#85 The Assumption of the Virgin — Coaster

It is four metres tall and it was his first commission in Spain. El Greco had trained in Crete painting icons and then worked in Venice and Rome, and he arrived in Toledo an unknown foreigner with a contract for the high altar of a convent church. He signed it in Greek. The apostles crowd around an empty tomb at the bottom, all of them looking up, and the whole lower half of the painting exists to make you look up too. Art Institute of Chicago.