The Opening of the Fifth Seal
I was trying to find a work of art with which to illustrate the start of teaching term and decided on this remarkable painting by El Greco, usually called The Opening of the Fifth Seal though it has been given other names. Actually it’s only part of the original painting – the upper section was destroyed in 1880 – which at least partly accounts for the unusual balance of the composition. What I find astonishing about this work, though, is that at first sight it looks for all the world like an early 20th Century expressionist work, complete with distorted figures and vivid colour palette. It’s very hard to believe that it was painted in the early years of the 17th Century! El Greco was 300 years ahead of his time.
by Doménikos Theotokópoulos (“El Greco“), painted between 1608 and 1614, 224.8 cm × 199.4 cm, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In the Dark 
September 23, 2024 at 3:16 pm
Late mediaeval depictions of divine judgement are typically lurid and artistically very advanced, because they are inevitably somewhat impressionistic. See Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” from a lifetime earlier.
The title of this El Greco comes from the Book of Revelation/Apocalypse (protestant/Catholic terminology) which closes the Bible, part of which describes the breaking of seven seals on a scroll in heaven ahead of the Second Coming of Christ. In chapter 6, Each breaking of a scroll unleashes a terrible event on earth. The first four seals unleash the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”, which symbolise a sequence that is all too common: military aggression, bloodshed, famine and epidemics. The breaking of the fifth seal provides a vision (to the apostle John, the writer) of those who have been martyred for their faityh at this time, petitioning God for justice. They are told to be patient, albeit not for long.