Opening of the Fifth Seal facts for kids

The Opening of the Fifth Seal is a famous painting by the artist El Greco. It is also known as The Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse or The Vision of Saint John. El Greco painted it in the last years of his life, between 1608 and 1614. The painting was made for a church in Toledo. For a long time, people called it Profane Love. But in 1908, a scholar named Manuel B. Cossio suggested its current name. Today, the painting is kept at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Parts of the painting are unfinished and have been damaged over time.

What the Painting Shows

The painting tells a story from the Book of Revelation in the Revelation|6:9–11. It shows the souls of martyrs, who were people killed for their beliefs. These souls are crying out to God, asking for justice against those who hurt them.

In the painting, the figure of Saint John is very important. He stands in the middle, looking excited. Behind him, you can see many souls. They are shown in a wild, emotional way as they receive white robes. These robes represent their salvation, or being saved.

The top part of the painting was damaged and removed in 1880. Experts believe this missing part might have shown a sacrificial lamb opening the Fifth Seal. It might have also looked like another painting by El Greco called Concert of Angels. Some people think the part we see today shows earthly love, while the missing top part showed divine, or heavenly, love.

Who Owned the Painting

After El Greco died in 1614, his son, Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli, inherited the painting. Later, in the 1800s, it was owned by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. He was the Prime Minister of Spain.

In 1880, Cánovas tried to have the painting fixed because it was in bad shape. But this attempt actually cut off about 175 centimeters (69 inches) from the top. This made Saint John look like he was pointing at nothing.

After Cánovas died in 1897, the painting was sold for 1,000 pesetas. This was about US$200 at the time. The buyer was Ignacio Zuloaga, a painter who helped make El Greco's art popular again in Europe. You can even see the painting in the background of Zuloaga's own work, Mis amigos. This painting shows several famous people from a group called the Generation of '98. Zuloaga showed the painting to other famous artists like Pablo Picasso and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He said it had a "visionary power" and was a "precursor of modernism," meaning it was ahead of its time.

In 1956, the Zuloaga Museum sold the artwork to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is still on display there today.

How it Inspired Other Art

Some art experts believe that El Greco's Opening of the Fifth Seal inspired Pablo Picasso's early Cubist paintings. One of Picasso's most famous works, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, shows similar sharp, angular shapes.

When Picasso was working on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, he visited his friend Zuloaga in Paris. There, he studied El Greco's painting. In the early 1980s, art historians started to notice how similar the two paintings were. They looked at the styles and ideas in both artworks.

Ron Johnson was the first art historian to really focus on this connection. According to John Richardson, another art historian, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was influenced by El Greco as much as by Cézanne.

Efi Foundoulaki, another art expert, also talks about the link between Picasso, Cézanne, and El Greco in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. She says that the figures in El Greco's painting show a contrast between earthly and divine love. Rolf Laesse suggests this idea might have inspired Picasso. Picasso's early sketches for Demoiselles even showed a student with a skull or book entering a room with women.

Richardson and Foundoulaki both point out how the shapes in Opening of the Fifth Seal and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon are alike. Foundoulaki believes Picasso cleverly used similar V-shapes and inverted triangles, just like El Greco did. She says that Picasso's conversation with El Greco, through Cézanne, continued into the Cubism art movement. Richardson sees El Greco's painting as a spark that helped Picasso use the strong spiritual feeling of a great religious artist in his own art. He believes Picasso followed this powerful vision throughout his life.

See also

In Spanish: Visión del Apocalipsis para niños

• List of works by El Greco

Images for kids

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  A detail showing the figures in the painting.