TOMB OF CARDINAL MENDOZA
TOMB OF CARDINAL MENDOZA

Not so the too famous and too horrible Trasparente behind the High Altar. What such a thing can possibly mean surpasses the average understanding. In the midst of all that one must venerate, in the home of majesty and loveliness, where beauty in stone and wood and colour takes its supreme form and hues, what effect but that of artistic scandal can such a monstrous creation have? One stares, one wonders, one could even weep for such inexplicable desecration, but one remains mystified and disheartened. Ponz a century ago wrote: “It is marble, an enormous affair in which it would have been better to have forever in the bowels of the hills of Carrara than to have brought it here to be a real blot in the Cathedral.” This celebrated atrocity is the work of Narciso Tomé, a native of Toledo, who, if he were useful for nothing else to posterity, offers an exceptional opportunity of measuring the frightful depths into which the dignity of Spanish art was plunged in the beginning of the last century. The degraded art of Churriguera may be bad enough elsewhere; here only does it stand out a gilt, magnificent marble nightmare, which cannot even be criticised, so awed is imagination by an ugliness that defies classification and repels reason. The man who paid 200,000 ducats for this blot upon a perfect temple, were he pope or bishop, merited at least a strait-waistcoat. Instead, he and the artist, and the thing itself, evoked, on its conclusion, national triumph and rejoicings, processions, illuminations, fire-works and bull-fights. Consistency is not a virtue we have a right to expect from races any more than from persons, so the massacre of horses and the idle torture of bulls, the encouragement of the brute instinct of cruelty, the destruction of which is admittedly the object of the mild and tolerant religion of Christ, may be regarded as nothing inordinately outrageous in ecclesiastical feastings. A modern Spanish critic is proud to own that for his part “he would not touch a hair of the smallest statue of this sumptuous fabrication,” and regards it as an interesting page in the history of Spanish architecture. There are of course curious natures who find interest in corruption and a certain majesty in madness. To these Churrigueresque masterpieces may be left, and with so many stupendous demands upon our admiration as the Cathedral holds, such a flaunting provocation of the contrary feeling may by the wise and grateful be accepted as a pause, a rest in interjectional contentment.

In the dim subterranean chapel of the sepulchre, there are sculptures and paintings worthy of inspection if there were light enough to see them by. One can see, however, that the sculptural group representing the burial of Christ by Copin of Holland is remarkable, but the paintings remain vague and blurred in the partially illuminated obscurity.

But however interesting each of the chapels may be, it is the general view that remains the loveliest thing about the Cathedral. Before you enter the space between the Coro and the Capilla Major, on looking up to the circular pierced arches between the curving line of columns, you will perceive a clear and charming evidence of Moorish influence in the architecture. The delicate pillars and horse-shoe arcade are familiar and welcome, and may again be seen running across the outer aisles. Nothing more graceful could be imagined than this light foreign touch in the sombre austerity of Gothic art. Again you are reminded of the Moors by a rich arch covered with lace-work in the chapel of Santa Lucia, mudejar rather than wholly Moorish, which looks quite oriental in front of the Renaissance arch of the other side of the chapel. It is such a variety in beauty that lends perpetual freshness to this monumental glory of Toledo. It has a face for every tone of reverie and musing. The light is always softly brilliant, and shadow not dense but suggestive; the very silence has the penetrative quality of mysticism, so that already on your second visit you will have ceased to feel a mere tourist, so intimate and instantaneous is its possession of you. Each day I have dwelt in the old imperial city, I have unconsciously wended my way to its doors. No matter what direction I started to take, it almost became a necessity to begin or end my daily wanderings by a pause in this spiritualised immensity of stone. I have never found its wonderful charm diminished by familiarity; on the contrary, the coloured rays of light from above, striking upon the brown shade of stone, seem ever more and more witching; the delicate tones of shadow more and more mysterious, and the unrivalled grandeur of long forested perspectives of aisles and of spacious naves, with the multiplicity of arches and windows, ever a greater testimony of Toledo’s departed glory.

