Which artist painted 'The Opening of the Fifth Seal' in about 1610?
Opening of the Fifth Seal Opening of the Fifth Seal The Opening of the Fifth Seal (or The Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse or The Vision of Saint John) was painted in the last years of El Greco's life for a side-altar of the church of Saint John the Baptist outside the walls of Toledo. Before 1908 El Greco's painting was referred to as Profane Love. Cossio had doubts about the title and suggested the "Opening of the Fifth Seal". The Metropolitan Museum, where the painting is kept, comments: "the picture is unfinished and much damaged and abraded." The very subject is taken from the
Opening of the Fifth Seal which has been preserved, depicted profane love, while the missing upper part depicted divine love. In the 19th century, the painting was owned by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain. Dissatisfied with the poor condition of the work, he had it "restored" around 1880. The restorers actually trimmed it by at least 175 centimetres (68.9 in), leaving John the Evangelist emphatically pointing nowhere. It was this strange quirk in composition that perhaps intrigued modern viewers the most and contributed to the painting's fame in modernist circles. After Cánovas' death in 1897, the painting was sold for 1,000 pesetas