Christ Blessing (The Savior of the World)

Christ faces us directly, his right hand raised in blessing, his left resting on a crystalline orb that stands for the world he redeems - the Salvator Mundi, Savior of the World. The blessing gesture, with two fingers extended, follows a formula reaching back to early Christian and Byzantine art, where it was long read as a sign of benediction and of the two natures of Christ, divine and human. El Greco paints him half-length against a dark ground, the rose and blue robes glowing, the long fingers and narrow, sorrowful face unmistakably his own. One of a set of devotional images of Christ and the apostles, it offers the believer a steady object of prayer.