8B 
 
 :_:i 
 
MASTERS IN ART 
 
 3Sl 0vtto 
 
 SPANISH SCHOO 
 
NL 
 
 '^MZ 
 
MASTEKS IN ART PLATE I 
 
 PHOTOGRAPH BY DURANORUEL 
 
 [257] 
 
 335779 
 
 EL GKECO 
 
 THE ANNUNCIATION 
 
 OWNED BX DUHANU-HUEIi 
 
MASTEKS IN ART PLATE II 
 
 PHOTOGRAPH BY DURAND-RUEL 
 
 [259] 
 
 KL GHECO 
 
 POHTJiAIT IJU CAHDIXAL TAVEKA 
 
 MUSEUM, TOLEDO 
 
MASTERS IK ART PLATE III 
 
 PHOTOGRAPH BY OURANO-RUEL 
 
 [261] 
 
 EL GHECO 
 
 THE ASSUMPTIOX 
 
 AKT INSTITUTE, CHICAGO 
 
MASTEHS IK AHT PLATE IT 
 
 Photograph by j. r. coolidge, j». 
 [263] 
 
 EL, GHECO 
 
 POHTHAIT OF CAHDINAIi SFOKZA VALLAVICINU 
 
 AHT MUSEUM, BOSTOX 
 
MASTERS TJS^ AHT PLATE V 
 
 PHOTOGRAPH BY EUGENE GLAENZER &. CO. 
 
 [265] 
 
 EL GKECO 
 THE NATtVITT 
 
MASTEHS IN AHT PLATE VI 
 
 [267] 
 
 ST. BASIL 
 PHADO MUSEUM, MADHID 
 
MASTERS IN ART PLATE VII 
 
 PHOTOGRAPH BY DURANO-RUEL 
 [2«9] 
 
 Eli GHECO 
 POHTKAIT OF A PHTSICIAN 
 PBADO MUSEUM. MADRID 
 
MASTEHS IJ!^ AET PLATE VIII 
 
 PHOTOGRAPH BY DURAND-RUEL 
 
 [271] 
 
 KZ. GKECO 
 
 POHTKAIT OF CAKUIXAL, UOX FERNANDO NIXO DE GUEVAHA 
 
 iJKIVATE COLLKCTroX 
 
MASTEHS IK AET 
 
 ■ PHOTOGRAPH BY DUR/ 
 
 [ 273 ] 
 
 PLATE IX 
 
 ND-RUEL 
 
 EL (iHEGO 
 
 HKA» OK A MAX 
 
 PHADO MUSEUM, MADHIO 
 
MASTEES IN ART PLATE X 
 [275] 
 
 Eli GHECO 
 
 CHKIST DEAll JX THE ARMS OF GOD 
 
 PRADO Ml^SEl'M, .MAriHII) 
 
MASTERS IN ART 
 
 I (Br X t t 
 
 BORN 1548(?): DIED 1614 
 SPANISH SCHOOL 
 
 DOMENIKOS THEOTOKOPULI was born in the Island of Crete in 
 the year 1547 or 1548. It is not known whether his youth was passed in 
 his own Greece or in Venice. Venice was the great dominating Christian 
 influence in all these isles and Levantine towns, and at just that time, when 
 thousands of Greek refugees were fleeing to Venice from the power of the 
 Turk, it would have been natural enough if the family of El Greco had been 
 among them. The legend is that he studied with Titian; yet his name does 
 not appear in the extant list of Titian's pupils. However, his countryman, 
 the Macedonian Giulio Clovio, speaks of him in a letter as " a pupil of Titian." 
 However that may be, he absorbed the Venetian manner simply enough, 
 and at the time of his coming to Spain he was quite Titianesque in style, 
 although even as early as that his work had its own strong individuality. 
 
 He was called to Spain and settled in Toledo, as his first work was there. 
 There is a good deal of confusion about the term "El Greco." It means, of 
 course, "The Greek." But in the right Spanish it should be "El Griego." 
 It would seem, however, that he got the nickname during his years in Italy, 
 and was called by the Italians "II Greco" when he first went to Spain. The 
 Spaniards adopted the name, gave it their own characteristic article, and 
 called him "El Greco," or sometimes plain "Greco." The French do the 
 same thing when they call him, as they always do, "Le Greco." And we, if 
 we were consistent with them, would call him "The Greco." But we, in our 
 haphazard English way, have for the most part elected to call him after the 
 Spanish nomenclature. And by the title " El Greco" he is known, as far as he 
 is known at all, among us. "Theotokopuli" is rather a mouthful at the best. 
 It was the pleasant manner of the Italians to give nicknames to their paint- 
 ers, as Masaccio, Giorgione, and Perugino, or "Slovenly Tom," "Big 
 George," and "The Man from Perugia," and so one may suppose the name 
 "El Greco" came about. 
 
 There is the same confusion about his given name and his patronymic. 
 His name in Greek was KvpiaKdi eeroKdirovXa^, or in the Latin lettering Kiriakos 
 Theotocopuli, Dominico being the Italian for Kiriakos. He seems to have 
 been called Domenico in Italy; but with a certain perverseness he preferred 
 
 [277] 
 
 \ 
 
24 MASTERSINART 
 
 to spell it in a half Greek way, Domenikos. He often had the habit — affec- 
 tation, if you will — of signing his canvases in the Greek lettering. Indeed, 
 he was well read in Greek, and in a country where culture was not very widely 
 spread he must have passed for a learned man. As to his last name, it is in- 
 differently spelled Theotokopuli, Theotokopulos, Teotocopuli, or Theoto- 
 copuli in various archives. 
 
 It is curious, by the way, that he should have been a Greek, because nothing 
 could be more different from what we have come to call the Hellenic spirit 
 than the soul that animated his work. Greek art, as we know it, is based on 
 proportion, measure, balance. Some of its leading qualities are serenity, 
 reserve, workmanship. Now the art of him they called "The Greek" is 
 different in all things, for his work is violent, perturbed, careless in execution. 
 It was written that he of the ancient classic race should be the first of the 
 moderns. 
 
 It would be hard to imagine one who differed in more ways than he from 
 the calculated, carefully poised art which we call classic. There is nothing 
 of the unthinking serenity of Greece in his types; they are tortured and quite 
 modern in expression. Half gods or Titans at the best, these men of his 
 have little likeness to the Greek gods of High Olympus. 
 
 No doubt the gdnij austere city of Toledo had its influence upon El Greco 
 and upon his art. He had been accustomed to happy and joyous Venice, 
 where things were seen through a golden rain of sunlight. And here in Toledo 
 was sunlight, to be sure, but of another quality. Here were gaunt, grim shapes 
 wholly Gothic or Moorish, wholly different from the rich, colored Byzantine 
 forms of the beloved Venice and of a farther Greece. And the proud, severe, 
 austere Spanish types about him were different enough from the smiling, 
 ease-loving Italian faces he had come to know in Venice. 
 
 So, in the end, his painting became strange and more strange. He alter- 
 nated in his work, now doing a picture that was quite "sane," as the writers 
 of to-day like to put it; again, making a picture so wild as to puzzle the grim 
 Philip II. and his court. 
 
 It is the test and measure of a man what use he makes of his ability; how 
 he develops after leaving the nest, as it were, of master and brother pupils; 
 and El Greco met this test strongly, for his Venetian art, though much more 
 individual than that of his fellows, §till smacked of Venetian color and man- 
 ner. He had something in his work of that rich, warm Venetian glow so often 
 talked of. There is a legend, probably apocryphal, that he was irritated when 
 his canvases were compared to Titian and determined to show that he could 
 paint better and in a different manner. However this may be, his manner 
 certainly changed greatly during his stay in Spain. It is more likely that 
 solitude in Toledo, not seeing other painters who were his equals, caused him 
 to fall back upon himself and to create a style almost of necessity personal. 
 
