A Sagrada Família

By the mid-1580s El Greco had left Italy for good and settled in Toledo, the old Spanish cathedral city where he would spend the rest of his life. Around 1586 he began returning, again and again, to a warm domestic subject: the Holy Family gathered close together. This is one of those versions. Mary holds the Christ child on her lap, her mother Saint Anne leans in from the left, and Joseph and the infant John the Baptist stand to the right, all pressed into a tight, tender group. There are none of the storm clouds or stretched, weightless bodies of his big altarpieces. The faces are gentle and near, the mood almost private. He would paint the same family, rearranged, several more times over the following years.