“In El Escorial everyone calls it The Dream of Philip II. Unlike the Bosch paintings, it hangs in the original location chosen for it by Philip the Prudent. But don’t judge it on the basis of that name. You and I have already discussed what happens with the titles of these paintings—hardly any of them are chosen by the original artists!”

“I like paintings with many names,” I said. Thanks to my time with Fovel, I’d learned that the more names a painting had, the more mysteries it was likely to hold.

“Well, this one takes the cake,” said Fovel. “It’s called everything from The Adoration of the Name of Jesus, because in the top half of the painting you can see the anagram IHS, to An Allegory of the Holy League, because the bottom half includes portraits of Philip’s principal allies in the fight against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto: Pope Pius V, the Doge of Venice, and John of Austria. However, I don’t find any of these titles quite adequate. My own favorite, which you’ll understand right away, is the one the monks of El Escorial gave to the painting upon first seeing it—El Greco’s Glory.”

“You mean like Titian’s?”

He smiled broadly. “Exactly. And it’s important that you understand why.”

Fovel then proceeded to lay out a fascinating story. Even though the painting wasn’t signed and there was no document or contract from the time that could verify when it was painted, many art experts believed that it was done right after El Greco arrived in Madrid in 1577. In fact, according to the Master, it was the first painting he did in Spain.

Doménikos had had a mixed reception in Italy, where he’d immersed himself in the work of the Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto, and Correggio, and had also been influenced by the later work of the great Michelangelo. But upon reaching his thirtieth year, he began to set his sights higher.

“It was at this point in his life,” Fovel declared theatrically, “that Fate decided to smile upon him.”

While no one can say how it happened, Fovel seemed sure that while in Rome, El Greco had crossed paths with a rather dejected Benito Arias Montano who, as if placed there by Fate, became El Greco’s mentor. The man who was to become El Escorial’s librarian had come to the Eternal City to try to convince the papal authorities to approve the Biblia Regia project. Montano was already a distinguished member of Familia Caritatis, and winning the Vatican’s approval was as vital to him as it was to his fellow initiates, who were involved with the printer Christophe Plantin. Getting it would advance their aim of a unio Cristiana, the fusion of all churches, which would also put them closer to Hendrik Niclaes’s ultimate secret aim of presenting himself as the Messiah of the new humanity.

But something went wrong. In Spain, professors at the University of Salamanca were suspicious of some of the translations and of the fact that Montano cited the Talmud as a respectable source. These suspicions reached the Holy See, and the pope ultimately frustrated the plan.

It was then that Montano and El Greco met, most likely through the circle they both frequented that existed around Doménikos’s patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. El Greco had befriended the Cardinal’s librarian, Fulvio Orsini, and he was probably the one who introduced him to Montano. Things proceeded from there. Seeing El Greco’s work, the Spaniard persuaded him to come to Madrid to work on the ambitious decoration of the monastery at El Escorial. This was during Philip II’s obsession with the artistic side of his great project, and they needed all the help they could get. Sometime between late 1576 and early 1577, newly arrived in Spain and keen to win the king’s favor, El Greco painted The Glory.

The Master continued his lesson. “It’s not hard to imagine Doménikos wandering through the monastery taking in all of the king’s favorite paintings, with no one to talk to in Greek save for Montano. There were a few Bosch works in the royal chambers, as well as Brueghel’s Triumph of Death, and I’m sure that as a notable Familist, Montano would have shown El Greco how to interpret it and asked him to paint a version of his own.”

“So that’s how El Greco came to be part of the court?” I asked.

“Yes, son; more or less. The Glory of El Greco certainly didn’t go unnoticed. But according to Brother Sigüenza, the monastery’s historian, the king didn’t like it. Or to be more precise, it ‘failed to please his Majesty.’ Even though it made use of some of his Majesty’s most beloved symbols: a great apparition directly above the king’s head, implying heavenly witness; a clear division of the just from the sinners; even a great, one-eyed monster that devours the souls of the sinful, all very much in the style of the Flemish painters.”

“And not just them,” I interjected.

