Святой Франциск, принимающий стигматы

Around 1560 the man who painted this was not yet El Greco, just Domenikos Theotokopoulos, a young icon painter on Crete, then a Venetian-ruled island where Byzantine workshops still turned out gold-ground saints by the rule book. This small panel of Francis kneeling as the wounds appear carries something those workshops did not teach, a signature in Greek letters staking a claim to authorship. It is often called his first signed work, the earliest point where we can put a name to the hand. The softer modelling and the Franciscan subject already lean toward the Italian art he would soon cross the sea to study in Venice and Rome, long before Toledo made him famous. Look for the Greek script along the base, the same name he kept signing his whole life, in Naples and later in Spain.