The painting depicts the Purification of the Temple; in the time of Christ, the porch of the Temple in Jerusalem accommodated a market for buying sacrificial animals and changing money. Christ drove out the traders, saying "It is written 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you make it a den of thieves." (Matthew 20)
El Greco conveys the drama at the heart of this scene: the shock of Christ being violent. Christ has turned his belt into a flail and is poised ready to unleash it – his torso twisted and foot raised for dramatic effect.
The composition is divided in half. On the left, the traders are gripped in positions of agony, their faces reflecting despair and horror. All is chaos and violent action: in the foreground a table lies snapped in half; next to it, a man struggles to lift a heavy chest, no doubt filled with money; and the crowd of men behind him attempt to protect themselves from Jesus’s wrath.
In contrast, the figures on the right are calm and composed. These are theApostles who are transfixed by Jesus’s actions and inspired by his divinity, displaying various expressions of exaltation and ecstasy. Directly mirroring a man on the far right, a woman lifts a basket, but in contrast to his look of desperation, she has an air of meditation – symbolising religious, rather than materialistic absorption.
This condemnation of those who pursue only worldly goals is underscored by the frescoes in the background. The fresco behind the merchants shows the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, while above the Apostles, the fresco shows the Sacrifice of Isaac, an allegory often used to prefigure Christ's death as the source of redemption.
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