The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest

El Greco painted it soon after settling in Toledo, and it is the earliest of his great Spanish portraits. Look at the economy: the face and the hand are the only lit areas, modelled softly with warm greys, and everything else is a play of black on black. The ruff and the lace cuff are painted in a few white strokes, the beard in transparent glazes, the sword hilt in dabs of gold. The elongated hand, with its long fingers and separated middle fingers, is a signature of El Greco's and appears in his saints and apostles too. The man's slight asymmetry, one shoulder higher than the other, gives the still figure a quiet tension.

Nobody knows who the sitter is. He has been called Juan de Silva, the Marquis of Montemayor and chief notary of Toledo, and even Cervantes, who lost the use of his left hand in battle; the picture shows only the right. The portrait entered the royal collection in the eighteenth century and came to the Prado in 1819. A cleaning in 1996 removed dark overpaint from the background and revealed the grey wall and the true tones of the face. It hangs in the El Greco rooms with the apostles and saints whose hands make the same gesture.

Did You Know? One popular theory has identified the sitter as Miguel de Cervantes, though the dates do not fit and the man wears a sword that the writer could not have afforded.