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,
Posthumous fame of El Greco such as Charles Blanc and Louis Viardot, whose hostile comments on El Greco were a powerful commonplace. Therefore, Lefort wrote an article recommending the repossession of El Greco by the historians. In 1908, art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works. According to Foundoulaki, "in this book El Greco is not established as the founder of the Spanish School, but as the conveyor of Spanish soul par excellence". The same year Julius Meier-Graefe, a scholar of French Impressionism, travelled in Spain and recorded his experiences in "The Spanische Reise", the first book which established