Space forbids anything like a detailed account of the chapels and cloisters of the Cathedral. These latter are not to be compared with most of the other Spanish cloisters,—with, for instance, those of Segovia, of Santiago, of Burgos or Oviedo. There is the inevitable felicitous contrast of foliage and columned arch, and here, certainly, the note is more joyous than elsewhere, with the deep yellow light striking radiantly upon this large, airy square of sun-shot leafage open to the heavens. The cloisters were built by Cardinal Tenorio, and Blas Ortiz, a contemporary Toledan of Philip II. describes them in his beautiful caligraphy, preserved in the Biblioteca Provinciale, as “sumptuous.” This is a favourite adjective with the Spaniards who write about Toledo. It saves a multiplicity of explanations. The frescoes on the walls, painted by Bayeu after the manner of Vanloo, represent scenes from the life of St Eugenius and the famous legend of the Niño perdido. They are decorative but not interesting, and Gautier pronounces them out of keeping with the austere elegance of the architecture. It must be earlier paintings, since effaced, that Blas Ortiz describes as perfectissime. The fine door of the Presentation, a good specimen of plateresca work, was wrought by Pedro Castañeda, Juan Vasquez, Toribio Rodriguez, Juan Manzano, and Andréz Hernandez. The design and the reliefs are well worth careful examination. The portada de Santa Catalina commands attention. It is excessively decorated, and bears the arms of Spain and of the Tenorios; one of the finest details of the façade is the statue of St Catherine holding in one hand the wheel and in the other the sword, emblems of her martyrdom. Historical value is attached to Bayeu’s frescoe representing the reception at Toledo of the bones of St Eugenius, 1565. Philip II. and his son are there, as well as the archdukes Rudolph and Ernest, and there is a view of the Puerta Visagra through which the procession entered. Other frescoes treat of the Moorish saint Casilda, and on the north side is the chapel of St Blaise, built also by Tenorio as his coat of arms indicates. On a pedestal within a railing is a fragment found near St John of the Penetencia testifying to the date of the consecration of the Cathedral.

Near the cloister entrance is the chapel of St John or the Canons, as mass can only be said here by the chapter. The old Tower chapel here used to be called the Quo Vadis, and was dedicated to St Peter. Cardinal Tavera, designing it for his sepulchre, consecrated it to St John. The fine artesonado ceiling is picked out in gold and black, with carved flowers and figures; the altars are richly wrought and painted. Antonio Ponz in the last century greatly praises Luiz Velasco’s three pictures here. On the opposite side of the great gates is the Mozarabe chapel, set apart by Cisneros for the famous Gothic rite; the porch is Gothic; the doors of good renaissance style, were wrought in 1524 by Juan Frances; and the frescoes, painted by John of Burgundy, representing the conquest of Oran and triumph of the founder have no great value. There is a retablo of St Francis placed by Dr Francisco of Pisa, the historian of Toledo, who is buried outside. The chief interest of the Mozarabe chapel is centred in its quaint old ritual which may be heard here every morning at 9 A.M., and will be found extremely puzzling to follow. The canons behind, in a sombre, flat monotone, chant responses to the officiating priest at the altar. The sound combines the enervating effect of the hum of wings, whirr of looms, wooden thud of pedals, the boom and rush of immense wings circling round and round. After the first stupefaction, I have never heard anything more calculated to produce headache, nervous irritation, or the contrary soporific effect. In summer it must be terrible. In an old MS. of the Biblioteca in the last century there is a grave complaint made that the Gothic Mozarabe rite had already fallen from its beautiful solemnity, and that it was to be deplored that it should now be performed with such little decency and so little in accord with the founder’s idea. The writer naïvely hopes that the advent of Carlos III., which promised such general reform, would lift up again a degraded ritual and “that it would be placed in the rank of decency and splendour that a vestige so singular and worthy of appreciation deserves.” A hope not realised if I may judge from my assistance at the service. There was neither quaintness nor piety that I could see, but the canons looked and gabbled as if their thoughts were several miles away, staring roundly at the foreigners, and exchanging smiles as they altered their places.

There are many minor chapels and offices one must overlook in a general description. The wood-work of the Sala capitular and the Anté sala was wrought by Copin of Holland and Antonio Gutierrez. The ceiling of the Anté sala is most charming, a brilliant moresque style, admirably painted and of quite regal magnificence, one of the best specimens of artesonada. The long carved

