Adorazione del nome di Gesù

El Greco painted this soon after he arrived in Spain in the 1570s, a Greek from Crete by way of Venice and Rome trying to win favour at the court of Philip II. The subject is the name of Jesus, the letters IHS blazing in the sky, worshipped by ranks of the faithful. Kneeling among them, seen from behind in black, is Philip himself, alongside the pope and the doge of Venice. Together those three had formed the Holy League whose fleet smashed the Ottoman navy at Lepanto in 1571, only a few years earlier, and the picture reads as a thanksgiving for that alliance. Off to the right yawns the fiery mouth of a great sea beast, swallowing the damned. Philip kept El Greco's work, though he never warmed to the painter enough to give him the grand royal commissions he wanted.