Retrato de Luís Gonzaga

El Greco had not long arrived in Spain when he painted this dark, sober portrait around 1583. The young man in black is Luís de Gonzaga, the son of an Italian nobleman, who spent his teenage years at the Spanish court as a page to the royal family. He was about 15 here. Within a few years he would give up his title and inheritance to become a Jesuit, and at 23 he died in Rome nursing victims of a plague, and the Church later made him a saint. El Greco, a Greek trained in Venice and now settling in Toledo, keeps everything quiet, a plain collar, a pale serious face, a single hand. The picture dropped out of sight for a century in private hands and only returned to public view when a Budapest museum bought it in 2022.