Chapter V: Part 5

The church of San Juan de los Reyes, near the Puente de San Martin, was built in 1476 by Ferdinand and Isabel, in thanksgiving for the victory of Toro gained over the Portuguese allies of Juana, nicknamed “la Beltraneja.” The first architect was a Fleming, Juan Guas, one of the builders of the cathedral. The church was intended to receive the ashes of the royal founders, but after the capture of Granada it was decided to establish the mausoleum in that city, and the completion of San Juan de los Reyes was delayed till the seventeenth century. In consequence, the architecture exhibits the transition from the Late Gothic to the Late Renaissance style. “Nothing,” remarks Street, “can be more elaborate than much of the detail of this church, yet I have seen few buildings less pleasing or harmonious.” The exterior is unpromising, and is decorated, if we can use the word in such a connection, with festoons of rusty chains which fettered the limbs of the Christians in Moorish prisons. The chief entrance, to the north, was completed by Covarrubias in 1610, and is in the decadent style of architecture. It is adorned with inferior statuary, and the arms and initials of the Catholic sovereigns.

The interior is composed of a single nave, two hundred feet long and from forty-three to seventy feet wide. There are four chapels on one side and three on the other. At the east end of the church is a shallow five-sided apse, forming the Capilla Mayor. Over the junction of the nave and transept is an octagonal cupola, resting on four fine pillars, with a pointed dome and a window in each face. At the west end of the church is a deep gallery, containing the choir. The altar dates from the Renaissance period, and is brought well forward into the nave. It came from the suppressed church of Santa Cruz. Above it is a blue velvet canopy, embroidered with the eagle, the symbol of St. John. The whole fabric is enriched with statuary, tracery, carving, and heraldic devices in almost reckless profusion. The yoke and the arrows--the devices of the Catholic sovereigns--and their coats of arms are repeated again and again. Among the inscriptions is one commemorating the foundation of the church. It runs: “Este monasterio é églesia mandaron hacer los muy esclarecidos Principes é señores D. Hernando é Doña Isabel, Rey y Reina de Castilla, de Leon, de Aragon, de Sicilia, los cuales señores por bienaventurado matrimonio y uñaron los dichos Reinos, seyendo el dicho rey y señor natural de los reinos de Aragon y Sicilia, y seyendo la dicha señora Reina y señora natural de los Reinos de Castilla y Leon; el cual fundaron á gloria de nuestro señor Dios, y de la bienaventurada Madre suya, nuestra Señora la Virgén Maria, y por especial devocion que le ovieron.”

Admirable as is the church in its general structure, and in the detail and execution of its ornamentation, it is garish and ostentatious. There is a superabundance of light and luxury. Here there is no dim religious light, no suggestion of mystery or devotion. Prayer would seem incompatible with the whole character of the edifice. More favourable was the opinion of Théophile Gautier, who declared that “Gothic art never produced anything more suave, more elegant, or more fine.”

Attached to the church is the convent, bestowed on the Franciscans, and pillaged by the French in 1808. It has been converted into a museum, which does not contain much of great interest. The most important exhibits are fragments of Visigothic inscriptions and Moorish tile-work.

The cloister of San Juan de los Reyes is a gem of florid Gothic, and the finest part of the whole fabric. There are two galleries, one above the other, the lower with traceried openings, the upper with large open arches. As in the church, there is here an excess of decoration, hardly a square inch on pillar, arch, and vaulting being free from sculptured ornamentation. There is a bewildering profusion of statues of angels, men, and animals, of scroll-work and foliage, heraldic devices and inscriptions. The whole is dazzlingly white--more like a temple of the Sun than a shrine of “the pale Galilean.” The original effect, perhaps, was less crude, for the church and cloisters have been recently restored, and, it must be confessed, not too skilfully.

A most beautiful specimen of azulejo work has been built into the north-west wall. It comes from the suppressed monastery of the Calced Augustines, and is said to have been a part of the ornamentation of the ancient palace of Don Rodrigo--wherever that may have been situated.

