San Domenico in preghiera

Zacharie Astruc, the critic who had defended Manet in the 1860s, sold this canvas to Degas in September 1896, when El Greco was still a curiosity in France rather than a painter people competed to own. Degas kept it in a collection he showed to almost nobody. It was auctioned with the rest of that collection in Paris in March 1918, in the week the German spring offensive opened and long-range guns began dropping shells on the city, and buyers turned up at the Galerie Georges Petit regardless. From there it went to Copenhagen, then to a dealer in New York, and in 1923 to Boston. Dominic, the Castilian friar who founded the Dominican order, kneels alone on bare ground before a crucifix, and the signature in the lower left is in Greek letters.