| The Fable | |
| Artist: | El Greco |
| Year: | 1580 |
| Medium: | oil on canvas |
| Museum: | Museo del Prado |
| City: | Madrid |
The Fable (Spanish - La Fábula) is a 1580 allegorical painting by El Greco, produced early in his Toledan period and now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.[1]
The light effects and use of colour show the influence of Jacopo Bassano, which the painter had picked up in Italy. It shows a monkey and a rogue flanking a boy blowing on an ember or taper. The central figure was a frequent theme for the artist (he had painted it a few years earlier as El Soplón for example), drawn from a story in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia.
The painting is probably a moralising warning about the consequences of lust, the ember bursting into flame symbolising sexual arousal, and the monkey and the buffoon the ever-present twin dangers of vice and folly.[2]