OIL PAINTING: The Purification of the Temple, 1600
El Greco first painted the subject of The Purification of the Temple in Venice, some years earlier, in the small signed panel in Washington, and he was to take it up again, much later, in Spain, and adhere closely to his original design. As with the Christ Healing the Blind, inspiration for the composition as a whole is from Tintoretto. The main central group in The Purification of the Temple, however, is very close to a Michelangelo design, known in drawings, and also in Venusti's painting after Michelangelo's design.