 Something of his early Venetian training, however, no doubt persists, even 
 in his latest work. He retained the trick of glazing, so beloved of Venetians, 
 though he apparently varied it by scumbling, a method not so much used by 
 his masters. At all events, something of this thin, sleazy way of smearing on 
 
 [278] 
 
ELGRECO 25 
 
 the paint in certain passages was adopted by Velasquez, whose earliest man- 
 ner was quite different, being in the heavy, robust, not to say stodgy tech- 
 nique which he first learned from Herrera. The big picture by Herrera in 
 the Worcester Art Museum illustrates this manner well enough. Greco's 
 manner is quite different from this: he is always glazing and smearing. One 
 notices glazes especially in the finger-tips of his portraits. 
 
 El Greco was in more than one respect the Whistler of his day. He had 
 much of the latter's wit; he had an uncommon way of painting; and, among 
 other things, he had Whistler's passion for litigation. Only the Greek, more 
 fortunate than the man from Lowell, won all his suits. It is recorded that 
 when the Inquisition accused him of controverting certain canonical rules in 
 some of his pictures, he had the courage — and courage it was in those days — 
 to defy it and bring suit against the all-powerful institution. Strange to say, 
 he won his case. 
 
 In those days there was a sort of tariff on the sale of each picture. El Greco 
 thought this unfair and refused to pay it. A suit brought before the Royal 
 Counsel of the Hacienda was decided in his favor. And it was proclaimed 
 that henceforth the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture were 
 forever exempt from duties or imposts. 
 
 There is no definite statement extant about his exact technique, but by 
 carefully studying his works one can arrive at a pretty good understanding of 
 the manner of it. It is fair to suppose that his early style was much the man- 
 ner that Titian taught and that the other young Venetians practised. Very 
 likely he under-painted in gray tempera body color and glazed plentifully 
 over that. Later, he very much modified this manner and came to paint in 
 what must have been a good deal the modern manner; that is, painting in the 
 picture quite directly and then constantly repainting or retouching. He, 
 however, glazed much more than is commonly done nowadays. 
 
 El Greco is, in a sense, one of our modern discoveries. Sir William Stirling- 
 Maxwell, it is true, speaks of him as early as 1848, and at considerable length, 
 but with quite complete misapprehension. In his "goguenard" and robust 
 way, he feels that there is something interesting in the Greek painter, but 
 fails to put his finger on it. So that any real effort to understand El Greco 
 has come about of later years. Indeed, it may be doubted if the mind of the 
 world has ever before been so nearly in the right state to appreciate the Tole- 
 dan painter's rather bitter and evasive charm. He suits our desire for novelty; 
 he chimes in with our sense of the mutability of things; and as nowadays, 
 whether rightly or wrongly, we are all for personality even if it be at the ex- 
 pense of craftsmanship, his very marked personality interests us. 
 
 With other painters the personality of the man is or is not an interesting 
 trait. With EI Greco it is almost the whole thing. One might almost say he 
 is nothing but personality. He is like Perique tobacco, which is very good 
 for criving a flavor to other brands, but rather heady when smoked alone. 
 Well, it takes a strong head to enjoy El Greco. His flavor is too strong and 
 of too bizarre and racy a quality to be enjoyed by every one. In other men, 
 personality will show in choice or arrangement of subject, perhaps in a cer- 
 
 [279] 
 
26 MASTERSINART 
 
 tain rare quality of color; but with our Greek the personaHty cries aloud with 
 every stroke of the brush. It is this that has kept him from due recognition; 
 it is this, too, which makes him a particular favorite with the raffine and dis- 
 cerning. 
 
 El Greco was the inventor, so to say, of the "muted" tones, the smoky 
 blacks, the dingy whites, which Velasquez, in a measure, adopted, and which 
 Whistler later developed into so taking an article of commerce. That is, the 
 Greek was the first man, so far as appears, to treat tones in that way. In the 
 work of his master Titian ^he whites are quite frankly white; the blacks, 
 though suggesting color, still of a blackness, as dark as may be in the accents. 
 With El Greco, the rendering of these muted tones was not so much a manner- 
 ism as a perception of the delicate bloom which light sheds on the "local 
 color" of things. And this was a subtlety of vision, a perception of nuance, 
 that till then had been wanting in painters' work. How much these qualities 
 suggested anything to Velasquez we do not absolutely know. But we do know 
 that Velasquez's earliest work was hot and unluminous, quite in the manner 
 of Herrera, and that in his latest work he developed those so-called "silvery 
 tones" which are also among the distinguishing qualities of El Greco. 
 
 Our master had all a Venetian's skill in landscape-painting when he first 
 came to Spain, and he quickly learned to render the peculiar beauty of Span- 
 ish landscape, and mostly the sort that is seen about Toledo. He seemed to 
 love, and well recorded, its austere grandeur; and in the backgrounds of some 
 of his figure compositions ar^^bits df* landscape which might well have filled 
 in some canvas of Velasquez. fn3ee4^, Tt is impossible not to feel that the latter 
 had seen and studied this feaiiire'of Tlieotokopuli's work, for many of his 
 landscape backgrounds have the same long, swinging lines, the same free, 
 loose manner of handling. 
 
 It is a strange thing that El Greco should have so well assimilated the for- 
 mula of the Spanish type, that he should have understood it so well, and that 
 he, a foreigner, should have painted Spaniards more "like" than they could 
 paint themselves. For when a Frenchman, or any other Outlander, comes to 
 America to paint portraits, he makes little Frenchmen of our cowboy Presi- 
 dents,, of our grim captains and Chevaliers de Vlndustrie. But it was not so 
 with El Greco. No one, better than he, has understood and rendered the cold 
 morgue of the Spanish grandee — fire under ice. And he, too, has well under- 
 stood the Spanish churchman, and his portraits of various Spanish cardinals 
 are among the best of his work. 
 
 Another quality, which one might say was invented by El Greco, was a 
 loose, free, almost feathery handling, which, while it injured his workmanship, 
 did in a measure suggest the floating, ever-changing aspect of nature in a way 
 which the solid, well-considered draftsmanship of the Venetians had hardly 
 done. Still less had the heavy, rather stodgy handling of Herrera and his ilk 
 suggested this constant mutability of things. 
 
 El Greco, like a true innovator, felt this so strongly, had so acute a sense of 
 the change, the "va et vient" of living things, that he was sometimes content 
 to let the form go unchastened, if he had given it the breath of life; so that 
 
 [280] 
 
ELGRECO 27 
 
 some of his creations are like Frankenstein's monster, palpably alive, yet 
 hardly human. 
 
 El Greco has to his credit, if it be a credit, that he was one of the first Im- 
 pressionists, and by "impressionism" one means the word in its broader 
 sense rather than in the more restricted meaning of painting in pure color, 
 which is most often given it nowadays. For he told the scandalized Pacheco, 
 when the latter visited him in Toledo, that he believed in constant retouching 
 and repainting, which tended to make the broad masses tell flat as in nature. 
 This is quite the doctrine of the "tache" so beloved by Manet, and his man- 
 ner of retouching here, there, and elsewhere is much like the style of Chardin, 
 Monet, and of our own Tarbell. 
 
 No doubt Pacheco, who was father-in-law to Velasquez, sometimes whis- 
 pered these heresies with bated breath to his clever pupil. And certainly 
 Velasquez succeeded in rendering the "apparition" of things even more suc- 
 cessfully than the old Greek. But " au fond" Velasquez was essentially a 
 modeler, and more, too; he always tried for the flowing surface of paint, the 
 "fused" look which his best paintings haveo So that, in this respect, his 
 method may be called quite different from the patchy facture of Theotokopuli. 
 
 What El Greco may have suggested to him, however, was a way of looking 
 at nature without prejudice, spot for spot. The Italians, even the best of 
 them, always treated a man by the way the forms ran. El Greco, and after 
 him Velasquez, were the first to see nature with the "innocent eye," putting 
 a dark spot here, a lighter tone there, as they came, without " parti-prts" as to 
 their exact meaning. In El Greco this is tentative; he still paints along the 
 form instead of across it with the light. Yet the effect of his work is more im- 
 pressionistic than most that had preceded it. 
 
