the desert on locusts and wild honey, and Francis of Assisi, who handed back his father's money and clothes in a public square. Both were reliable subjects for Toledo's churches and chapels in those years.

How it reached Barcelona is a 20th-century story. Francesc Cambó, a Catalan politician and financier, bought old masters between the wars and moved his collection out of Spain during the Civil War. He died in Buenos Aires in 1947 and left the paintings to the city. This one was accessioned in 1951.