El Greco

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Adoration of the Shepherds. The newborn Christ a small blaze of white at the centre of a vortex of shepherds and angels whose bodies spiral upward into heaven; painted in the final year of his own life to hang over his own tomb at Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo, and kept by the Prado as possibly his final work.

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The Resurrection. Christ bursting from the tomb in a white banner of a body above the sleeping soldiers, one of six great canvases made between 1596 and 1599 for the altarpiece of a Madrid college chapel; five of the six canvases are in the Prado today.

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Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino. A Trinitarian friar and major Spanish poet, a close friend of the painter, seen three-quarter length in his habit against a storm-grey ground; painted in 1609 and now in Boston.

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The Tears of St Peter. The penitent apostle, hands crossed on his breast, eyes lifted weeping to a sky torn open by light; one of several versions of the subject, this one bought by the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City in 1998.

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Christ with the cross. Christ alone with the beam on his shoulder, his gaze raised to heaven in a face of grey and rose; a Barcelona canvas that passed from the painter Beruete to the collector Santiago Espona, who left it to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in 1958.

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The Annunciation. The angel breaking in on the Virgin through a flood of light, painted about 1575 or 1576; among the earliest surviving works of El Greco, still close to his Venetian years, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

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Saints Peter and Paul. The two apostles shoulder to shoulder, Peter's keys in his hand, the open book between them; painted between about 1587 and 1592, and one of several versions of the pairing, this one in the Hermitage.

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Saint Peter and Saint Paul. A later Barcelona pairing of the same two apostles, their heads ringed by an intense blue break in the clouds; the crossed, almost touching hands have been read as disagreement between them, the older Peter gesturing in surrender towards Paul.

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Adoration of the Magi with Camels. The kings and their long camel train paying homage, from the very start of the career, around 1568, when the young Cretan was still braiding Byzantine, Venetian and Sienese traditions; the Soumaya holds one of the two versions.

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The Annunciation. The small replica El Greco made of his great Annunciation for the Aragón college chapel in Madrid, a commission finished in July 1600 and carted from his Toledo workshop for assembly. Mary receives the angel at the meeting of two realms, little around her of the earth beyond the reading desk, while a cloud of musical angels fills the heaven above; the canvas came to the Thyssen from the Pascual collection in Barcelona in 1954.

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The Immaculate Conception. A late Virgin lifted on cloud and cherubim, a work the Thyssen hangs under two names, father and son: Soehner saw a weaker hand in the landscape and gave that part to Jorge Manuel, Wethey listed the canvas with workshop help, and Álvarez Lopera kept it as El Greco's own with his son's collaboration, a late return to his San Román composition with new force and clarity.

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Christ with the Cross. Christ alone in his red tunic against a neutral ground, the crown of thorns bleeding down his face, his head turned to his right and the arms of the cross left out of the picture: the third of the formats Wethey sorted this subject into. Álvarez Lopera dated it to the decade from 1587; it entered the Thyssen collection in 1930.

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The Fable. A rare secular puzzle: a young figure in a blue jacket with a white cuff and scarf is watched by a dull brown monkey and a man in a red hat and yellow doublet, all lit by the whitish glow of an ember, an effect traced to the example of Jacopo Bassano. El Greco treated the theme three times, and this Prado canvas counts as the earliest and the most Venetian; whether the watched figure is a girl or a boy, and whether the scene hides a proverb with roots in Pliny, is still argued.

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The Tears of Saint Peter. The penitent apostle weeping, a subject El Greco returned to all his life. This canvas carries his Greek signature, and its authorship divides the scholars: Cossío, Mayer and Camón Aznar gave it wholly to the master, Wethey to his school, number X-434 in his catalogue. It hangs in the Cau Ferrat at Sitges, reached through the painter Santiago Rusiñol.

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Penitent Mary Magdalen. One of the five Magdalen inventions of his career, painted between 1585 and 1590. Where the earlier Budapest Magdalen is a beauty, here the eyes lift and the mood turns inward: sensuality given over to penance, the skull and the folded hands fixing the thought on death and pardon.

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Mourning madonna. The grieving Virgin close up, in oil on canvas, a portrait of sorrow of about 1590 that once stood in the Thyssen holdings at Villa Favorita. The eyes are wet, the head bowed, the dark ground pressing close around her face.

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The Agony in the Garden. Christ at prayer in the night garden while his apostles sleep, an oil on canvas of about 1590, a Mannerist vision of the night before the Passion, held by the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.

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The Holy Family with Mary Magdalen. The Soumaya's Holy Family of about 1610, a canvas its record places among the works of El Greco and his school and follows from his own Holy Family with Mary Magdalen: the Virgin and Child with the penitent Magdalen in attendance, late devotional painting in his elongated last manner.