The Burial of the Count of Orgaz
1586 · Church of Santo Tome, Toledo, Ohio
Two saints lower a nobleman into his grave while his soul slips through a tear in the sky. The mourners are El Greco's own neighbors.
★ 8.7
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
View of Toledo
1610 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
El Greco moved the cathedral tower off its real site for the sake of the composition and lit the whole city with a green storm.
★ 8.4
The Trinity
1579 · El Prado, Madrid
God the Father holds his dead son across his knees, the body marble-pale against blue and acid yellow. El Greco's first Spanish commission.
★ 6.5
Agony in the Garden (El Greco)
1605 · Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
The sleeping apostles are sealed inside a bubble of rock while soldiers wind toward Christ in the distance, all lit by cold moonlight.
★ 6.3
Christ Carrying the Cross (El Greco)
1580 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
El Greco stripped out the crowd and the road and left the face and the embraced wood, a formula he repeated many times for Toledo.
★ 6.1
Purification of the Temple
1600 · The Frick Collection, New York City
El Greco split the canvas down the middle: the traders tumbling out on the left, the disciples watching calmly on the right.
★ 5.7
St. Jerome
1600 · The Frick Collection, New York City
Not the desert hermit but the Doctor of the Church, in cardinal's red with one long hand resting on his own translation of the Bible.
★ 5.4
Christ Blessing (The Savior of the World)
1600 · National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
Two fingers raised in a gesture reaching back to Byzantium, one hand on a crystal orb, the face long and sorrowful and unmistakably his.
★ 5.2