Standing on the peak of Mt. Sinai, Moses extends his arms to receive the Tablets of the Law from God. in the earliest known painting by El Greco. Acrid yellows, greens and pinks, applied with quick, nervous brushstrokes, illustrate the violent—literally earth-shattering—moment of divine revelation: “Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke for the Lord had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently” (Exodus 19:18). At the foot of the mountain lies Saint Catherine’s—a sixth-century monastic fortress that still stands at the base of the […]