CAPITULAR DOOR IN TOLEDO CATHEDRAL
CAPITULAR DOOR IN TOLEDO CATHEDRAL

cupboards on either side are Copin’s and Durango’s work. Copin’s especially is delightful, simple, dignified, not over elaborated. Both are divided in panels which are covered with reliefs, exquisitely designed. Vases, heads, figures, masks, and every kind of mediaeval fancy abound. A Moorish doorway executed by Bonéfacio in 1510, leads into the Sala capitular, one of the loveliest of Spain. The doors are of a rich renaissance, full of busts, leafage, and gilt reliefs. The painted arms of Cisneros and of Lopez de Ayala are worked into the garlands above, and the archiepiscopal choir below is another good specimen of Copin of Holland, who did so much for this cathedral. Round the walls are the portraits of the archbishops, beginning with St Eugenius. The old series ends with Cisneros, and the second begins with William of Croy. Most of the recent portraits are wretched daubs. There are paintings here by John of Burgundy on a level with those of the Mozarabe chapel, while the effect of the Giordano ceiling is striking. The light seems to fall in perpendicular rays. In the matter of paintings the Cathedral would be poor enough but for a Titian and the splendid picture of El Greco in the sacristy. When you have gazed at that virile, majestic figure of Christ, felt the charm of its lofty expression, of its wonderful suggestion of aloofness and fatality, marvelled at the colouring, the splendid boldness of design and grouping, the vigour and naturalness of the figure of the first plan bent forward to bore a hole in the cross at his feet previous to inserting the nails, you may ask yourself in dismay what gave rise to the legend of El Greco’s madness. Stay a moment. This is unfortunately not the last word of El Greco. This grave and lovely Expolio de Jesus, hardly second to that other astounding masterpiece, “The burial of Count Orgaz” in Santo Tomé, has its lamentable sequel in the St John the Baptist of the Hospital de Afuera, which lets you into the secret. Whether or no El Greco ever went mad we have no means now of knowing, though he undoubtedly gives the impression in the St John of genius labouring under some wild and extraordinary influence. But the Expolio is as perfect and sane a masterpiece as artist ever produced. All the tones are cold and subdued, as if a brilliant imagination purposely steadied and held itself in check to realise the highest and simplest expression of repose. The agony is past, transient revolt is over, and here stands the Son of Man in the hands of his ruthless enemies, insusceptible to personal indignity, greater than death, the supreme ideal of resignation, of its majesty rather than its sweetness. No wonder the lovers of El Greco regard him as the precursor of Velasquez, and will have it that Velasquez studied him as master, and from him learned the secret of his own immortal dignity and cold majestic grace. When you look long at this great picture, you wonder how an artist like Théophile Gautier came to write the flippant nonsense he did about El Greco. Even if the legend of the painter’s madness were true, it is certainly not apparent in this canvas. What is apparent is a complete want, felt everywhere in El Greco’s work, of sensibility of the more subtle and penetrative kind, an inaptitude that made the limitation of his art to conceive or paint emotion on a woman’s face. The three Maries are present, so close as to touch the robe of Jesus. Well, the three faces express nothing stronger in feeling than curiosity, in the case of the middle figure more slightly depressed by a vague instinct of passive grief; in the case of the younger women such a curiosity as a passing incident might excite, with neither a touch of terror nor abhorrence much less that of martyred love. The dark and lovely head behind of the third woman, said to be the painter’s daughter, with the superb hand and arm, is that of a young Toledan girl placidly watching some street procession and looking for the appearance of her lover. The smile is not far from the shadowed eyes and sweet, grave mouth, and the whole suggests soft, young romance. A rash youth, passing at that moment, if his eyes fell first upon her in the tragic scene, would greet her with an eloquent smile, and probably fling her a kiss through the air, but he would never suppose she was looking on at barbarous men as they bored holes in a cross and tore the garments from the form of her Lord and Saviour about to be crucified.

The same curious indifference to appropriate form and expression is shown in his St John the Evangelist. The last of the row of apostles on the right of the sacristy, a pallid, lean young man enveloped in the peculiar tints of dull green and faded pink, one soon learns to recognise as El Greco’s hues of predilection, which are more than once reproduced elsewhere in the figures of St Joseph, the infant Jesus and Mary. This is not the dreamy and loving youth of the New Testament, full of tenderness and mystical reverie. The face is delicately hard, long, pointed and intellectual, its cold ardour clouded with a suggestion of impatience and contempt.

