Portrait of Cardinal Tavera

El Greco's Portrait of Cardinal Tavera from around 1609, in the Hospital de Tavera in Toledo, depicts Juan de Pardo Tavera posthumously — the cardinal had died in 1545, decades before El Greco arrived in Spain. El Greco worked from a death mask to reconstruct the cardinal's appearance, a practice that reveals both the commemorative function of portraiture and the technical challenges of posthumous representation. Cardinal Tavera was Archbishop of Toledo and a major patron of ecclesiastical architecture; the hospital that bears his name was built under his endowment and remains one of Toledo's most important Renaissance buildings. El Greco's late portrait style gives the reconstructed cardinal's face a visionary intensity that transcends its mechanical origins.

The posthumous nature of the portrait lends it an uncanny, almost spectral quality. El Greco renders the gaunt features with his characteristic elongation, while the cardinal's robes are painted in broad, fluid strokes of crimson and white.