This chapter studies the new conceptions of history painting that El Greco extracted from an unswerving interaction between relics and painting. The pronounced retrospective directions of El Greco's St. Ildefonso mingle an interest in carved Marian artifact with a self-awareness of current artistic practices. While proving a dexterous hand in matters of ornament and decorum, El Greco simultaneously underscores the preeminence of religious images over texts for validating religious authority. The all’antica orientation effectively situates El Greco in the most significant advancements of the post-Tridentine decades.

A Marian Miraculous Image and the Aesthetic Goals of El Greco's Portrait of St. Ildefonso

El Greco's decision to depict Saint Ildefonso (607-667) contemplating the seventh- century carved image of Our Lady of Illescas on the left side altar in the nave of the church of Illescas led him into elaborating on the miraculous image which stood at the high altar of the same church (fig. 36). Produced in 1605, the painting is a culmination of El Greco's previous activity as the architect responsible for the project to enshrine Our Lady of Illescas, also known as Virgen de la Caridad, in the high altar (fig. 37). El Greco's St. Ildefonso articulates effectively that the relic may expand on its latent aesthetic meaning when tethered to the contexts of portraiture. The portrait stresses the authoritative image of the Church Father writing at his desk, which early Christian artists used in the decoration of the pendentives on Byzantine domes and which Sandro Botticelli's St. Augustine in his Study (1480) and Domenico Ghirlandaio's St. Jerome in his Study (1480) updated to the standing of Italian Renaissance painting in Florence's Church of Ognissanti. El Greco corroborates the Church Father at his desk by illustrating St. Ildefonso's contemplative gaze directed towards the miraculous image of Our Lady of Illescas, which the reform Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436-1517), Archbishop of Toledo, named Our Lady of Charity in 1500.

Part of a family of venerable artifacts from seventh-century Spain, the carved miniature of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child was in St. Ildefonso's possession during his tenure as Bishop of Toledo from 657 to 667.