Fovel raised one eyebrow. “What do you mean?” he asked.

There was moment of discomfort as I tried to gauge the wisdom of introducing something pretty far outside Fovel’s syllabus. Finally, I decided to risk it.

“I’m referring to the ancient Egyptians, Doctor.”

His face took on a puzzled expression.

“I’m very interested in ancient Egypt and, as it happens I’m also quite familiar with the painting you mean; it’s one of El Greco’s most famous. I think there’s a parallel here. The idea of a monster devouring sinners behind the king’s back appears in the pharaohs’ religious texts several times going back at least three thousand years!”

Fovel rewarded me with an attentive look. He didn’t contradict or hush me; on the contrary, he looked interested in what I was saying. After all those times being his student and learning from him, seeing his look of surprise felt to me like a small triumph. Since I had never mentioned it, he couldn’t have known that I had this passionate interest in the ancient culture of the pyramids.¹

I grinned at him. “Don’t make that face, Doctor! In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which is over thirty-five hundred years old, there’s a scene with a monster just like El Greco’s. They would use scrolls of parchment that they placed underneath the head of the cadaver as a kind of map to the hereafter. No two of these were exactly the same, and yet—guess what? One scene that was repeated without fail in all of these texts for the dead was that of the diabolical monster!”

Fovel stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, El Greco’s monster may not have its origins in the Bible . . .”

“It doesn’t. But there’s another connection with our sixteenth-century painting that comes to mind. El Greco’s painting deals with the idea of a final judgment of the dead. The Egyptians ‘invented’ the whole notion of a tribunal of souls long before the Jews or Christian ever began to mention it. Their pictures place the monster in the middle of the trials that the pharaohs faced on their journey from the earthly to the eternal life. It would serve as witness while Anubis, the god with the head of a jackal, would place the soul of the pharaoh on a scale to determine whether or not it held sin. If it did, Ammit, the devourer of souls, would open her enormous gullet wide and gobble up the pharaoh, denying him eternal life. There was nothing the Egyptians feared more than Ammit.”

Fovel seemed captivated by my lesson, and pressed me for details.

“How is it that between the Egyptians and El Greco no one has painted this Ammit?” he asked.

“Actually that’s not entirely true,” I replied. “The builders of the great Gothic cathedrals included the weighing-of-the-soul scene in many of their façades. They would put the saved souls on one side of the scale, and the condemned souls on the other. In fact, if you recall El Greco’s Glory, the blessed are to the left of the monster, entering a sort of divine doorway. So the only real difference between the Egyptians and the builders of the cathedrals is that the builders substituted an angel for Anubis.”

Fovel smiled. “Excellent! I’m delighted that you’re able to connect two disparate visual elements and wonder about their origins.”

“You know, Doctor, every time I come across these traces of Egyptian icons in western culture, I wonder how these transcendental symbols get transmitted from civilization to civilization, from religion to religion, across thousands of years!”

“That is indeed a great mystery,” agreed Fovel, without taking his eyes off The Annunciation, which we were now facing. “That drive to trace the various sources of art reminds me of discussions about which traditions could be the sources for both the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Familists. I participated in a number of them, and came to my own conclusions.”

“Were you able to find a common source for both of those heretical movements?”

“Think about the Familia Caritatis, which had such an impact on Montano and, then later, El Greco,” said Fovel, tapping his temple with his forefinger. “Its members felt part of a minority faith that believed it had surpassed all other religions. In contrast to Christians or Jews, for example, they preached a direct relationship to God. They believed that the Creator dwells in each of us, so that there is no need to appeal to the divine to invoke his presence. What’s interesting is that we find all that two hundred years earlier, in the Cathar faith, and even before that among the Gnostics, in the earliest days of Christianity.

“We now know that the Familists that Brueghel associated with were one of the last glimmers of Catharism in history.² In fact, the Familists called themselves the Family of Love, since the Cathars had previously named themselves the Church of Love, in opposition to Rome. Notice that, in Spanish, amor—‘love’—is Roma backward.”

I jumped in. “So the Cathars are the source? The most persecuted heretics of the entire Middle Ages?”

