L'Adorazione dei pastori

El Greco painted this in Toledo near the end of his life, one of several versions of a scene he clearly cared about. The grandest he made for his own burial chapel, and it now hangs in the Prado. This one, from around 1607, is close kin. There is no daylight in it: the only real light source is the newborn child on the ground, throwing its glow up onto the shepherds and the Virgin and stretching their bodies into the flickering, flame-like figures of his last years. The ox and ass lean in from the shadows behind, barely caught by the same small light.