The Virgin of Charity (El Greco) of the Virgin"). It updates the medieval iconography of the Virgin of Mercy. The central figure of the Virgin opens her cloak, sheltering a group of figures in then-fashionable ruffs, including the painter's son and other members of the Toledan aristocracy. 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
Art of El Greco Art of El Greco El Greco (1541–1614) was a prominent painter, sculptor and architect active during the Spanish Renaissance. He developed into an artist so unique that he belongs to no conventional school. His dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but gained new found appreciation in the 20th century. He is best known for tortuously elongated bodies and chests on the figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western civilization. Of El Greco, Hortensio Félix Paravicino, a seventeenth-century Spanish preacher and poet, "Crete gave him life and the painter's