The composition centres on the trigram IHS, the first letters of the name of Jesus in Greek, blazing within a burst of glory at the top of the picture, a device that gives the painting its primary title, the Adoration of the Name of Jesus, described as a Jesuit counterpart to the traditional Adoration of the Lamb^[1]. Below this celestial focus, the picture folds in a second, political layer of meaning: an allegory of the Holy League, the military alliance formed between Spain, the Papacy and the Venetian Republic to resist Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean, which gives the work its alternative title^[1].

The three members of the Holy League are represented by three kneeling figures identifiable as actual portraits: King Philip II of Spain, Doge Alvise Mocenigo of Venice, and Pope Pius V^[1]. In the foreground, kneeling in a heroic pose and grasping a sword, is Juan of Austria, the general who commanded the League's forces at Lepanto, though El Greco painted him not as a documentary likeness but as an idealised figure whose pose draws on Michelangelo^[1]. Below this group, heretics are shown being swallowed by a monstrous beast, a symbol of Hell, swimming in a sea of fire, giving the lower portion of the composition a sombre, punitive counterweight to the celestial glory above^[1].

The Battle of Lepanto, fought in October 1571, was the last great sea battle fought between oar-powered galley fleets, and its outcome, a decisive defeat of the Ottoman fleet with the near-total survival of the Holy League's own ships, was read across Catholic Europe as a sign of divine favour^[2]. Juan of Austria, illegitimate half-brother of Philip II, commanded the Christian forces at the battle; when he died in 1578, his body was transferred to the royal Pantheon, and El Greco's painting was most likely commissioned to mark that occasion, connecting the Escorial altarpiece directly to a specific, recent political and religious event rather than to a purely timeless devotional subject^[1].