Opening of the Fifth Seal

Description:

This work is a significant fragment of one of three altarpieces El Greco was commissioned to paint in 1608 for the church of the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist near Toledo. Intended for the side altar, the painting originally measured about 330 x 211 cm and was meant to be part of a larger ensemble including the Baptism and Annunciation, which were completed by El Greco’s son, Jorge Manuel. The Met’s picture remains unfinished as El Greco left it, though it was later cut down and damaged. The elongated, ecstatic figure of Saint John appears in the foreground, with groups of figures on either side, suggesting a scene from the Book of Revelation, illustrating the breaking of the Fifth Seal.

The painting was significant for the hospital, which offered spiritual and physical care, promising salvation to those who died within its walls. Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, the hospital administrator, was a patron of El Greco and emphasised the spiritual ministry of the hospital. The exact subject of the painting remains speculative, with some suggesting it depicts the Resurrection of the Elect. Without the upper portion of the altarpiece, it is challenging to identify the precise event shown.

In realising this hallucinatory scene, El Greco’s imagination returned to Rome and Michelangelo. The pose of one of the nude figures ultimately derives from the sculpture group of the Laocoön. The pose of Saint John recalls Michelangelo’s Haman in one of the pendentives of the Sistine Chapel, although, as Joannides (1995) has remarked, it was Michelangelo’s “spiritual expressiveness” that interested El Greco, rather than the direct transcription of a motif.

Despite its unfinished and truncated state, the picture remains enormously powerful. Its visionary treatment of space and dematerialisation of form have been shown to have played a crucial role in the genesis of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon of 1907. Picasso knew the painting from visits to the Paris studio of the painter Ignacio Zuloaga, who had acquired it in 1905. The painting also loomed large among the German Expressionists and was later sketched by Jackson Pollock, highlighting its enduring impact on modern art.

-Adapted from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s description of this piece.