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This is another work dating from El Greco’s Italian period. It was probably painted for Alessandro Farnese, who was El Greco’s patron in Rome. The painting shows a boy blowing on a coal in order to light a candle. It is remarkable that El Greco regarded this commonplace scene as a suitable subject for a painting. Such genre paintings were not common in sixteenth-century Italian art. Painters usually incorporated everyday scenes into depictions of episodes from the Bible, or historical tableaux.
El Greco combines the genre motif with a study of light. In this painting El Greco not only exhibits his impressive artistic ability, but also his knowledge of the classics. The motif of a boy blowing on a coal was described in great detail by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder.
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