 It has been already hinted that Velasquez was a good deal influenced by 
 the art of Greco, and in an indirect way it would seem that he doubtless was. 
 If this be so, it may have come about by conversations with his father-in-law 
 Pacheco, who knew El Greco and had argued with him about art; although 
 it is quite evident that if Pacheco admired the Toledan master in some re- 
 spects, he still highly disapproved of certain of his practices. Velasquez may 
 have heard about El Greco from the latter's favorite pupil Tristan, though 
 Tristan's work does not much recall the master, being heavier and made with 
 more care, yet lacking in charm. Or, what seems most likely of all, Velasquez 
 had, no doubt, seen El Greco's work at Toledo, and being the most thoughtful 
 and analytic of men, by much study he may have divined some of the Tole- 
 dan's secrets; have known, and that was his great gift, which to take and which 
 to leave. 
 
 Theotokopuli is said to have written a book or treatise about art. Whatever 
 this may have been, it has now wholly disappeared, and this one must feel to 
 be a great pity, for it would be interesting to know the views of so independent 
 and unusual a painter. It is to be regretted that all painters have not written 
 on the practice of their art. What a library of information we should have; 
 and, more than that, what a side-light on the intentions and meaning of each 
 painter would be his comments on his own work and his description of his 
 
 [281] 
 
28 MASTERSINART 
 
 own manner of working! But whatever he may have written, it does not now 
 survive, and we shall never know what the strange old man thought about 
 the practice of his art. 
 
 But at the very last, El Greco, though interesting in himself, is most in- 
 teresting historically, as a link between the old and new. He is one of those 
 men — the Impressionists are his brothers in this — who dimly felt or divined 
 certain subtleties, refinements, nuances, which till then had not been ex- 
 pressed. Indeed, he felt them so strongly that in the passion of their rendering 
 he sometimes forgot or slurred the old perfections. Other men, like Velasquez, 
 perceiving these qualities in his work, were able to express them in their own, 
 while not sacrificing the other verities as he had done. It is the fate of inno- 
 vators to be obsessed by their own discoveries. Uldee fixe tortures their 
 mind and obscures other verities. They are the victims of their truth. And 
 El Greco was no exception to this. And yet they have this reward — that 
 they are sometimes more interesting to subtle minds than are men of more 
 triumphant and absolute ability. Greco is not comparable to Rubens, for 
 instance, as an all-round artist and master of technique. And yet, to certain 
 minds, he must always seem a more interesting painter, infinitely more dis- 
 tinguished. And where he often failed in rendering the obvious — so unlike 
 Rubens — he sometimes felt and suggested subtleness of expression — nuances 
 of light and tone which the healthy Fleming would never have even suspected. 
 He is, to use an expression rapidly becoming banale, a painter's painter. 
 Millet delighted in his picture of St. Ildefonso and had an engraving of it, 
 which is now owned by Mr. Degas. Zuloaga and other Spanish painters are 
 said to consider El Greco the superior even of Velasquez. One is not prepared 
 to agree with this. Yet the mere suggestion shows how sympathetic is the 
 work of our subject to many painters of ability. 
 
 El Greco, then, was an innovator, a man who felt and suggested many 
 things, yet was not perfect in his rendering of any of them. Mr. McCoU has 
 made a half-humorous division of painters into Titans and Olympians. 
 Well, then, our Greek was in some sense a Titan, if a man so neurotic as he 
 could be called a Titan. At least, there was nothing Olympian about him. 
 No, he was hardly a Titan or even a half-god, not even a super-man; for 
 there was little of the " Laughing Lion " in him. Rather, he was one of those 
 men, fortunate or unfortunate as you will, made for a time in the future. 
 How lonely he must have been in Toledo, even with Cervantes and Lope da 
 Vega as neighbors! And even now there would be few to understand him. 
 What the other men thought most important seemed to him distressingly 
 obvious. The things which to him seemed all important, they had never seen. 
 
 [282] 
 
ELGRECO 29 
 
 Cije art of CI 0xno 
 
 CARL JUSTI <DIEGO VELASQUEZ AND HIS TIMES* 
 
 A PROOF of the attraction Venetian art had for the Spanish eye is seen in 
 the welcome given to the works of El Greco. At the very time a Navar- 
 rese was for the first time painting in the Titian manner in the Escorial, 
 Toledo was visited by a Cretan Greek, who, like Antonio Vassilacchi of Milo, 
 known as I'Aliense, had studied the Venetian style at the fountainhead. He 
 was traditionally, and doubtless justly, regarded as a pupil of Titian, although 
 his signature is always in Greek, with a Latin translation of his Christian 
 name Kyriakos: Aoyuijui/cos Qeoro K6irov\os Kprjs^TroUi. This artist is as remark- 
 able for his rare pictorial genius, and for the impulse given by him to Spanish 
 painting, as for unexampled and in fact pathological debasement of his later 
 manner. Biographers have hitherto studied him only from the time of his 
 arrival in Spain (1575), but there still exist a number of authentic works be- 
 longing to his Italian period, works which rank with the best productions 
 of the Venetian school. Nobody being aware of his existence, these works, 
 notwithstanding their peculiar physiognomy, have long passed for Titians, 
 Paul Veroneses, Bassanos, and even Baroccis. They are partly portraits, 
 partly animated gospel scenes in bold lines, and in the attitudes resembling 
 Tintoretto, but richer in individuality and more solid in the coloring. Vistas 
 of distant hills beyond the marble-paved piazzas and line of palaces give them 
 a strong Venetian accent. He is also influenced by Michael Angelo, as seen in 
 many of the figures; and what is stranger still, old Byzantine reminiscences 
 are betrayed in his invention and grouping. 
 
 The Greek signature of El Greco occurs on the 'Healing of the Man Blind 
 from his Birth,' in the Parma Gallery, of which a modified but unsigned 
 replica exists in the Dresden Collection. He often depicted 'The Cleansing 
 of the Temple,' a large specimen of which formerly in the Buckingham Col- 
 lection, is now in the possession of the Countess of Yarborough, catalogued 
 as a Paul Veronese. But his most comprehensive creation is the 'Disrobing 
 of the Saviour on Calvary,' formerly in the Manfrin Gallery, and assigned to 
 Barocci. Christ stands in the center, an embodiment of sublime resignation, 
 His large, brilliant eyes turned upwards; to the left, lower down, three noble 
 female figures; to the right, a man with the borer stooping over the Cross. 
 Behind tower up the heads and busts of the thronging troops, the captain of 
 the armor on Christ's right hand, the man seizing His red mantle on His left. 
 It would be difficult to find a work of the Venetian school richer in studies of 
 character than this 'Disrobing.' 
 
 That he was at that time an eminent portraitist is evident from the half- 
 length of the miniature-painter Giulio Clovio, in the Naples Studj, which in 
 Parma passed as a portrait of himself. So also the study of light effects, 'The 
 Boy Blowing a Coal,' in the Naples Museum. That portrait of Clovio sup- 
 plies a conjecture as to El Greco's hitherto unknown career in Italy, 
 
 [283] 
 
30 MASTERS IN ART 
 
 He may perhaps have introduced himself as a fellow countryman of the 
 aged Clovio, who calls himself a Macedonian. His skill at miniature is re- 
 vealed in one of his best early works, a replica of the 'Cleansing of the Temple' 
 on a small scale, with sumptuous architecture and ornamental details, in 
 Mr. Francis Cook's collection, Richmond. In the already mentioned large 
 piece we see in the right corner four half-figures — the aged Titian, Michael 
 Angelo, an old man (probably Clovio), and a young man with index finger 
 pointing to his face, possibly the artist himself, indicating thus to whom he 
 felt indebted. In any case his youth has been rich in experience, and Pacheco, 
 who made his acquaintance in old age, calls him a "great philosopher," full 
 of wise sayings and author of a treatise on painting, sculpture, and architec- 
 ture. 
 
