Christ Cleansing the Temple by El Greco

This is El Greco's 'Christ Cleansing the Temple,' specifically the version that belongs to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It was painted around 1570, early in the artist's career, and nearly destroyed by a petty thief four hundred years later.

Look at Christ's raised arm and the expression on his face. El Greco gives us a Christ who is fierce rather than serene, a theological choice that makes the force of the expulsion hard to look away from. The figures scatter, the coins are on the floor, and the whole composition funnels your eye straight to that single righteous arm.

In the fall of 1972, a burglar entered the Minneapolis Institute of Art during open hours, hid inside until after closing, and walked out with a Rembrandt portrait and this panel. The Rembrandt was recovered within days. This El Greco was missing for seven weeks. Police found it rolled like a poster and stuffed into a locker at the Greyhound bus depot downtown. The rolling created a web of cracks across the oil surface that took conservators years to stabilize and conceal.

If you look at the canvas closely today, the seams of that repair are nearly invisible. But the painting carries the memory of its kidnapping in every square inch of oil.