Adoration of the Shepherds

An unusually tall canvas, more than three and a half metres high, where shepherds kneel on earth below and angels crowd the sky above. El Greco painted it for a Madrid college altar, and it is the one piece of that lost altarpiece that travelled all the way to Romania.

The story behind the painting

El Greco painted this Adoration of the Shepherds in 1596 as part of a commission now known as the Doña María de Aragón Altarpiece, made for the Colegio de Doña María de Aragón in Madrid, in a building that today houses the Palacio del Senado. Doña María de Aragón, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Ana de Austria, negotiated the work in 1596 but died before the final payment. El Greco had promised delivery by Easter 1599; the papers show it was shipped from Toledo to Madrid only in 1600, and payment for the high altar was made in September of that year.

What to look for

The canvas measures about 364 by 137 cm, a narrow, towering format shared by the other paintings of the group. Like El Greco's earlier designs of the same subject, it is split into two worlds: the earthly scene of the shepherds and the Christ Child in the lower half, and the heavenly world of angels in the upper half. Bodies are stretched and distorted, as in many of his altarpieces. Look at the paper in the lower left corner: El Greco signed it there, in Greek.

Meaning and intent

The original commission brought together six paintings and six sculptures that gave visual form to one idea, the Incarnation of the Son of God. That theme matched the title of the chapel and was the subject of many theological debates in Spain at the time. Because such altarpieces were sometimes hung at floor level and sometimes high above the viewer, it is not known whether El Greco planned the distortions for a particular viewing height. Today almost nothing is known about his design for the high altar or who commissioned the individual paintings.

Legacy

The altarpiece stayed intact until 1808 and was taken apart during the French occupation of Spain under Joseph Bonaparte; its sculptures are lost and five paintings went to the Prado. This one, perhaps the most popular subject, followed its own road. In 1836 Baron Taylor bought it for King Louis Philippe, then it passed to the brothers Émile and Isaac Péreire in Paris, to Félix Bamberg, consul of Messina, and in 1879 to the Royal Palace of Sinaia. It is now in the National Museum of Art of Romania, and a smaller copy from 1598 is in Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica.