The Adoration of the Shepherds (El Greco, Madrid) The Adoration of the Shepherds (El Greco, Madrid) The Adoration of the Shepherds is a painting of the traditional subject which was painted during the last year of El Greco's life. The painting is a work which the artist made to hang over his own tomb in the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo. El Greco's signature, in Greek, may be seen in the lower left corner. Extreme distortion of body characterizes the "Adoration of the Shepherds" like all the last paintings of El Greco.The infant Christ seems to emit a light which plays off the faces of
El Greco and Paul Lefort helped to promote a widespread revival of interest in his painting. In the 1890s, Spanish painters living in Paris adopted him as their guide and mentor. However, in the popular English-speaking imagination he remained the man who "painted horrors in the Escorial" in the words of Ephraim Chambers' "Cyclopaedia" in 1899. In 1908, Spanish art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works; in this book El Greco was presented as the founder of the Spanish School. The same year Julius Meier-Graefe, a scholar of French Impressionism, traveled in Spain, expecting to