Focus on this artwork and discuss the abstract.
Allegory of the Camaldolese Order is a composition by El Greco and his workshop that survives in two paintings, one at the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan in Madrid and the other at the Museo del Patriarca in Valencia. The paintings depict a bird's-eye view of the "ideal monastery" according to the Camaldolese, and were likely commissioned as part of Fray Juan de Castañiza's (c. 1545-1599) petition to Philip II in 1597 to establish the benedictine monastic order in Spain.
El Greco monastery Valencia Museo del Patriarca bird's-eye view Philip II Spain Camaldolese Instituto Valencia de Don Juan Madrid