 In 1575 he made his appearance in Toledo, which he never again quitted, 
 dying there in 1614. During these forty years he displayed an almost bound- 
 less activity, filling the Castilian churches with altar-pieces, the halls of prel- 
 ates and cavaliers with portraits. But only in the earliest is his Venetian 
 manner preserved. The first, which apparently brought him to Toledo, is the 
 reredos in the Church of Santo Domenigo de Silos, where the architectural 
 framework on the statues is also by him. The central and chief piece is the 
 'Assumption,' now in Pau, but a copy of which is still on the spot. The ele- 
 ments of the Frari altar-piece here reappear, but already in the Spanish en- 
 vironment. Mary soars aloft with outstretched arms in ecstatic emotion. 
 The Apostles are men from the Toledo mountains, who, like true Castilians, 
 express their amazement still with dignity in a slow, solemn gesture-language. 
 The picture is thrown on the canvas with surprising power of chiaroscuro and 
 in richly varied, deep, glowing color. 
 
 This performance opened El Greco's way to the cathedral. Invited to 
 execute the central piece for the new and spacious sacristy, he resolved to 
 figure hi^ 'Christ on Calvary' on an imposing scale. This chief work and 
 masterpiece of his, occupying an honorable place in the richest church in 
 Spain, for the first time in that country gave an idea of Titian's art — his 
 plastic power, his vivid light and shade, his naturalism. In his capacity as a 
 colorist El Greco here proclaimed himself king. 
 
 But he was unable to keep on the high level of this work. Drunk with ap- 
 plause, unwarned by associates or judges whom he might have well respected, 
 in the pride of his triumph, piqued at the compliment that "he painted like 
 Titian," he degenerated into that reckless manner in which, as in the speech 
 of "a noble, unstrung mind," only flashes of his genius still occasionally gleam 
 forth in those marvelous physiognomies and daring strokes of the brush. In 
 Toledo's crumbling eyrie, isolated from healthy influences, he sank lower and 
 lower, painting like a visionary and taking for revelations the distorted fancies 
 of a morbid brain. 
 
 In portraiture alone a spark survived of his former greatness. Those of 
 Pompeo Leoni at Keir in Dumfriesshire, and of the gray-haired Cardinal 
 Quiroga (?) in the cathedral sacristy, Valladolid, still give a good notion of 
 his powers; whereas the specimens in the Prado Museum are unfortunately 
 
 [284] 
 
EL GRECO 31 
 
 very mannered. In St. Thome is a large picture, which, strange to say, passes 
 in Spain as his masterpiece, although executed in his worst style. A group of 
 cavaliers in the black dress of the Court of Philip ii. assist at the burial of 
 Count Orgaz, whose body is being lowered into the grave by two ghostly 
 figures, in whom one recognizes SS. Augustine and Stephen. "Around this 
 painting," we are told, "the Toledans often gathered, still discovering some- 
 thing new in the portraits of so many cavaliers." And in truth, at sight of 
 these stiff, ceremonious attitudes, these grave, motionless glances, giving the 
 impression of an assembly of apparitions, one must fain confess that the 
 foreign artist has a good eye for national peculiarities. 
 
 As religious enthusiasts precede the creative innovators of the times, this 
 Iberianized Greek was a precursor of the masters that arose in the following 
 century. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL «ANNALS OF THE ARTISTS OF SPAIN' 
 
 EL GRECO has been justly described as an artist who alternated between 
 reason and delirium, and displayed his great genius only at lucid inter- 
 vals. There is probably no other painter who has left so many admirable 
 and so many execrable performances. Strange to say, in his case, the critics 
 cannot fix the epoch when his "early bad manner" gave way to his "good 
 middle-style," or when his pencil lost the charm of its prime; for he painted 
 well and ill by turns throughout his whole career. The disagreeable 'St. 
 Maurice' was executed between the times when his two best works were com- 
 menced. The finest portraits of Tavera and Palavicino were painted in or 
 about 1609, which is also the date of his delightful 'Holy Family' and his 
 offensive 'Baptism of Christ' at the Toledan Hospital of St. John Baptist. 
 In the latter picture, the narrow draperies, and the gleams of light, thin and 
 sharp as Toledo sword-blades, produce effects not less unpleasing than diffi- 
 cult to be described intelligibly to those who are unacquainted with the 
 Greek's style. He might have painted it, by the fitful flashes of lightning, on a 
 midsummer night, from models dressed only in floating ribands. In the 
 Louvre we find near his excellent portraits an 'Adoration of the Shepherds,' 
 in his most extravagant style, in which the lights on reddish draperies and dark 
 clouds are expressed by green streaks of so unhappy a tint that those harm- 
 less objects resemble masses of bruised and discolored flesh. Yet the perpe- 
 trator of these enormities sometimes painted heads that stood out from the 
 canvas with the sober strength of Velasquez's, and colored pictures and 
 draperies with a splendor rivaling Titian. With all his faults, El Greco was a 
 favorite artist in Spain, and his pictures were highly valued. For the church 
 of Bayena, a village in the province of Segovia, he executed a series of paint- 
 ings on the life of Mary Magdalene, which were refused, about the close of 
 the seventeenth century, to Cardinal Puertocarrero, although his Eminence 
 offered to buy them for 5,000 crowns, and replace them with pictures by 
 Luca Giordano, the famous and fashionable court artist of the day. 
 
 Theotocopuli was much engaged as sculptor and architect. At Madrid he 
 designed, in 1 590, the church of the College of Dofia Maria de Arragon, and 
 
 [285] 
 
 / 
 
32 MASTERS IN ART 
 
 carved the "abominable" retablo of the high altar; at Illescas he built, about 
 1600, two churches — that of the Hospital of Charity, still existing, with its 
 good classical altar, and that of the Franciscan friars, with marble tombs and 
 effigies of the Hinojosas, its founders, now demolished; at Toledo, he gave 
 the plans of the city hall, a solid plain building of two stories, resting on Doric 
 pillars and flanked with towers; he carved, in 1609, the retablos for the church 
 of the St. John Baptist's Hospital; and, in 161 1, he erected in the Cathedral, 
 by order of the chapter, the catafalque, or temporary monument for the cele- 
 bration of funeral solemnities for Margaret of Austria, Queen of Philip iii. 
 
 Few artists were ever more unweariedly industrious than El Greco, even 
 in his old age. Never idle for a moment, he must have not a little astonished, 
 by his indomitable energy, the slow and otiose Toledans amongst whom he 
 lived. Pacheco, who visited him in 161 1, relates that he showed him a large 
 closet filled with the plaster models of his various sculptures, and a chamber 
 full of sketches of all his pictures. In the course of their talk El Greco de- 
 clared his opinion that coloring was a more difficult part of the painter's art 
 than drawing, and that Michael Angelo, "though a good professor, knew noth- 
 ing of painting." Besides uttering these heresies, to the horror of the Sevillian, 
 he explained and defended his own harsh and spotty style, avowing that it 
 was his practice to retouch a picture till each mass of color was distinct and 
 separate from the rest, and asserting that it gave strength and character to 
 the whole. But in spite of his eccentric style and opinions, the school of 
 Theotocopuli produced Maino, Tristan, and Orrente, who rank among the 
 best Castilian painters. He was a man of wit and some learning, and is said 
 by Pacheco to have written on the three arts which he professed. 
 
