The Virgin of Charity (El Greco) The Virgin of Charity (El Greco) The Virgin of Charity (Spanish - "La Virgen de la Caridad") is a 1597-1603 painting by El Greco. It was part of a commission to paint five works for the high altarpiece of the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad in the Spanish town of Illescas, Toledo, gained through the mediation of his son Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli. It still hangs in the Santuario. Three of the other works still hang in the church ("Coronation of the Virgin", "Nativity" and "Annunciation"), whilst the fifth is in the National Museum of Art of Romania ("Marriage
Art of El Greco "odd". The phrase "sunk in eccentricity", often encountered in such texts, in time became his "madness". With the arrival of Romantic sentiments, El Greco's works were examined anew. To French writer Théophile Gautier, El Greco was the precursor of the European Romantic movement in all its craving for the strange and the extreme. French Romantic writers praised his work for the same "extravagance" and "madness" which had disturbed 18th century commentators. During the operation of the Spanish Museum in Paris, El Greco was admired as the ideal romantic hero and all the romantic stereotypes (the gifted, the misunderstood, the marginal,