Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
Outside the sequence, on purpose
Christ as Saviour is not an episode. It is the type in which Christ is shown frontally, blessing, often with a globe: an image of what he is rather than a report of something he did. The convention is old and stable, and it is deliberately without setting, so that nothing anchors it to a day in the narrative.
Its place relative to the cycle
None, and that is what distinguishes it from every narrative panel in this catalogue. A viewer moving through a life of Christ in order passes from Nativity to Passion to Resurrection; an image of this kind interrupts that movement with something the sequence cannot contain. Series of apostles and saviour figures were often painted as sets, in which case the single panel is one unit of a group rather than one moment of a story — though this record says nothing about a set, and none is assumed.
The catalogue entry
The record names El Greco, dates the work to 1612, and places it in the El Greco Museum, Toledo, Spain. It measures 97 x 77 cm, upright. The style is entered as Mannerism Late Renaissance and the artist as Spanish; the subject fields class it as a single male figure and under religion. The measured palette reads as ochre. Seventeen works in this catalogue are entered under this artist, of which this is among the latest by recorded date.
Sources
1 references- Greco, Nicolás — Getty ULAN
Spanish artist, active late 16th - early 17th century