 RICHARD MUTHER «HISTORY OF PAINTING' 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING Justi's investigations, the chief master of Toledo, 
 Domenico Theotocopuli of Crete, deserves a new biographer. For the 
 "pathological degeneration" of El Greco seems an important symptom of the 
 great religious fermentation which at that time had seized all minds. Pictures 
 like his 'Purification of the Temple,' in which he appears as a Venetian, ex- 
 press but little; although the theme seems in some wise related with the puri- 
 fication of the Church at that time by Caraffa and Loyola. But in the work 
 which introduced him to Spain, 'Christ Stripped of His Garments on Cal- 
 vary,' he has freed himself from Titian, and now seems a savage entering the 
 world of art with impetuous primeval power. He displays a collection of 
 herculean figures composed of real flesh and blood, of barbaric bone and 
 marrow. The same quality gives his painting of the 'Holy Trinity' a primeval, 
 brutal grandeur. His picture in the Church of San Tome in Toledo, in which 
 the members of a knightly order solemnly attend the funeral of Count Orgaz, 
 his corpse is lowered into the grave by two saints, while Christ, Mary, martyrs, 
 and angels hover in the air — this painting, in its abrupt union of actual with 
 transcendental, already heralds the visionary painting of the seventeenth 
 century. His later works are uncanny, ghostly pictures of exaggerated line 
 and harsh color; which seem to be executed in wax colors mingled with the 
 
 [286] 
 
ELGRECO 33 
 
 mold of corpses. In all respects he seems a strange, titanic master; and not 
 until more is known of his life will he stand revealed as an artist. 
 
 C. S. RICKETTS 'THE ART OF THE PRADC 
 
 EL GRECO was trained in Venice, and in his earlier manner is a pure 
 Venetian, influenced by the work of Bassani and stimulated by the man- 
 ner of Tintoretto. He was born in Crete in 1548, and died at Toledo in 16 14. 
 This painter developed on Spanish soil a style that seems almost more Spanish 
 in temper than the work of any born and bred Spaniard till the advent of 
 Goya, in whom all the national traits find expression. Outwardly the more 
 central of EI Greco's work seems founded entirely upon Tintoretto at his wild- 
 est and most mannered phase; his figures are torn to shreds by a wind of pas- 
 sion, by an extravagant effort at impressiveness. His method in portraits re- 
 calls the method of the Bassani; but with time the fever latent in his art takes 
 a form more acute, and in his Toledan manner the Venetian influence burns 
 less visibly. Realities are then supplanted by a series of conventions of his 
 own; the Venetian methods are finally replaced by the most wilful experi- 
 ments in form and color and in the use of pigments; human forms are twisted 
 and stretched into mere symbols of themselves, or into symbols of passion 
 and movement. A wish to be inspired and original at all costs clashes with 
 the staid tendency of the Spanish temper, it is true; yet where out of Spain 
 could so strange and perverted a vision of things have found acceptance; 
 when, save in the reign of Philip 11 ? 
 
 His pictures might at times have been painted by torchlight in a cell of 
 the Inquisition. Philip ii. in his old age might have so painted, had he been 
 given the faculty to paint. El Greco's 'Vision of Philip ii.' might have act- 
 ually risen before the recluse of the Escorial himself, when, after so much 
 done and undone, after so many acts of faith, he lay dying by inches under 
 the black velvet of his bed; when under the horsehair shirt he felt the approach 
 of eternity, and beyond the incense fumes and the smoke of the tapers stood 
 the goal of all his effort. 
 
 At times Theotocopuli is a sincere and almost naive artist; in portraits of 
 small surface area and unambitious scope he is quite excellent; at times his 
 feverish workmanship has the "quality of its defects" (if we may be pardoned 
 this transposition of a French phrase which nevertheless expresses perfectly 
 the singular case presented to us in the work of El Greco). 
 
 We understand the power to disturb, which the religious revival brought 
 in its wake, when we touch the art of El Greco — a sense of trouble has been 
 detected even in the light work of Titian himself. If we turn on the art of 
 Tintoretto, who was the main influence upon El Greco, the tendency of agita- 
 tion seems to spring from a different source, even in such works as the ' Holy 
 Supper' at St. Giorgio Maggiore, with its fantastic torchlight, and presence 
 of spiritual forms in the air of the room itself. The aim of Tintoretto was 
 sensational, but eloquent in its sensationalism; its tendency was declamatory 
 and romantic, tending always towards an emphatic statement of dramatic or 
 romantic effects. With El Greco the imaginative impulse flickers and twists 
 
 [287] 
 
34 MASTERSINART 
 
 upon itself; there is even less balance than in the Italian, there is even less 
 room, less breathing-space for sequence of thought, or for constructive vision; 
 he gives you a sort of shorthand of Tintoretto, and later on mere jottings and 
 hints at a method of his own; at times his figures have the lithe and trenchant 
 aspect of a sword. 
 
 The color of his whites and crimsons is ashen; his blacks, vivid; his blues 
 remind one of the blues of steel; his use of green is constant and unusual for 
 painting of his time. 
 
 Light with him becomes a quantity for emotional appeal only, to be focused 
 or scattered at will, and he will paint a sky black or a bitter green. 
 
 The influence of Veronese's early manner has been instanced as the first 
 influence upon the aspect of his earliest and least individualized works; yet 
 nothing could be more remote in temper or tendency than these two paint- 
 ings. Had Veronese, with his unbounded and almost monotonous control 
 over plastic eff^ect, painted only the strange little 'Crucifixion' in the Louvre, 
 with its strange green sky, its strange and chilly color, the difl^erence between 
 the Venetian master and the Spanish mannerist would still be immense. His 
 most ascetic and monkish canvases degenerate into what looks like a parody 
 of himself; he even at times turns away from his curious palettes and, with 
 blue-black, white, and brown, produces a yet more bitter, I had almost said 
 discordant, result. 
 
 No one would apply to the work of El Greco the statement that art is the 
 expression of that which the artist likes best in life; his choice would seem to 
 have been governed by another craving, and to have been of the nature that 
 makes a man lean over a precipice to see if he will feel faint and dizzy, or a 
 patient touch a wound to see if it will hurt. 
 
 This estimate of El Greco gives him an undue importance, perhaps, for 
 his work is more individual than original, and the basis of individuality does 
 not suflftce for art; originality must be found in its essence, not the mere ex- 
 pression of personal limitations, as with El Greco; and above originality 
 stands the creative power, that noblest expression with which modern criti- 
 cism hardly ever concerns itself at all. 
 
 The personality or originality of El Greco is too thin, too whimsical, too 
 arbitrary, to command absolute praise. His was in no sense a constructive 
 temperament; his originality as a painter consists largely in his power of 
 scattering and decomposing the convention of others. 
 
 His human type, when he condescends in his pictures to give attention to 
 this, is a low one, much lower than Tintoretto's; a dilated eye does duty for 
 expression. The ' Descent of the Holy Spirit,' still catalogued at the Prado, 
 shows this unwillingness to realize things plastically, and his trust to a wild 
 form of improvisation; yet the picture attracts by its flame-like aspect. The 
 'Baptism of Christ' in the Prado is a more responsible work. One detects in 
 the extravagant mannerism of the forms an idealizing tendency, notably in 
 the delicate hands and long feet; the angels, with their doll-like faces, support 
 a large crimson mantle, in itself a delightful "painter's motive," forming as it 
 does a sort of niche for the figure of the Saviour; the St. John shows a sensi- 
 
 [288] 
 
ELGRECO 35 
 
 tiveness of type we find sometimes in El Greco's portraits; at his feet is the 
 stump of a felled tree and an axe; but where the art-lover is charmed out of 
 criticism is in the treatment of the heaven above, in which we forget the small, 
 doll-like faces of the spirits in the visionary and instantaneous effect of the 
 whole, the blotches of vivid electric cloud in which dart and shimmer the 
 flame-like forms of little baby angels, each in its little world of cloud and 
 light; they are like birds who, thrown up into the air, tumble and quiver be- 
 fore regaining the use of their wings. 
 
 We find further evidence of painter's delight in the mottled sky and the 
 three white mitres of the *St. Bernard' hanging near. In the fine early pic- 
 ture of the 'Ascension,' painted when El Greco was twenty-three (lent by the 
 Infanta Isabella of Bourbon), we notice a more careful, a more thoroughly 
 worked-out attempt at that originality El Greco strove for all his life under 
 the accusation of being an imitator of Titian and Tintoretto; in this and in 
 the 'Trinity' he produced there is more variety in the heads, a more plastic 
 use of the brush, a more vivid use of color — green, crimson, straw-yellow, 
 blue, orange, lavender — and a sort of vinous and stain-like quality in the 
 paint itself. Velasquez remembered the color of this work in his ' Coronation 
 of the Virgin.' 
 