Opposite the Trasparente is the chapel of San Ildephonso. Painted on a vault outside is an armed cavalier bearing a standard in one hand and an emblazoned shield in the other. This is the famous Estevan Illan, descended as we have seen from Don Pedro Paleologus, of imperial Greek origin, and founder of the powerful family of the Toledos, since the Dukes of Alba. The general effect of this chapel is costly rather than beautiful. It is impossible not to be oppressed by the sensation of display, not that it is in the least gaudy; it is too solidly wealthy and artistic in its elaboration for that. The mouldings are rich, the decorations are rich, and rich beyond calculation are the tombs. Grander and less elaborate is the really great chapel of Santiago, better known perhaps as the Constable’s Chapel. This was built by Alvaro de Luna as a vast mausoleum for himself and his wife. It is astonishingly bright when you remember its dimensions and its imposing height; of sober taste notwithstanding its flowered ogival style, subdued, while what the Spaniards delight to call everything here, “sumptuous.” The word indeed may not be grudged in this instance, where it is sonorous and appropriate. To do honour to this edifice, Don Alvaro de Luna commanded truly miraculous tombs for himself and his wife, on which lay their full-length figures in gilt-bronze, so fashioned that whenever mass was recited, these life-sized figures rose from their recumbent attitudes, and knelt during the service. On its conclusion, they quietly lay down again. Such tombstones, had they remained, would speedily have turned into a form of local entertainment for the townsfolk. But the great Constable fell into his sovereign’s disgrace, he poor, sorry, feeble king, hounded into the basest ingratitude by the clamouring populace and the Constable’s jealous foes. So in the hour of his fall, the infante, Don Enrique of Aragon, had the wonderful tombs with the gilt moving statues, broken up, on which the Constable sarcastically addressed him in verse:

TOMBS OF COUNT ALVARO DE LUNA AND WIFE, THE CATHEDRAL, TOLEDO
TOMBS OF COUNT ALVARO DE LUNA AND WIFE, THE CATHEDRAL, TOLEDO

The tombs that have replaced these were ordered by the Constable’s daughter, and erected, with Queen Isabel’s permission, in 1489, to the memory of a king’s great servant and friend scandalously abandoned by his master. For this Isabel had nearly all the virtues, barring, alas! religious tolerance. She could be trusted to prove true to her own friends, and not meanly condone betrayal of a subject in a fellow-sovereign. But the Constable has fared all the better because of the Infante’s petty spite. I doubt if we should have been much impressed—except as children are by dolls that squeak and walk, or as the child in most of us is delighted with every kind of mechanical spring, from the wheels of watches to cuckoo clocks and German town-clocks, that send dear, quaint little men and women in and out with the day’s revolution—by these gilt tombs, and they serve a wiser and nobler purpose as the exquisitely-wrought pulpits of Villalpando, outside the reja of the Capilla Major. Now Don Alvaro and Doña Juana repose in sculptured marble between life-size kneeling figures of singular impressiveness. Nothing could be grander and more massive than the simple effect of both tombs. There are more beautiful ones, even in Spain—the splendid Italian tomb of Cisneros at Alcala de Henares, tombs in the Cathedral and Cartuja of Burgos, the grand and lovely tomb of Tavera, Berruguete’s last work, in the Hospital de Afuera—but, nevertheless, these great sculptures of an obscure artist, Pablo Ortiz, are worthy of the crowned and castellated mausoleum built for them. The reliefs are gracious, the treatment fluent, large and sober. The noble statues are unfortunately much mutilated, but the flow of folds, the finish and delicacy of detail, are quite Italian. In the retablo are the painted portraits of Don Alvaro and Doña Juana, painted by Juan of Segovia, and on either side of the altar, under canopied tombs, lie other figures.

The artesonado ceiling of the Chapel of the New Kings is similar to that of St John the Baptist. The Gothic retablo is one of the best of the Cathedral. A passage leads to it, and the interior is extremely gilt and ornate. The sovereigns are buried on either side of the chapter, the first being Henry of Trastamare, the founder of the chapel. Rich as it is in gilding, wrought-iron, marble and paintings, it looks small and unimposing after the great chapel of St Jago. Mass is celebrated here every morning at nine. An official in ragged and embroidered finery, at the end of the chapter, stands, holding the crowned and jewelled mace with the arms of Spain.

There is small space to dwell upon the incredible value of the church treasures, only shown at stated periods. Seven canons open the seven doors, each with a separate key. The hour for showing these matchless splendours is 3 P.M., a bad one on account of the light, and the miserable candle the sacristan carries is of small use. Here will you see pearl and precious stones, embroidered mantles, such jewels and gold and silver brocade as surely the eye of man never elsewhere beheld—the rarest of wrought cloaks and robes and laces—all royal presents, or the gifts of cardinals to the Virgin of the Sagrario. The Custodia is, for sheer magnificence, a thing to gape at. It is the work, rather the monument, of a German silver-smith, Henry of Arfe, and his son and grandson. The guide-book describes it as of an unheard-of wealth in jewels, gold work and chiselling. To attempt its description would involve me in another chapter on the Cathedral. Perhaps the most precious thing of all among so many treasures is the sad and mystical wood statue of St Francis of Assisi, by Alonso Cano, some say, by his pupil, Pedro de Mena, later critics aver. Unfortunately, it is vilely placed in a corner, and as well, just in the middle of the face, the glass cover is broken, so that it is difficult to obtain a real view of the head without some portion of the features distorted.

