Le Dépouillement du Christ

The full-size original of this scene, painted for Toledo Cathedral around 1577, was El Greco's first big commission in Spain, and it landed him in court. The cathedral chapter refused his price and objected on top of that to the heads he had painted rising above Christ's, which they said was improper. This is a smaller, later version of that composition, made in the 1580s. Christ stands in a brilliant red robe, calm and upward-gazing, pressed in on all sides by a jostling crowd about to strip him before the crucifixion. At the lower left a man in yellow bends to bore the holes for the cross. El Greco kept returning to the design, and reduced versions like this one carried it well beyond Toledo.