“The Good Men, yes, the Bons Hommes,” he replied. “All massacred in the South of France in 1244 by troops loyal to the pope. Their ideas and beliefs had spread throughout much of Europe: that nature was the product of dark forces, that the corporeal, material world was no more than a prison for the soul. They also believed that there was not just one creator—God—but also an evil Demiurge, arguing that a tangible universe so fragile and corrupt could not be the product of one single, perfect, and supreme maker. They had many followers. They also agitated tirelessly for the translation of the Bible from Latin into the vernacular languages, a mission that would not bear fruit until the first polyglot Bibles of Cardinal Cisneros and Montano.

“But, Javier, what earned them the worst persecution ever seen of Christians by Christians—and which helped launch the infamous Inquisition with all of its terrible practices—was their belief that we all carry within us in our mortal bodies a part of the divine spirit which allows us to communicate with God. Directly. Without the need for intermediaries. Needless to say, that meant the church. It is this that inspires all those paintings of mystics, kings, and biblical characters who behold in the distance the intangible, pure world. The one created by the good God.”

Dubiously, I asked, “Is this simply your opinion, Doctor, or have you researched it?”

Fovel smiled. “I’ve studied this, Javier, of course. Sadly, these issues are not widely known about, as you might imagine. There aren’t many universities where you can study these things. I remember one particular essay that was quite controversial by Lynda Harris, a professor of art at London University. She proposed the idea that the Adamites who commissioned The Garden of Earthly Delights were descended from Cathar survivors.³ According to her, the art from the time before the Cathar massacre in 1244 provided their one hope for escaping the darkness of the material world they felt trapped in. For them, meditating before the right painting would remind them of that part of reality that couldn’t be touched or measured. And that we all possess a spiritual dimension that we can cultivate in order to attain what the Greeks called Theoretikos: the ability to see the transcendent world.”

“Do you think El Greco believed in this?” I asked him, glancing at the paintings all around us.

“Whether he did or didn’t is itself the subject of some sharp debate among specialists. What seems indisputable is that his work overall radiates the sort of supernatural quality much favored by the Familists. Some of his most important biographers, like Paul Lefort or Manuel Cossío, both quite oblivious to Familist doctrine, have no trouble accepting that El Greco sought a mystical union with God through his art. I myself am convinced that some of these masterpieces of his come directly from visions he had.”

“So you’re saying El Greco was a mystic.”

Fovel smiled ironically. “He’s really the only one who could tell you that, Javier. But it’s only fair to warn you that the true mystic keeps his visions to himself. So if he was, he took care to keep it quiet. However, we do know without doubt that he used the work of other mediums and visionaries to help him create his greatest works.”

“Like who, Doctor?” I asked.

“Would you like a name?” he asked, archly.

“Of course!”

“Very well. How about Alonso de Orozco?”

I shrugged. For a moment I thought Fovel was going to make one of his great leaps, connecting El Greco with St. Teresa of Ávila, for example.

“You don’t know who he was?”

I shook my head regretfully.

“Don’t worry,” he said, glossing over my ignorance, “hardly anyone remembers him nowadays. But believe me, he was one of the most popular religious figures of the sixteenth century. An Augustinian as well. He was so popular that when he died, he was proposed as a possible patron saint of Madrid, to replace St. Isidore.”

“Was he a saint?”

“Beatified,”⁴ Fovel corrected me. “He was preacher to both Charles V and Philip II, and the confessor and friend of Gaspar de Quiroga, the all-powerful archbishop of Toledo.”

“How did he know El Greco?” I asked.

“Well, he was responsible for commissioning a number of pieces from El Greco for the altarpiece of the Seminary of the Incarnation in Madrid.”

“Where’s that located?”

“It was originally built near the Royal Palace, but the French destroyed it during the Peninsular War, El Greco’s pieces were scattered, and we lost the original plan for their positions on the altar. They built the senate building on the site afterward. But the point is that, when Alonso de Orozco commissioned the altarpiece work from El Greco, he was already well known around Madrid for his ecstasies and supernatural visions.”