 We cannot deny to El Greco a certain visionary quality: a poor replica 
 hangs in the Prado of his ' Burial of the Count of Organza,' the original being 
 at Toledo. This picture shares with his 'Theban Legion' at the Escorial the 
 claim to be El Greco's most typical work. Against a space of abstract color 
 flickers the light of a few torches, which illumine a row of vivid portrait heads, 
 cut off by their white ruffs and isolated in space; seen out of relation to each 
 other, yet dominated by a sense of awe and piety. Some are ecstatic, others 
 self-absorbed; below this band of fervent faces glimmers the exaggerated 
 whiteness, the exaggerated elegance, of a few hands; and the central group, 
 at first dominated by the row of spectators, emerges from the gloom in flashes 
 of gold, white, steel-blue, as the noble figure of an old bishop bends beneath 
 the weight of a man in armor whom they are about to entomb, and who is 
 supported also by a deacon in embroidered vestments. The group is ad- 
 mirably invented, full of a passionate awe and tenderness; the shroud of gray- 
 white against the black armor, the large white mitre of the bishop, are all ad- 
 mirable "painter's inventions." The upper part of the picture is a confused 
 and swaying mass of angels and holy persons drifting on large strata of strange 
 cloud-forms, lit from within. El Greco's human type, even in his portraits, 
 is odd, fervent, pointed in brow and lacking a back and base to the cranium; 
 there are fervor and elegance in his work, which on the average is whimsical 
 and hasty. 
 
 This decadent artist has at least one virtue, which we find in several de- 
 cadents — that in aim, if fatuous, he was not commonplace. Sensational, 
 impatient, and extravagant as he is, El Greco never meant to appeal to com- 
 mon and comfortable ideals. He also saves us from that somewhat unthink- 
 ing and unemotional point of view which marks the decadent but by no means 
 unattractive or unimportant work of mannerists such as the Italians Parmi- 
 
 eianino and Baroccio. 
 
 [289] 
 
36 MASTERS IN ART 
 
 But what is decadence ? Below the surface of much decadent art lies, un- 
 balanced, it is true, a wish to stimulate and charm, such as is ever present in 
 classical art itself. I am reminded of the confession of a drunkard, whose 
 excuse for getting drunk was not that he liked drinking, but that he liked to 
 "see things more interesting than they were." In this sense El Greco wished 
 to make things seem "more interesting than they were;" but, unlike most 
 decadents, his method was limited and often insufficient, and, like Blake the 
 mystic, he was not always as much under the influence of his artistic or spirit- 
 ual Daemon as he imagined. With El Greco the spectator is invited to a dis- 
 play of artistic fireworks which does not always come off, but unmistakably 
 smokes and sputters. 
 
 We have not apphed the word "decadent" to El Greco to indicate a merely 
 decaying and dereHct type, such as each school and nation may show at 
 times — men who are merely bad artists and poor craftsmen; in this sense the 
 popular EngHsh painter may be a decadent, however "popular" or "whole- 
 some" his aim; whether he paints 'Cattle in a Surrey Field' or 'Well-known 
 Footsteps.' El Greco belongs to a genuine type of artists in whom the proper 
 balance between aim and achievement is disturbed by something feverish 
 and lacking in the sense of intellectual responsibility. He belongs to a class 
 of artists in whom we find, on a different level, even such great names as 
 Botticelli and Tintoretto — men in whom the romantic effort oversets or 
 strains the plastic sense to a dangerous point, a hasty effort not always suffi- 
 cient or significant; and beneath these great artists we may still admire lesser 
 men such as Filippino Lippi, Bazzi, and those later mannerists in paint and 
 form such as Bassani, whose efforts were insufficient; Parmigianino, who is 
 fatuous and monotonous; and Baroccio, who inherited some of the charm and 
 all the weakness of Correggio. With these painters we must place El Greco. 
 In the art of Theotocopuli, who was Spanish only by adoption, we notice some 
 of the extravagant intensity latent in the Spanish character itself, which 
 Spanish painting hardly ever reflected. 
 
 PAUL LAFOND «LES ARTS' OCTOBER, 1906 
 
 HIS work is all passion. His quality of generalization makes him appre- 
 ciate the eternal forms of nature. His evoking soul has rendered in 
 powerful and subtle interpretations the expression of the Idea, the significance 
 of the Word. El Greco is a sublime thinker, who by means of imagery has ex- 
 pressed beings and states of soul — beings, too, as complicated as we; states of 
 souls as troubled as ours. His work is of the most emotional and captivating 
 that art has produced. The real master is he who creates a type, a manner; 
 and by this one should understand a new way of rendering that nature which 
 does not itself change; a new way of expressing feelings old as the world, and 
 consequently enriching the domain of art by a hidden treasure. El Greco is 
 one of these privileged beings. His work brings with it surprises and sensa- 
 tions till now unknown. Although wholly saturated in nature, it fascinates 
 and conquers as though a new thing. 
 
 To this primordial quality he adds an intense emotion, He, an intelli- 
 
 [290] 
 
EL GRECO 37 
 
 gence essentially emancipated, lifts spirits above this material appetite and 
 joys. A sincere and refined melancholy rises from his productions, as from 
 those of our own Delacroix. Before these one cannot choose but be caught 
 and troubled by their depth, their nobility, their vivacity of expression, their 
 grandeur. His figures, translucid and elongated out of all measure, of super- 
 human life, in stretched-out attitudes, with crumpled draperies, shock us 
 like apparitions. His unhealthy tones, running from crude white to absolute 
 black; his harmonies, almost too acute and capricious and jumbled (accords 
 which come near to dissonance), give a fever, as it were. The master has an 
 indefinable sense of the Invisible Life and what lies beyond, mingles in his 
 figures in a bizarre fashion which leaves a disquieting obsession. They dis- 
 concert, they astonish, they captivate. 
 
 More than any one, save Rembrandt, does he have the sense of what is 
 dramatic — but dramatic movement coming from simple action, ever heroic 
 or noble, without complication; something outside what happens to be pic- 
 turesque for the moment. It is from this in great part that he draws his mys- 
 terious power. 
 
 Few masters have pushed the science of composition further, though all 
 the while dissimilating it. In his work the groups are balanced or opposed 
 with a rare perfection. No one has shown as much care and science in the 
 preparation of his works. Never did El Greco brush in a canvas, model a 
 statue, design a plan for architecture, without first making numerous sketches 
 or projects or designs. We have, for that matter, the proof in the 'Conversa- 
 tions on Painting' by Pacheco, which recounts that, having been to see the 
 master at Toledo, this latter showed him the ebauches of his pictures, the 
 statuettes in terra-cotta for his statues. The father-in-law of Velasquez was 
 stupefied. "For," he writes, "who would think that Domenico Greco made 
 studies for his work, repainted them time and time again, to the end that he 
 might separate and disunite the tints and thus give to his canvas that look of 
 cruel daubings in order to stimulate a greater liberty of handling and a greater 
 power." 
 
 Let us leave to the timorous Pacheco any responsibility for his sayings; 
 but could one expect anything else from the weak and untemperamental, 
 petty master ?. . . . 
 
 Why should Domenikos Theotokopuli have left Italy when he was be- 
 ginning to make himself known, where the future smiled on him, pledging 
 herself to him under happy auspices ? On what occasion did he leave the 
 Eternal City, where he could not have lacked for friends and protectors ? 
 Had not the capital of the world all which should hold a young and enthu- 
 siastic artist .i* Chef J'ceuvres were there to be met at every step, those of past 
 civilizations as well as those of the hardly-ended Renaissance. According 
 to the saying of Montaigne, who visited Rome but a little later, Rome was 
 then the cosmopolitan city where every stranger found himself at home, and 
 where difference in nationality did not count at all. 
 