Before the finishing touches had been put to San Juan de los Reyes, the last important Gothic work of Toledo, the erection of one of the two earliest examples of the Renaissance style in Spain had been begun. The hospital of Santa Cruz was built between the years 1494 and 1514 by Enrique de Egas, of Brussels, some ten years after he had completed the college of the same name at Valladolid. The hospital was designed by the founder, the mighty Cardinal Mendoza, as an asylum for foundlings. He died in 1495, and left 75,000 ducats to the queen for the completion of the work. Isabel it was who chose the site overlooking the bridge of Alcantara, where formerly the palace of the legendary King Galafre is fabled to have stood. Among other stories connected with the spot is that of a Leonese princess wedded against her will to a Moorish prince, her union with whom was prevented by the intervention of an angel. As in all the early specimens of Spanish Renaissance architecture, the groundwork of the building approximates to the Gothic, the new ideas manifesting themselves in the decoration and carving. The portal is superb. The reliefs represent the Adoration of the Cross by St. Helena, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the founder, Cardinal Mendoza, two pages also appearing, bearing mitre and helmet. Other reliefs, exquisitely chiselled, have for subjects the espousals of St. Joachim and St. Anne, and Charity. The four cardinal virtues are shown, and everywhere, amidst a maze of ornamentation, occur Mendoza’s arms and device. The plateresque windows, with their rejas in the local style, are deserving of admiration. Entering, we find a vast _patio_, enclosed by a double arcaded gallery of marble, and, crossing it, ascend a grand staircase with a fine ceiling of the _artesonado_ kind. The chapel, in the form of a Maltese cross, has also a fine ceiling, and Gothic pillars, beautifully carved, that attest the splendid appearance once presented by this dismantled building. Some of the columns adorning Santa Cruz were brought from the Visigothic church of Santa Leocadia.

To the same period belongs the Franciscan convent and church of San Juan de la Penitencia, begun by order of Cisneros in 1514, and finished by his secretary, Fray Francisco Ruiz, Bishop of Avila. The semi-Moorish palace of the Pantojas was utilised in its construction, and the whole building bears traces of Arabic, or rather Mudejar, workmanship. Entering the chapel by a porch adorned with the great Cardinal’s arms and foliations in the Gothic style, we find ourselves in a sombre edifice of a single nave, revealing a curious medley of styles. The roof is a fine example of the artesonado. Over the transept, which is divided from the nave by a plateresque reja, is a cupola with a stalactite roof of the Moorish pattern. The principal retablo is early Renaissance, and several of the altars may be classed as Baroque. The most interesting feature of the church is the tomb of the Bishop of Avila, who died in 1528. It is in the Renaissance style, and was the work of a Lombard artist. It is wrought in Sicilian marble, and is thus described by Ponz: “Above a large stone divided by three pilasters to form three pedestals there are an equal number of statues seated, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. Between the pilasters are the arms of the Bishop--five castles. In a framed recess are the urn, couch, and recumbent figure. In front of the urn are seen two weeping children, and within the recess four angels draw aside the curtains. On either side are two Doric pillars supporting the frieze, which is inscribed, ‘Beati mortui qui in Domino moriantur.’ On the edge are two antique columns admirably executed. Between these columns and pilasters are statues, St. James and St. Andrew, and above, the figures of children. Over all is a bas-relief of the Annunciation, with the statues of St. John the Divine and St. John Baptist, one-half the size of the Virtues below.”

The Emperor-King Charles V. had, as we have seen, small reason to love Toledo, but he did something for the permanent embellishment of the city, and the last architectural monuments reared on its craggy peninsula belong to his era.

It is difficult to ascribe the Alcazar, to which reference has so often been made, to any one epoch. It has undergone so many vicissitudes, so many reconstructions, that the name, as we have employed it, must be understood to represent a site rather than the actual palace. A stronghold of some sort has always been here--possibly, in Roman times, the Arx, where tradition avers the martyr Leocadia suffered death. The Arabian geographer, Jerif al Edris, writing in 1154, describes Toledo as “a town great in extent and population, extremely strong, with fine ramparts, and an Alcazaba, fortified and impregnable.” This citadel was doubtless the Alcazar, which was strengthened and rebuilt by successive Castilian kings, and is said to have been the residence of the Cid, the first Christian Alcaide. Added to, reconstructed, partially demolished and repeatedly restored, it must have presented an aspect rude and heterogeneous enough when, in 1538, Charles V. ordered Alonso de Covarrubias and Luis de Vega to rebuild the palace entirely on the lines of the new Alcazar of Granada. The Flemish Emperor may, then, fairly be considered the founder of the present fortress-palace, though it has since his time undergone radical transformations. It was burnt down during the War of Succession in 1710, restored sixty years later, destroyed again by the French in 1810, and devastated by a third conflagration as late as 1887. Since 1882 it has been the seat of the Royal Military Academy.