“Let me guess—another prophet!”

“Well, more of a theologian, though his life seemed to lend itself to the mystical. According to Orozco, while his mother was pregnant with him, a voice—‘very soft, like a woman’s voice’⁵—spoke to her in her dreams and told her not only that she would have a boy, but also that she should name him Alonso.

“Years later, when he was already prior of the Augustinian monastery in Seville, a similar thing happened to him. The Virgin appeared to him in the middle of a dream, and gave him an explicit order. ‘Write!’ she said. So of course Orozco obeyed, and wrote dutifully to the end of his days, publishing thirty-five books and establishing friendships with such notable writers of the day as Lope de Vega and Quevedo, thereby creating that narrowest of paths between faith and reason.”

“What do you mean, Doctor?”

“Simply that he was a respected man as well as an intellectual, and word quickly spread that his sermons performed miracles, and could cure illness and even raise the dead. However, as far as we know, there were only two occasions when he showed any gift for clairvoyance. The first was on the night that the invincible Armada was sunk in the English Channel, during which Blessed Alonso passed the time praying and sighing, ‘Oh, Lord! That Channel!’ The second event occurred some time before his death, when he predicted that he would surrender his soul to God on September 19, 1591, at midday, which in fact he did.”

“Knowing that, it doesn’t surprise me that El Greco would want to paint his visions.” I noted.

“Actually, Javier, it was María of Aragon, who was then a lady-in-waiting to Philip II’s last wife, who persuaded El Greco to do the paintings, not Orozco. She was an enthusiastic supporter of Orozco, who died five years before the painter began his work. Orozco and María had founded the seminary together, but the plan for the work was based on his visions.”

“Does that mean that she was the one who directed El Greco?”

“Exactly. Two of the paintings from that lost altarpiece are here in this gallery, The Annunciation and The Crucifixion. Take a good look, Javier. They’re the same size, and there almost certainly were two other smaller panels that went with them—The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Baptism of Christ, which, sadly, are not in the Prado. What all four of these panels have in common is the presence of angels, which is not a small detail, since Orozco believed that priests should try to emulate angels. After all, it was for them that the seminary altarpiece was intended, not for whatever faithful happened to be in attendance. Based on this, neither The Resurrection nor Pentecost were thought to be part of María of Aragon’s altarpiece, since neither contained angels.”

“But that’s what it says on this card,” I said referring to the museum’s description ascribing the two works to the altarpiece.

“It makes no difference what that says,” Fovel retorted. “I happen to agree with the historian Dr. Richard Mann,⁶ who recently made public his thesis that, hidden behind the seminary paintings is a mystical program designed to work closely with Alonso de Orozco’s visions.

“Take another close look at The Annunciation. You see how El Greco has removed any physical reference to the room in which we see Mary? Alonso de Orozco wrote a fair amount about this event, and is quite clear that at the moment when the Archangel Gabriel planted the divine seed in Mary, all the furniture in the room faded away, and at that instant, Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest, enchanted by Mary’s meekness. That is what we’re being shown here!”

I turned to look at the painting. I had to take a few steps back in order to get the full splendor of the work, and even at that distance, it was unsettling to see such a young-looking Mary delivered to the will of her visitor. There was something hallucinatory about the scene. The colors, the tall columns of cherubim up against a leaden sky, even the way Gabriel’s form was twisted—all gave a strong feeling of the unreal, almost as if they were melting before our eyes.

Fovel then began complaining about the Prado’s decision to rename this painting from the original The Incarnation to The Annunciation, claiming, “they’re not the same!” He explained the subtle differences between the two. In The Incarnation, Mary is already pregnant with the Son of God, while in The Annunciation, she is being told that she is going to be pregnant. Thus The Annunciation would have come before The Incarnation. He said that Orozco was always more interested in the notion of incarnation, feeling that it served better in the meditation upon two critical aspects of priestly life: the vow of chastity and transubstantiation, which is the literal conversion of the Host into the body and blood of Christ during Mass, in the same way that the Word takes form in the Virgin’s womb.