Retrato de uma dama

El Greco had only recently arrived in Spain when this small portrait was painted, around 1578, soon after he settled in Toledo. Some scholars think the woman is Jeronima de las Cuevas, the companion who shared his life there and was the mother of his son Jorge Manuel, though he never married her and nothing is signed or documented, so the name stays a guess. What is certain is how little he does and how much he gets. A pale face turns toward us, quiet and direct, wrapped in a soft dark veil that fills most of the panel. He painted very few private portraits like this. The attribution itself is cautious, listed as attributed to El Greco rather than firmly his.