The object of the devotion of the Chapel of the Treasury is a statue of the Virgin, which Our Lady is said to have kissed on her descent from heaven to bestow the chasuble on St Ildefonso. Hence the astounding mantle embroidered by Felipe Corral, made of gold, pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Other notable treasures are the charming specimens of silver repoussé—one, the Rape of the Sabines, so beautifully wrought as for years to have been attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. To-day, the Flemish artist, Mathias Méline, is recognised as the creator. It was the gift to the church of Cardinal Lorenzana. The big silver figures on four globes, with belts and sandals all gleaming with jewels, belong to the time of Felipe II. They command attention, even in all this magnificence of precious metal, precious stones, silk, lace and art; but I do not know who made these statues that represent the four parts of the world.

Two hundred and fifty ounces of seed pearls, 85,000 pearls, as immense a number of diamonds, rubies and amethysts, were expended alone on the Virgin’s celebrated mantle. As for the reliquaries of gold, silver and rock-crystal, the church plate, the incensors, only an auctioneer’s list could do them justice. One hails them marvels of their kind, and passes by. In staring, with an abashed modern gaze, unfamiliar with such sights, at Arfe’s masterpiece, the Custodio, that weighs its weight in precious metal over 10,900 ounces, note the gold cross on the top, said to have been wrought of the first piece of gold brought from America by Columbus, and was raised by Mendoza over the surrendered walls of the Alhambra in the same year.[18]

Historic interest is still more attached to the modest sword shown as that of Alphonso VI., worn by this monarch on his triumphal entry into Toledo, and to the original letter in Latin of St Louis of France to the chapter of Toledo, on sending some sacred relics for the church. It runs: “Luys, by the grace of God, King of the French, to his beloved in Christ, the canons and all the clergy and church of Toledo, salutations and love. Desiring to adorn your church with a precious gift, by the hand of our beloved John, the venerable archbishop of Toledo, and at his prayer, we send to you some precious parts of our venerable and excellent sanctuaries that we had from the treasure of the Empire of Constantinople as follows: some wood of our Lord’s cross, a thorn of our Lord’s holy crown, some of the glorious Virgin’s milk, some of our Lord’s crimson garment, worn by Him; of the napkin He wound round Him when He washed His disciples’ feet, of the sheet in which His body was wrapped in the sepulchre, and some of the Saviour’s swaddling clothes. We beg and pray of your friendship in the Lord to accept and guard these sacred relics, and in your masses and offices to keep us in benign memory. Given at Etampes, the year of our Lord, 1248, month of May.” This document is stamped with a golden seal.

The Ochavo is like everything here, an impressive chamber, the home of vast treasure. It is a monument of bronze and marble, containing massive silver coffins wonderfully wrought for the bones of St Leocadia and St Eugenius, statues of silver and ivory, and priceless reliquaries. Behind are guarded the church vestments. Nowhere are such embroideries and brocades to be seen. The hundred altar-pieces are works of art to set the mouth of the collector awatering. The older they are the more lovely, and beside the early Gothic brocade-embroidery, the finest effort of the last century seems poor and vulgar, though seen apart would cause the beholder to exclaim at its loveliness. Whence did these rude Goths obtain their secret of such exquisite work? and how has it died from amongst us? Were the sacristan willing, and human nature capable of such a prolonged effort of admiration, one might spend days among these gold and silver embroidered brocades, and complacently dream of impossible times. But when the sacristan has shown you a dozen chasubles and a dozen altar-pieces, he thinks it quite enough—and so do you, wearied from excess of strain upon admiration and ravenous envy.