 Was the young painter called into Spain by Philip ii on Titian's recommen- 
 dation ? The sovereign had told Titian to send some of his scholars to him. 
 
 [291] 
 
38 MASTERS IN ART 
 
 Or was it suggested to El Greco to try to win the competition for the decora- 
 tion of the Cathedral of Toledo ? Or did he come of himself, drawn by that 
 need for novelty and for adventure which was so common with the artists of 
 past centuries ? Who knows ? All is mist and shadow in these days of El 
 Greco's infancy and youth. 
 
 GUSTAVE GEOFFROY 'LES MUSEES D'EUROPE: MADRID' 
 
 GRECO'S admiration for Titian, Palma, Bassano, Tintoretto, made place 
 for a passionate liking for direct vision of things and of people. He 
 painted naively, strongly, what he saw; and his dryness, his harshness, are of 
 a strange, new kind. He has not given up color; he shows it in the light, and 
 he is extraordinarily luminous. There is nothing sinister; on the other hand, 
 it is a hymn to light. The drawing is sometimes deformed; the people are 
 stretched out beyond all measure. El Greco was evidently striving for a dec- 
 orative aspect, and, like all searchers, he happened to deceive himself. 
 
 This stretching-out came to him through Italy from Tintoretto, have I said ? 
 And through Tintoretto from Michael Angelo. But one can pardon an error in 
 a great, passionate artist so admirably gifted with skill in grouping figures, in 
 distributing the pure and greatly simplified colorations of his palette; to give 
 to all these faces that expression of passion, of ecstasy, of violence, and of 
 ravishment. 
 
 Despite two absent chefs J'csuvre, one finds El Greco at Madrid with 
 both his faults and his qualities which belong to his anxious genius. He is 
 there with religious pictures, 'The Baptism of Christ,' 'The Crucifixion,' 
 'The Resurrection,' 'Christ Dead in the Arms of the Father,' and one sees 
 with astonishment this religious painting of so triumphant an aspect, which 
 seems sonorous with trumpet-calls — these shadowed skies, these chalky 
 lights, these little heads; and amid the movement and the tumult are charm- 
 ing expressions, that of the blonde Magdalen at the foot of the Cross, of a 
 Mary in blue and red, of saints, of angels, of youths, and little maids with 
 baby faces, the mouth small, the nose tip-tilted, the eyes wide open. 
 
 You see images of saints, St. Basil, St. Francis, St. Anthony, and St. Paul, 
 like statues, or like heads of statues, of worm-eaten wood, or of moist and 
 mossy granite. There is something Gothic about Greco. And then if you 
 have passed into the hall of portraits, you find again people like the spectators 
 in the 'Burial of the Count of Orgaz' — black pour points, white ruffs, gray 
 faces with pointed beards and eyes which start out from the serious faces. 
 Such are the portraits of 'A Doctor,' who holds a book; of Don Rodrigo Vaz- 
 quez, President of Castille; of him whom one might call the 'Man with a 
 Sword,' a young and grave physiognomy, one hand on the breast, the guard of 
 a sword just visible. 
 
 I leave El Greco with the feeling that he was before all a painter, and that 
 the artist in him was double: an observer, fond of the sharpest, the harshest 
 reality; a decorator, ambitious to make light blaze from the walls. 
 
 [292] 
 
EL GRECO 39 
 
 Cije Woxke of €1 <Bxtto 
 
 DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PLATES 
 •THE ANNUNCIATION' PLATE I 
 
 AVERY characteristic example of El Greco, of a certain charm, and yet 
 illustrating very clearly various of his faults. The arms and heads are 
 of that curious, pulled-out quality which we have come to associate with him; 
 but note, in the left arm of the angel, that the faults of drawing are those of 
 exaggeration rather than lack of perception; that is, the contour is expressive, 
 but the thick parts of the arm are made too wide in relation to the thinner 
 parts. There is considerable knowledge of construction in the way the wrist 
 is attached to the hand, only the thing is done carelessly. 
 
 The composition is well balanced and original. Indeed, it is interesting to 
 note how far El Greco has departed from the conventional arrangement of 
 the Annunciation used by almost every Italian painter from.Giotto to Da Vinci. 
 
 'PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL TAVERA' PLATE II 
 
 AGAIN a most characteristic head. It illustrates, among other things. El 
 ./A. Greco's tendency to paint heads thin and long drawn out. In this re- 
 spect he was quite different from his Venetian masters, who, if anything, erred 
 on the opposite of dumpiness. 
 
 This glabre and pallid face is at first sight rather forbidding. Yet there is 
 much of interest in it. The character is of a peculiar and highly specialized 
 type. El Greco was particularly successful in rendering sympathetically the 
 character of churchmen, and this head is no exception to that rule. Note par- 
 ticularly the peculiar and specialized character of the weary eyes; the singu- 
 lar mouth, and the long nose; also the modeling about the temple and again 
 under the cheek-bone and about the muscles round the mouth. 
 
 The hand is made with that singular ineptitude which at times character- 
 ized the Greek. 
 
 •THEASSUMPTIONOFTHEVIRGIN' PLATEIII 
 
 AVERY characteristic example of El Greco in that there are admirable 
 bits in it and again other pieces of deplorably careless rendering. For 
 instance, the drapery about the Virgin does not impress one as at all well ex- 
 pressed, while, on the other hand, certain of the heads appear remarkably well 
 done. Note particularly the saint gazing upward and the bald head leaning 
 forward. 
 
 The composition may be a little reminiscent of Titian's 'Assumption,' but 
 in details is quite different. Its chief fault is that the canvas is frankly divided 
 into two pictures, with no subtle binding together of the two. As in most of 
 El Greco's pictures, the realistic heads in the lower part are much more suc- 
 cessful than the more or less idealized rendering of the upper half. 
 
 [293] 
 
40 MASTERS IN ART 
 
 'PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL SFORZA PALLAVICINO' PLATE IV 
 
 PAINTED on a rather coarse canvas, apparently prepared with a red 
 ground. The handhng in the whites is rather impasto, apparently made 
 with oil paints, though possibly with tempora glaze. 
 
 The composition, with its arrangement of head and hands, is effective, if 
 curious. Note that the left hand holds two books. The head is distinguished 
 in character and is an evident likeness, though constructed after El Greco's 
 peculiar fashion. The chair and book, though curious in drawing, are in 
 paint quality very much as Velasquez might have done them. The technique 
 is quite direct, although one observes signs of glazing on the mouth, the tips 
 of the fingers, and in some of the shadows. The color. quality of the white and 
 black vestments, the greenish chair, and the brown background are partic- 
 ularly fine, although the shadows of the white are rather brownish. 
 
 In sum, this is one of the finest of El Greco's portraits. His good qualities 
 show in it to the best advantage, and his defects add a pleasing quaintness. 
 
 'THE NATIVITY' " PLATE V 
 
 THIS is introduced as one of the most extreme examples of El Greco's art. 
 The drawing of some of the pieces, as, for instance, the cherub in fore- 
 shortening, the leg of the kneeling shepherd, the side of the Madonna's head, 
 is unbelievable. At the same time, the group is well composed and possibly 
 was the Plan type on which like subjects by Ribera and by Murillo were built 
 up. Observe that the figures are lit by radiance from the Infant Jesus. This 
 idea may have been borrowed from the famous *La Notte' of Correggio. In- 
 deed, the main lines of the Greek's composition are very similar to that of the 
 Italian's: the lighting is imagined rather than studied from nature. It would 
 be impossible that the face and arm of the kneeling shepherd should be so lit 
 by light from the Child. 
 
 The face of the Virgin, despite its singular drawing, has a certain charm, 
 and the head of St. Joseph is eminently Grecoesque, looking, indeed, more 
 like a fierce Jeremiah than a meek Joseph. 
 
