The Fable (El Greco)

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The Fable
File:Fábula (El Greco, c. 1600).jpg
Artist El Greco
Year 1580
Location Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Fable (Spanish: La Fábula) is a 1580 allegorical painting by El Greco, produced early in his Toledan period and now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.[1]

The light effects and use of colour show the influence of Jacopo Bassano, which the painter had picked up in Italy. It shows a monkey and a rogue flanking a boy blowing on an ember or taper. The central figure was a frequent theme for the artist (he had painted it a few years earlier as El Soplón for example), drawn from a story in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia.

The painting is probably a moralising warning about the consequences of lust, the ember bursting into flame symbolising sexual arousal, and the monkey and the buffoon the ever-present twin dangers of vice and folly.[2]

See also

Bibliography (in Spanish)

References

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