São Bento

In 1577 a painter from Crete who had trained in Venice and Rome turned up in Toledo, needing work and a reputation. The commission that gave him both was a set of altarpieces for the convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, and this Saint Benedict was one of its smaller pieces, a lateral figure standing off to the side of a great Assumption. Benedict, who founded Western monasticism in the sixth century, holds his monastic rule and a crozier, his face long and grave in a way that would soon become the artist's signature. El Greco arrived in Spain a foreigner with no patrons here. He would spend the rest of his life in this city and never sign his name in anything but Greek letters.