The northern façade was constructed after the designs of Covarrubias, and looks on the square created by Ferdinand and Isabel in 1502. The reconstruction was so complete that probably no stone of the older façade was left in its place. The façade is severe and majestic, revealing classical influence, though not without important traces of the plateresque. It is flanked by towers, and adorned with a handsome portal--the work of Enrique de Egas, brother-in-law of Covarrubias. Over the door are the Imperial arms, supported by the figures of two heralds or mace-bearers. The fortress-like eastern façade is believed to be a part of the original Alcazar as restored by Alfonso X.; the western side of the building dates from the reign of the Catholic sovereigns, and the southern, with massive Doric pillars and square turrets, was built after designs by Juan de Herrera.

The inner court, or _patio_, is described by a Spanish writer as “solemn, grandiose, full of majesty ... constructed for the dwelling-place of the August Cæsar.” It forms a spacious parallelogram and is enclosed by an arcade in two storeys with columns of the Corinthian order. Above the capitals are displayed the escutcheons of the various kingdoms ruled over by Charles. The modern restorers of the palace have adorned the court with a statue of the Emperor in the Roman costume in which he was so fond of being represented.

The finest feature of the palace must have been the staircase, designed by Villalpando and Herrera, which has been to some extent restored after its destruction by Stahremberg in 1710. One of the widest staircases in the world, “it ends,” says Miss Hannah Lynch “in the void!” In truth, the Alcazar is not to-day a very interesting building. It is, in reality, quite impossible to identify the scenes of the romantic and historical episodes which we know occurred in one or other of the successive Alcazars. But the room in which Alfonso VI. died and the window at which the hapless Blanche de Bourbon wept, _pace_ the local guides, must have disappeared to the last stone and fragment ages ago. All that can be said of the palace to-day is that it forms an imposing landmark, and affords from its northern terrace one of the finest views of Toledo.

To the age of Charles V. (or Carlos I. as in Spain he would properly be called) belongs the Hospital de San Juan Bautista, styled the Hospital de Afuera (outside) in the suburb of Covachuelas. The building was begun in 1541 by order of Archbishop Juan de Tavera, who died on his return from the baptism of Prince Carlos at Valladolid. The building was carried on after Bustamente’s death by the two Vergaras, and completed about 1600. The façade dates from the eighteenth century and is still unfinished. The courtyard, spacious and imposing, is divided into two and enclosed by colonnades. A fine Renaissance portal by Berruguete leads into the large chapel, which is in the form of a cross and surmounted by a dome. The pavement is of black and white marble. Before the altar is the tomb of Archbishop Tavera by Berruguete. This is one of the finest monuments in Spain. It was finished by Berruguete when he was over eighty years old, in 1561, his death taking place the same year in one of the rooms under the great clock. His sons received nearly a million maravedis for the work. “The Cardinal,” says Théophile Gautier, “is stretched out upon his tomb in his pontifical habit. Death has pinched his nose with its strong fingers, and the last contraction of the muscles, in their endeavour to retain the soul about to leave the body for ever, puckers up the corners of the mouth and lengthens the chin; never was there a cast taken after death more horribly true; and yet the beauty of the work is such, that you forget any amount of repulsiveness that the subject may possess. Little children in attitudes of grief support the plinth and the Cardinal’s coat of arms. The most supple and softest clay could not be more easy or more pliant; it is not carved, it is kneaded!”

The hospital contains some of El Greco’s most notable work, which will be noticed in the chapter on that master.

To Charles V. Toledo also owes the grand New Gate of Visagra, built in 1550, and restored in 1575. It consists of two separate structures, or gateways, enclosing a _patio_. On the exterior of the north gate is shown the double eagle with the Spanish arms and a Latin inscription--all in sculptured granite. On the inside is a fine statue of St. Eugenio, variously attributed to Berruguete and Monegro. The statues of Gothic kings, a life-sized angel with unsheathed sword, elegant capitals and balconies, combine to make this gateway one of the finest approaches possessed by any city in the world.

The Ayuntamiento, or town hall, of Toledo was erected in the time of Ferdinand and Isabel by the corregidor Gomez Manrique, and enlarged and restored between 1576 and 1618 by the corregidor Juan Tello, under the supervision of El Greco. The façade is composed of two storeys, the first consisting of nine arches with Doric columns which spring from massive pillars, the second of as many arches with Ionic columns. The edifice is surmounted by two towers, crowned with steeples and weather-vanes. On the fine staircase may be read in letters of gold on a blue ground this admonition to the civic dignitaries of Toledo:

Nobles, discretes varones,
Que gobernais á Toledo,
En aquellas escalones,
Desechad las aficiones,
Codicio temor, y miedo,
For los comunes provechos,
Dejad los particulares;
Pues vos fizo Dios pilares
De tan riquisimos techos,
Estad firmes y derechos.

