A adoração dos pastores

El Greco built this around 1596 as one panel in a large altarpiece for a convent college in Madrid, the Colegio de dona Maria de Aragon. That explains its strange proportions. The canvas is more than three and a half metres tall but barely a metre wide, a narrow vertical slot, and El Greco stacks the scene to fit it. The shepherds and the newborn Christ are crowded into the lower half in earthly shadow, and above them the heavens open in cold, flickering light. Early in the 19th century the altarpiece was taken apart. Most of its panels went to the Prado in Madrid. This one travelled further and ended up in Bucharest.