129 XVII - THE PRESENTATION OF THE INFANT At the hour when Domenikos painted his last Adoration of the Shepherds, those mystics, consumed by their passion for God, had left their earthly dwelling place and finally reached the heaven towhich they had incessantly aspired. But theirwords still floated in the Toledan air, enlightenedminds, and inspiredEl Greco to paint these bodies that never stop straining toward heaven. I am acquainted with the source, it flows, it runs, but it is by night... I know that there can be nothing more beautiful and that heaven and earth come to drink there, but it is by night... Its brightness is never darkened and I know that all light springs from it, but it is by night... This living source of my desire, I see it in this bread of life, but it is by night. This poem by John of the Cross is perhaps the most beautiful in all Spanish literature; did El Greco hear it being sung within him as he was painting his Nativity? This was the third time within a period of two or three years that he returned to this theme. In the earlier versions—pictures now in Valencia and in the Metropolitan Museum in New York—he had assigned greater importance to the scenery and had painted a structure around the figures, an annunciation to the shepherds in the distance, and a lamb with its feet tied in the foreground of the scene. Now the hour has come to eliminate what is superfluous, to purge his canvas of anything that could diminish its intensity. Nothing is left of the structure but a sketch of a vaulted door, the annunciation to the shepherds is omitted, and the sacrificial lamb is reduced to a bright spot set off to one side. A cloud and a rock can still
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