 <ST. BASIL* PLATE VI 
 
 THIS is one of the figures of saints to which Geoffroy somewhat flippantly 
 refers as being worm-eaten. Despite the excessive smallness of the head, 
 perhaps because of it, the figure is not lacking in a certain severe dignity. The 
 hands, again, though extremely small, are characteristic, that holding the staff 
 being perhaps the more successful of the two. The landscape background 
 should be noted as being exceptionally fine, especially to the left side of the 
 saint. It suggests the sort of landscape which Velasquez was later to paint, 
 and is altogether of a different, more modern sentiment than the landscape 
 backgrounds of El Greco's Venetian masters. The embroidery on the vest- 
 ments, of a singularly high degree of finish, is possibly the work of an assistant. 
 The head of the saint, though still characteristic of the painter, is one of his 
 best constructed and most soberly painted performances. 
 
 [294] 
 
EL GRECO [ :% I \l'\,*\'',l'<iA\ 
 
 • PORTRAIT OF A PHYSICIAN' PLATE VII 
 
 ANOTHER of El Greco's long faces, but what expression of character lies 
 .in the cold, pale, phlegmatic face! The eyes are interesting as being 
 done in a manner half way, as it were, from the Venetian convention and 
 from Velasquez's pure light and shade. The eye is, for the matter of that, well 
 expressed in light and shade, but the nuances of modeling in the half-light do 
 not appear well expressed. Titian, on the other hand, never quite broke 
 away from the old convention of drawing the eye like a button-hole; and while 
 his vision was so acute that eventually he made a good eye, one will find in 
 studying one of his heads painted in the same position as this that the eye is 
 not so simply and frankly stated in mere light and shade as with El Greco. 
 
 The head is particularly well done, and in its distinction and character sug- 
 gests some that Velasquez later painted. 
 
 •PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL DON FERNANDO NINO DE GUEVARA" PLATE VIII 
 
 IN some respects the most successful, at the least the most complete, of 
 Greco's portraits. The stuffs are rendered with great skill. Note the paint- 
 ing of lace, which is done very freely yet suggestively, in manner more like 
 Velasquez than like the Venetian masters. The textures and quality of the 
 skirt and cape are remarkably rendered. The head is of a peculiar character, 
 which is very well expressed. A slight expression of slyness may be caused by 
 the eyes looking sideways toward the spectator, although the mouth as well 
 looks as if it belonged to no simple-minded priest. As to the hands, one, the 
 prelate's left, seems to have caused the painter a good deal of trouble and is 
 even now not wholly successful. The other one is better. 
 
 •HEADOFAMAN' PLATEIX 
 
 ONE of the most successful of El Greco's single heads. The face is full ot 
 character and quite sufficiently well drawn. Note, however, that the 
 man's right eye is considerably higher than his left. This is a detail which 
 mediocre painters almost always get right, but of which Greco apparently was 
 oblivious. The edges of the hair against the background are very well studied 
 and in a peculiarly modern way; that is. El Greco, unlike his Venetian mas- 
 ters, apparently got his edges by sheer brushwork, where these latter would 
 have painted the thing more or less hard and then achieved their soft edge by 
 glazings and retouchings. 
 
 The ruff is treated in a broad, almost impressionistic, way, rather than in 
 the somewhat meticuleux way of Titian. 
 
 •CHRIST DEAD IN THE ARMS OF GOD' ' PLATE X 
 
 THIS is one of the most characteristic of El Greco's compositions, illustra- 
 ting very well both his merits and defects. The composition is hardly so 
 interesting as some of his, yet it very clearly indicates the intention of the pic- 
 ture. The drawing is singular, like all of the Greek master's. It is said that 
 he had a defect of vision which made him see everything a little twisted. At 
 the same time, the construction is well understood, showing the artist's close 
 
 [295] 
 
4'^ . MASTERSINART 
 
 Study of Michael Angelo. Bits like the elbow, the wrist, and the knee of the 
 dead Christ are done with understanding and with considerable finesse. The 
 expression of the heads is well indicated, the character of both the principal 
 figures being well searched and studied. 
 
 A LIST OF EL GRECo's PAINTINGS IN VARIOUS GALLERIES 
 
 AUSTRIA. Vienna: Portrait of a Young Man — ENGLAND. London, National 
 x\. Gallery: Christ driving out the Money Changers — Richmond, Sir F. Cook's 
 Collection: Christ driving out the Money Changers — FRANCE. Paris, M. Chris- 
 tian Cherfils: Genre pictures. Boy, Girl, and Monkey — Don Raimondo de Ma- 
 drazo: Holy Family — M. L. Manzi: Portrait — Prades, Palais de Justice: Cruci- 
 fixion — GERMANY. Dresden: Healing of the Blind Man — ITALY. Naples: 
 Julio Clovio — Parma: Healing of the Blind Man — RUMANIA. Bucharest: Mar- 
 riage of the Virgin — RUSSIA. St. Petersburg: Alonso Ercield — SCOTLAND. 
 Glasgow, McCorkindale Collection: The Nativity — SPAIN. Illescas, Church 
 of the Hospital de la Caridad: Figure of Charity; Coronation of the Virgin; The 
 Birth of Our Lord; The Annunciation; Portrait of San Isidore — Madrid, Don Ignacio 
 Zuloaga: St. Francis — Don Pablo Borch: Good replica of the 'Coronation of the 
 Virgin' — Marquis de Casa Torres: St. Sebastian — Marquis de Cerralbo: St. 
 Francis — Chapter Hall, Escorial: San Mauric del Escorial; Dream of Philip ii; 
 San Eugenio and San Pedro — Prado Museum: The Baptism; The Crucifixion; St. 
 Paul; Christ dead in the Arms of the Eternal Father (Plate x); Rodrigo Vasquez; St. 
 Anthony of Padua — Sr. BeruetE: Christ driving out the Money Changers; Head of a 
 Man (Plate ix); Portrait of a Physician (Plate vii); St. Basil (Plate vi) — Palencia, 
 Cathedral: St. Sebastian- — ^Toledo, Cathedral: El Espolio — Chapel of San Jose: 
 St. Joseph; The Coronation of the Virgin; The Virgin and Child with Sta. Inez and Sta. 
 Fido; St. Martin de Tours on Horseback — Church of Sta. Tome: Burial of the 
 Count of Orgaz; Parting of Christ and the Virgin — Provincial Museum : St. Bartholo- 
 mew; Canon Antonio de Covarrubias; Don Diego de Covarrubias; Portrait of Cardinal 
 Tavera (Plate ii) — UNITED STATES. Boston, Art Museum: Portrait of Cardinal 
 Sforza Pallavicino (Plate iv) — Chicago, Art Institute: The Assumption (Plate iii). 
 
 €1 (§xtto 33ibliograpi)p 
 
 A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL BOOKS AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES 
 DEALING WITH EL GRECO 
 
 ALEXANDRE, A, Histoire Populaire de la Peinture. Paris [1895] — Bryan. Dic- 
 XA. tionary of Painters and Engravers. London, 1903 — CoLE, T. Old Spanish Mas- 
 ters. New York, 1907 — -Cossio, M. E. Greco — Gautier, T. Voyage en Espagne. 
 Boston, 1896 — Geoffroy, G. The Prado. Paris [1907] — Justi, C. Diego Velasquez 
 and his Times. London, 1889 — Lefort, P. Peinture Espagnola. Paris [1893] — 
 Muther, R. History of Painting. New York, 1907 — Ricketts, C. S. The Art of 
 the Prado. Boston, 1907 — Stirling-Maxwell, Sir W. Annals of the Artists of 
 Spain. London, 1891. 
 
 MAGAZINE articles 
 
 GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS, 1906: P. Lafond; (La) Chapelle San Jose de 
 Toledi et ses peintures de Greco. 1907: P. Lafond; Etudes et document sur le 
 Greco. 1908: P. Lafond; Etude et documents sur le Greco — Zeitschrift fur Bil- 
 dende Kunst, 1897-98: C. Justi; Domenico Theotocopuli von Krete. 
 
 [296] 
 
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