The beautiful and massive tower which lends majesty to an exterior not nearly so impressive as the interior of the Cathedral, was begun by Rodrigo Alfonso in 1380, but the work went on very slowly until the Archbishop Contreras put it into the hands of the architect, Alvar Gomez, who finished it (1440). There have been changes since, especially in 1660, when the capital was burnt and rebuilt. It is worth while to ascend the interminable stairs to the belfry, not to marvel at the largest bell, I believe, of the world, whose terrible note reaches as far as Madrid, but to revel in the view. You seem to look down upon the earth from Alpine heights. Below, through incredible depths of space, flows the Tagus, with its broad horse-shoe curve that makes almost an island of the town, and with charming little breaks in joyous verdure and soft little dashes of blue shade and white mist, the sombre and austere hills of Toledo make an upper and more violent rampart against the world beyond. Such is the sense of imprisonment here, that the eye instinctively seeks, as a chance of escape, the long white way of Madrid. It is good to breathe a moment in so exalted an atmosphere, to behold so vast and wonderful a scene, in which all remembrance of human miseries vanishes, and our very joys drop into relative significance. Nature has nowhere else attained a note of beauty harsher, more intense, more indifferently sublime. Elsewhere you feel that an effort has been made to captivate you, a deliberate combination of effects to win your admiration. Not so here. The Moors never succeeded, during their long sovereignty, in stamping the place with their voluptuous charm, as they did in Granada, Cordova, and Valencia. They left it as they found it, the stern home of revolt, the nest of mailed warriors and hardy artisans, so hard and quarrelsome that not even their loves furnish us with a soft legend, nor their literature a witching profile, or any hint of seductive grace in their womanhood.

THE CATHEDRAL TOWER
THE CATHEDRAL TOWER

CHAPTER VII

Domenico Theotocopulos El Greco

Masters are so rare in the history of this world that one would gladly know something of this tardily recognised great one; learn the secret of his preposterous defects in the second stage of his development, and the no less enigmatic secret of his occasional reach to supreme perfection. How came the man who could paint the glorious under picture of the Burial of Count Orgaz (see illustration), to draw and paint the inconceivable picture of St John the Baptist in the hospital de Afuera? How, in fact, rose the absurd legend of his madness, since no details of the man’s life has reached us on which to base such an idea? Théophile Gautier, with lamentable flippancy, gives echo in France to the ill-natured supposition of Palomino, the least trustworthy of guides. Nearly every fact given by Palomino concerning El Greco is false. He states the painter’s age, though no mortal being, contemporary of El Greco, or researcher of our own times, has the faintest ground for any such statement. The registrar of his death, which a Spanish painter, an impassioned student of all that concerns El Greco, has seen, proves that the artist’s age was uncertain, since nobody about him knew the date of his birth. Furthermore, Palomino tells us triumphantly that El Greco was buried in the parish of San Bartolomé, “and instead of a slab they placed a railing over his grave to indicate that nobody else should be buried there.” The church fell down years afterwards, he assures us, and the place of El Greco’s burial was no longer known. This is all mere supposition, just as Palomino’s statement of El Greco’s age, seventy-seven, and more innocent in the way of loose statements than his information that Theotocopulos went mad with rage from hearing himself compared with Titian, and purposely distorted his work to extinguish a similarity that did him honour. Such is the flimsy tale so genial and witty a writer as Gautier lightly spreads.

To begin with, it is now denied that El Greco ever was Titian’s pupil. It is admitted that he studied under Tintoretto, and however much he may preserve (and wisely!) of the noble Italian school, there can be no doubt to the least discerning that he has brought to its interpretation his own forcible individuality and cold temperament. Great he often is, supreme sometimes, but never voluptuous or charming. You admire him with your head; your heart he leaves always untouched, unless we make an exception in the solitary instance of the delightful figure of St Martin in the Chapel of San José. Here you have a touch of romantic pathos and charm in the slim young knight, which evokes reverie and remembrance of warm soft legendary love such as El Greco is elsewhere persistently blind to. We accept his own word for it, that he came from Crete, but when, why, how, we know not. We hear of him in Italy, but at no fixed spot, and he blazes unexplained upon the horizon of Spanish art, first known by one of the masterpieces of Spain. Pacheco, earlier than Palomino, tells us that he was a curious student, a philosopher, an architect, a sculptor, as well as a painter. Of his studies, his philosophy, no proof has come down to us; but of his sculpture, his wood-carving, his architecture, Toledo possesses many a sample as evidence of the man’s versatility. He is said to have left behind him, as a monument of industry in a life so full and varied, a complete copy in clay of everything he wrought or painted. The only faint hint of the man himself that we get is a reference Pacheco makes to a conversation he had with El Greco in Toledo, when the great painter told him that in his opinion colour alone was of value, and form and drawing quite secondary considerations in the art of painting. It was this feeling that made El Greco so persistently cold to the work of Michael Angelo, says Palomino. Michael Angelo, he said to Pacheco, was a very good fellow, but a very poor painter.