The Summer Council Chamber is handsomely decorated with _azulejos_, and contains some battle pictures. The portraits of Carlos II. and his wife are the work of Carreño.

The celebrated Bridge of Alcantara, of which mention has so often been made in these pages, belongs indifferently to all the epochs of Toledo’s history, so no apology is needed for mentioning it here. “It constitutes to-day as in the past,” writes Amador de los Rios, “the principal entrance to the city, and, constructed very wisely on one of the narrowest parts of the river, it is formed of a great central arch of more than twenty-eight metres in breadth, resting on the right on a solid pile, often demolished, behind which is a smaller semicircular arch, which is, in turn, sustained by the bridge head, founded on the rock and pierced by a still smaller arch or passage, where several Visigothic remains have been discovered.” At the outer or country end of the historic bridge formerly stood a fortified tower, which was in 1787 replaced by the existing structure. This is in a pretentious style, and is decorated with various inscriptions, among them one commemorating the building by order of Philip V. The majestic hexagonal tower on the town side, with its picturesque turrets, dates probably from 1259. Above it is a statue of St. Ildefonso, by Berruguete. Over the archway are sculptured the badges of Ferdinand and Isabel (the yoke and bundle of arrows), commemorating the restoration of the tower, in 1489, by Gomez Manrique. A noble bridge is this of Alcantara; old--old as the city--the work of all Toledo’s rulers, and like Toledo, grim, stern, rude, destined, it would seem, to endure for ever. Romans, Visigoths, Moors and Castilians have lingered on it, triumphed on it, fled across it, fought upon it, and across it to-day must walk every traveller entering with reverence this great temple of the mediæval and bygone.

EL GRECO

BY

ALBERT F. CALVERT AND C. GASQUOINE HARTLEY

Domeniko Theotokopuli,[A] known to us to-day as El Greco, was the first great painter of Spain, and in his strange and fascinating art, the Spanish School compels for the first time the attention of the world. And El Greco was not Spanish. He was born in Crete, it would seem about the year 1548, and died at Toledo in 1614. Learning his art in Venice, in his early manner he is a pure Venetian, owing much to the work of the Bassani, and more to the inspiration of Tintoretto, but in Toledo he became Spanish and himself, developing there a manner in which the special temper of the race finds an expression passionate enough, not equalled again, indeed, until the advent of Goya.

There will always be some men imaginative, entirely personal, who, like El Greco, seek to express themselves, and in so doing, quite unwittingly probably, express the life of their age. Having the interpretative--creative would perhaps be the truer word--genius, their work becomes, as it were, a mirror, which reflects not the man alone, but the circumstances that have formed his life. For, after all, what the artist does is to use up what he has seen.

This is why El Greco seems to chronicle for us our impressions of Toledo, and of Spain.

Surely no other painter has lived in a city in such strong agreement with his spirit. Think of the place--wind-swept, heat-dried, extraordinarily austere, yet flushed with colour, ochre-red shading to unusual greens; heaped upon its rocky throne above the yellow flowing Tagus, its rugged silhouette straight cut against a sky hard and clear as enamel; and, beyond, the sierra like a great brown sea in which it all stands as an island starting from the waves. A suggestion of strenuousness seems to linger everywhere, a spirit, personal and keen, cruel almost as the sword-blades the city fashions. The very buildings, placed upon the crags beneath the great hulk of the Alcazar, repeat this impression, they rise in sharp upward and downward lines like an arrangement of swords, and make their appeal by the strange strength of their aspect. The streets are a tortuous net of steep-rising passage-ways. A city strongly itself that has suffered no change, fantastic as a city seen in a dream.

Yes, to those who know Toledo, the impression of the character of the city upon El Greco will bring no surprise. His art corresponds perfectly with its setting. Everywhere his work is around you, for El Greco is one of those painters who has but a single home. He built churches and other buildings--the classic façade of the Ayuntamiento, for instance, was modelled on his design; he carved statues, he painted pictures, there are canvases of his in the museum, in the cathedral, and in many of the churches. And in all this mass of work, it is the living force behind it that is the first impression that you gain; a kind of driving power that fascinates you, just as Toledo fascinates you, by reason of its power. El Greco was a painter able to create--that is the secret of it all. And, be it remembered, the artist does not find his matter straight from the springs of his brain, what he is able to see he sets down, and that is all. His art is great in exact measure as it is able to transfer this vision from him to us. In this way El Greco, to whom vision seems to have been the whole of life, does in his pictures transfer to us the entire impression of Toledo, so that it is difficult to speak of his art without making Toledo the refrain.

