T14 ENG

SAN FRANCISCO AND BROTHER LEON
MEDITATING ON DEATH (GRECO)
There are almost forty versions of this matter between the outputs of El Greco’s brush, his workshop and various copies or forgeries, including a hand-engraving by Diego de Astor. This avalanche of images of Saint Francis corresponds to the success in the saint’s message, which expresses with simplicity and emotion the importance of penance and meditation on death, key elements for the counter-reformist spirit prevailing in the Spain of Philip II. Saint Francis always appears kneeling, facing the front, carrying in his hands a skull to which he directs his gaze and thoughts; At his feet we find Brother León in a prayerful attitude. Both figures are in front of a grotto, slightly appreciating the cloudy sky in one corner of the complex. The figures begin their process of elongation and loss of anatomy that will characterize Doménikos’s painting, using a canon from one to nine – the head is the ninth part of the body when the classical canon establishes that it will be the seventh part – while the folds of the thick fabrics «engulf» the anatomy of the figures, eliminating all reference to the bodies of the characters. As Cossío says so well, this is the «most original and traditional image among those painted by El Greco (…) but also the most distant from that troubadour of God, sweet and human, and from the serene frescoes that inaugurated the cycle Giotto consecrated him in Assisi «