Beyond two legal squabbles, we learn nothing of the man’s life at Toledo. He is said to have painted his own visage in the Burial of Count Orgaz: lean, hard, nervous, exceedingly dark and striking, the face of a man in whom energy was an unsleeping disease, who worked with his mind concentrated upon the accomplishment of an ideal achievement, not as an idealist, as a materialist rather with an ideal object in view. There is the same curious modern expression in this dark, impassioned face that I noticed in the desperate portrait of the Italian novelist, M. Gabriel d’Annunzio, whom the face strangely resembles; an eager, ravenous, cruel sensuality which knows neither rest nor satiety, and which gives meaning to the charge of habits of harsh gallantry and deliberate ostentation. He is said to have kept a band of musicians to play during his carefully-prepared and selected repasts. Yet nothing could be less sensual than the work of El Greco. He is colder than Velasquez, and only understands feminine emotion in a certain austere intensity, passion fed upon the perfume of incense and saintly legend, as in the striking head of St Agnes in his great Virgin and Child of San José.

But this statement also is untrustworthy. It is incredible that a man, who left so much behind him, whose life was so active, and whose achievement was so important for a town in which he lived for so many years, should be merely a name, leaving no evidence of social or civic existence, no word of friend or foe in the annals of that town, nothing in its contemporary letters to guide us to any knowledge of the man himself. Pacheco in three lines reports a conversation with him, that is all. We do not know even where he lived in Toledo, how he lived, who his wife was, if he loved her, who his friends were, what manner of father and citizen he was. We know that he painted pictures, that he built churches, carved statues, and, since he was well paid for his work, that he must have possessed considerable means, and was probably an influential personage as well as a great master. Sir William Stirling Maxwell possesses a portrait said to be that of El Greco’s daughter by him, but this, too, is regarded as doubtful. Of a son’s existence, however, we are certain, and the charming figure of the delicate and pensive St Martin on horseback, as well as that of the dreamy youth in the plan of Toledo of the Museum, are the portraits of George Manuel Theotocopulos, architect, like his father. It is now certified that he was buried in the church, built by himself, of the Dominican convent, Santo Domingo el Antiguo.

I have said that an impenetrable obscurity lies upon the personal life of El Greco, though here his artistic existence is one of the most insistent facts about us. He seems first to have come to Toledo about 1575 to build the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, and paint the fine Assumption, the original of which was bought by Don Sebastian de Bourbon, and is now the property of the Infanta Cristina, the picture of the Retablo being only a copy, from which we may infer that his name in the world of Italian art was already known. How else could he have come to Toledo upon direct invitation, unless he came upon chance, hearing of Toledo as a flourishing city, where art was more appreciated and better remunerated than anywhere else in Spain. Then the chapter of the Cathedral ordered the most beautiful Expolio of the sacristy. When the ordered picture was painted, with the group of three women in the foreground, the canons were shocked by the audacious innovation, sent it back to the painter, and refused to pay for it. There was no justification, they asserted, for the presence of the three Maries at the Crucifixion, and they could only consent to receive it if the figures were rubbed out. This El Greco haughtily and properly declined to do. Having painted his picture, he announced himself ready to stand by it, good or ill, as it was, without the slightest alteration. But he demanded his money, whether the chapter took the picture or not. This, too, the chapter refused, whereupon the irate and humiliated artist went to law. It was a long case, lasting for years, during which time El Greco whiled away his enforced leisure at Toledo by marching off to Illescas, where he found time to build the church and paint some noble pictures. His defence against the chapter was a naïve and lame one. He asserted that the presence of the women did not matter, “as they were a long way off,” which is not true. But the main fact was true, “it did not matter,” any more than radically matters the mediaeval knight in armour behind them. Such inaccuracies and discrepancies leave the artist’s genius undiminished. So apparently thought the judges and jury, for El Greco won his case, gained his price, and maintained his artistic dignity without offensive concession to his pride. The women remained, the picture was hung in a frame of jasper and marble, the wood-work wrought by El Greco, which cost the chapter considerably more than the painting, and El Greco himself lived to die an old man in the town he had started in so stormily.

His next proceedings were at Illescas where, having built the Church of Our Lady of Charity, painted retablos and carved statues, it was seriously proposed to tax his pictures as common merchandise. El Greco went to law again, and this time, too, won his case. Only this was not merely a personal triumph, it was a big justice wrung in these far-off days from the stupid bourgeois to art. Palomino, commenting on it, writes: “Immortal thanks are due to El Greco for having broken a lance for art and thus forced the proclamation of its immunities.” He compelled the court to accept his theory that art was a thing apart from merchandise, not like mere fabrications, subject to the control of taxes or to the law of duty. While the process went on, El Greco refused to sell any of his pictures, but simply hired them out for a certain sum, as the good counsellors of Illescas only proposed to tax sold pictures. As the case with the chapter of Toledo was concluded before that of Illescas, he only accepted a loan on account of the future sum, from the canons for the Expolio.

