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

Portrait of a Cardinal (detail)

c. 1600
Oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

His finely wrought features framed by a manicured, greying beard and crimson biretta, the sitter is perched like some magnificent bird of prey in a gold-fringed chair. The round-rimmed glasses confer on his gaze a frightening, hawkish intensity as he examines the viewer with an air of implacable, even cruel detachment.