For more than three hundred years a painting hung here that nobody paid attention to, because everyone took it for a copy, possibly by son or by one of his pupils. It was only when someone spotted the signature, hidden inside the scene itself, that it turned out to be the original.
The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple arrived here as a donation around 1700, and today it counts as the most important canvas Madrid owns outside a museum. Christ raises his arm to drive the traders out of the temple, in the colours you recognise El Greco by, and it hangs behind glass set just a few millimetres from the linen so that nothing reflects in between.
On Wednesdays the painting stays covered, so that's the one day you can stand in front of the frame and see nothing at all.
Outside, we follow the Calle del Arenal a little further, turn right onto the Calle Preciados and walk its full length, until the wide boulevard opens up ahead of us.
Sources. Story: esMadrid, Ayuntamiento de Madrid; Archivo Parroquial de San Ginés. Photos: El Greco, La purificación del templo, Iglesia de San Ginés, Madrid; photo Malopez 21, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
