A portrait of Jerónimo de Cevallos (Escalona 1562-1641), dressed in black with a white ruff, on a dark background.

Born in Escalona in 1562, he died in 1641. Cevallos was a friend and protector of the painter, as well as a famous jurist and politician in Toledo. A member of the so-called Academy of the Count of Mora, a discussion group attended by important members of Toledo's intellectual and literary circles, he has been identified thanks to a contemporaneous engraving by Pedro Ángel that appears in Cevallo's book, Tractatus de cognitione per viam violentiae in causis Ecclesiasticis.

The grasp of the sitter's personality and the loose and confident brushstrokes denote the high quality of this work, which is very similar to other portraits painted by El Greco at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

This work comes from the country home of the Duke of Arco in El Pardo (Madrid).