GRECO, El
(b. 1541, Candia, d. 1614, Toledo)

The Resurrection (detail)

1596-1600
Oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

A soldier wearing a helmet decorated with brilliantly coloured plumes, rests his cheek on his hand - the traditional pose of melancholy - still unaware of Christ's resurrection. El Greco's skill in creating dramatically foreshortened figures is clamorously apparent in the soldier wearing a yellow cuirass sprawled in the foreground and in the adjacent soldier in green.