His fame now was spreading through Spain, and that on no common unattuned voice. His superb portrait of the monk, Felix de Artiaga, won from that distinguished poet the first of the two celebrated sonnets to El Greco.

it begins, and having descanted on the superiority of the artist’s creature to God’s, wittily ends:

The second sonnet was brought forth by El Greco’s tomb of Queen Margarita, when Fray Felix de Artiaga addresses him:

We know that El Greco had disciples, since his two most famous, Fray Bautista Maino and Luis Tristan, were considerable artistes, whose work in Toledo is only second to his own. But had he a school such as had the great Italian masters? Was he beloved, admired, followed through the town? What was his influence upon the young men around him? Was his personality intense and commanding? Strong, yes, else he would never have dabbled in litigation. We may imagine too some intemperateness of character to explain the intemperate blemishes of his work. The strange obscurity of so successful a career as his must have been, if the most important commissions of the time mean anything, leaves us in doubt of the man’s personal attractiveness. He can scarcely have formed strong friendships, or some testimony, some facts would have reached us through these. A wilful, obstinate, self-centred nature is revealed in all his works, and a curious lack of temperament and charm in it would explain to some extent the man’s lack of personal magnetism and influence to account for the century’s indifference to the creator of work it seems to have appreciated so thoroughly.

We find him again at loggerheads with Felipe Segundo. The Escorial was built, and the morose Philip ordered El Greco to paint a picture of the martyrdom of St Maurice for the chapel. He had by this entered into his last period of accentuated eccentricity, of which the St John the Baptist of the Hospital de Afuera, beyond the Puerta de Visagra, is a sufficiently exasperating example. The St Maurice I have not seen, but if the saint’s legs in any way resembled those of St John the Baptist, small blame to the astounded king when he refused to accept the picture. The sacristan of the Hospital de Afuera explains the outrageous anatomical contortions in the blunt good-natured fashion of the people: “Picture by El Greco when he went mad.” But as El Greco never went mad, we rest dissatisfied with the information. There can be no doubt that every strongly-marked nature reveals excess of some sort in whatever direction development may tend. Neither men nor things, nor colour nor line, can appear the same to all. The same sex and nation produced Rossetti’s women and Romney’s. Greuze and Puvis de Chavannes see Frenchwomen with a different eye, though woman herself is the eternally unchanged, the same variously-imaged enigma of the beginning, rather reflected and modified through the glance that scans her than seriously altered or influenced by environment and impression. Humanity was not an elegant affair for Hogarth, and viewed through El Greco’s imagination, it ceased to possess proportion, and man became absurdly tall and grotesquely contorted. He bestows the finished hand of twenty on a child of ten, and shoots his saints up to such a height as would make them ridiculous in Frederick’s famous Potsdam regiment of giants. But this is no indication of madness, any more than any other exaggeration of a natural tendency. Even in the Expolio, his first known great picture, painted when he was a young man, his predilection for excessive height is visible in the tall figure of Christ, and as the years go on this predilection accentuates itself, till his figures cease to be natural. The same tendency to distort the human limbs reveals itself in his magnificent picture in the little church of Santo Tomé, in the upper portion of which one notes extraordinary figures of angels out of drawing, with twisted limbs over clouds.

Philip, in his dissatisfaction with his bargain was, however, as befits a prince, more honourable than the chapter of Toledo. He paid El Greco the price of his work, and only with difficulty did the unhappy artist obtain, for his reputation’s sake, a grudging admission of the picture into the Sala de Capitular, while Philip ordered for the chapel, in its stead, another picture of Romulo Cincinnato.

But these rebuffs were few in a truly brilliant career. The wonder is how he found time, as well as physical strength, for all the commissions he received. He built the extremely elegant façade of the Ayuntamiento, which makes an odd and formal note in its Gothic and semi-Moorish environment, in Greco-Roman style, but has a fine and dignified effect against an appropriate depth of azure to carry out the classical intention of a son of Greece. The side towers give lightness to the solidity of the immense base, and if the columns and arches do not succeed in producing a general impression of grace—a quality absent in nearly all El Greco’s work—there is no sin anywhere against harmony. The interior is worth a visit if it were only for the pleasure of reading on stone Manrique’s sententious and noble lines, with their indubitable ring of the plumed, dramatic ages and the hidalgo’s studious search for the fitting word, the fitting gesture, that shall send him down to posterity in the worthiest form: