The Vision of Saint John  1614

by El Greco

The painting is a fragment from a large altarpiece commissioned for the church of the hospital of Saint John the Baptist in Toledo. It depicts a passage in the Bible, Revelation (6:9-11) describing the opening of the Fifth Seal at the end of time, and the distribution of white robes to "those who had been slain for the work of God and for the witness they had borne." The m...
Size: 
87 1/2 x 76 in. (222.3 x 193 cm)
Medium: 
Oil on canvas
Credit: 
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art