Cristo che si congeda dalla Madre

El Greco had left Crete and Italy and settled in Toledo, the spiritual capital of Counter-Reformation Spain, where patrons wanted images that made you feel a sacred moment rather than simply read it. He painted this in the 1580s, one of a set on the fall and redemption of man. It shows a quiet, wrenching scene the Gospels do not describe, Christ saying goodbye to his mother before he leaves for Jerusalem and the death he knows is waiting. Both of them are outwardly calm. The feeling is carried by the hands, four of them close together at the centre, fingers laced and pointing. Their faces are lit from within, pale against the dark, drawn with the stretched, elongated forms he developed more freely in Spain than he had in Italy.