Santo Ildefonso de Toledo

Ildefonso was a 7th-century archbishop of Toledo, the Spanish city El Greco had adopted as his own after leaving Crete and passing through Italy. Around 1609, in his final years, El Greco painted this standing figure of the saint for a Toledo church, paired with a Saint Peter. Ildefonso wears the full bishop's vestments, the mitre, pallium, staff and open book, and the body beneath them stretches unnaturally tall and thin, the manner El Greco pushed further and further as he aged. This was Counter-Reformation Spain, when the church was promoting its old local saints hard, and an archbishop of Toledo who had written in defence of the Virgin was a natural subject there. The picture later passed to the royal monastery of the Escorial, where it hangs now.