Testa di Cristo

This is a small, quiet picture from El Greco's first years in Spain, painted around 1580 not long after he settled in Toledo. It was almost certainly made for private prayer. Devout households in Catholic Spain often kept a pair of images to pray before, and a head of Christ like this one would have hung beside a matching Mater Dolorosa, the sorrowing Virgin, the two faces answering each other. El Greco painted the head of Christ more than once, treating it almost as an exercise in rendering a face that was at once human and divine. For a long time some doubted this version, but a recent cleaning and study led by the Prado concluded it is largely by his own hand.