San Giuseppe con il Bambino Gesù

By the 1590s St Joseph was having a moment in Spain. Teresa of Avila, the Carmelite reformer who died in 1582, had made him her favourite intercessor, and devotion to him was spreading fast. When a Toledo donor named Martin Ramirez, a follower of Teresa, endowed a private chapel in the cathedral, he wanted Joseph at its centre, not as the quiet old carpenter of tradition but as a towering guardian. El Greco gives him a young Christ pressed against his side, the two of them striding forward while angels drop a garland from above. The picture has never left the chapel it was painted for. Look at the small city laid out below their feet: that is Toledo itself, the painter's adopted home.