Saint Bernardino of Siena (El Greco) Saint Bernardino of Siena (El Greco) Saint Bernardino of Siena is a 1603 work by El Greco. It is owned by the Museo del Prado but displayed at the El Greco Museum in Toledo, Spain. Showing Bernardino of Siena in a Franciscan habit, holding a cane topped with the monogram IHS and with a book under his left arm, it was commissioned for the university college of San Bernardino in Toledo. He was paid 3,000 reales for it in February 1603 and it was ready the following September. In the left background is a landscape of the city of Toledo,
Art of El Greco "madness". The critic Zacharie Astruc and the scholar Paul Lefort helped to promote a widespread revival of interest in his painting. In the 1890s, Spanish painters then living in Paris adopted him as their guide and mentor. In 1908, art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, who regarded El Greco's style as a response to Spanish mystics, published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works. In this book, El Greco is described as the founder of the Spanish School and as the conveyor of the Spanish soul. Julius Meier-Graefe, a scholar of French Impressionism, travelled in Spain in 1908 and wrote