And as we wait with his pictures and note, after the first surprise has left us, the qualities of the work, throughout they confirm this. The very form of his composition is moulded upon Toledo. Just as its buildings cluster around the Alcazar, almost as bees swarming about their queen, so he groups everything around a central figure. Never, after he came to Toledo, did El Greco use Italian backgrounds. And in his long, lithe figures, so fantastic in their hard outlines, sometimes we catch that suggestion of the sword that haunts Toledo. Then when we come to more tangible things, we find to-day El Greco’s models in the dark peasants of Toledo. Nowhere else can we quite believe in the reality of those coldly fervent, self-absorbed, ecstatic men, who greet us with such fascination from his canvases, their lean, long profiles suggesting again that aspect of a sword.

Then, El Greco’s colour was drawn from the landscape around him. And colour, if we may credit the truth of the conversation recounted by Pacheco, was to him the one quality in painting, form, drawing, all else, being of secondary significance. This, too, was learnt in Toledo, where colour has an allurement--illusive and insistent. Toledo it was showed him the existence of cold tones, and the fascination of its greys and livid greens led him to anticipate modern colour, at a time when every one else was painting warm tonalities. In the Convent of San Juan de los Reyes, now the Museo Provincial, is that ‘Bird’s-Eye View of Toledo,’ the picture in which we have a portrait of George Manuel Theotokopuli, El Greco’s son. At first you will be astonished, it is the strangest landscape in the world. But wait with the picture--always the danger with El Greco is that you will not linger enough. The painter who sees for himself must be studied, not dismissed as he who but sets down the common vision of things. And El Greco does give us the real Toledo in this fantastic landscape. Do you doubt this? Then go when night falls upon the city to some such vantage-point as the Puerta del Cambón, where beneath the dome of the evening sky you will see Toledo, heaped roof against roof, tower against tower. You will forget the strangeness of the picture’s statement, as you come to see that it is just this effect that El Greco has caught. Now you will recognise the reality of those bluish whites, those tones of green that surprised you, and, in gladness, you will yield to the truth, the beauty--are not the two the same?--of the painter’s vision, and avow how much he has taught you to see.

Always El Greco’s pictures leave an impression of their own upon the spectator; and this is the test of vital work. It is personality that counts in art. Whether he paints the visible truth of outward things, as in his portraits--that wonderful series in the Prado, for instance, in which he startles us with his revelation of his model--or pure fancies of the mind, as ‘The Vision of Philip II.,’ in the Escorial, a picture that would seem to have no conscious reference to things seen, one feels that he had something definite to express. And although his style at first may have been formed largely on that of the great Venetian painters, of Tintoretto especially--a “sort of shorthand of the Venetian,” Mr. Ricketts calls it--in all his pictures there is but one personality--that of himself. At the back of his art was a force of passionate character--unbalanced? Yes! capricious and arbitrary; a tyrannical need that compelled expression. But in spite of his singular conventions and, from a theorist’s point of view, the strangeness and exaggeration of his qualities, he does convey his meaning, splendidly effective, if not the best. And because of this intensity of vision we have those pictures of exaggerated statement that give credit to the fable of the painter’s madness, such as the ‘St. John the Baptist,’ in the Hospital San Juan Bautista, a picture which many have found ugly, while the few see in its new conception a striving for personal utterance, and find many things in its suggestion.

El Greco stumbled in his methods maybe, never in his purpose, which was, it would seem to us, the significance of movement. All his strange skill, the power of his imagination, his new knowledge of colour and light, are used in this service, to bring home to us the vision of movement that everywhere he saw. Even in his portraits it is this that holds us. There is something more in them than the outward likeness; there is a power of reaching to and showing us the unquiet spirit within. He makes his portraits live and speak. This quality is present in all his work. Every picture is built up by its effect; and this effect is movement--life. By concentrating on a particular passage, by a contempt for detail and peddling accuracy, he directs our minds to this principal thing. His interest, as it were, compels ours; he realises his vision and makes us share in his imagination.

But it may be said that in many of these pictures the effect is forced; in the ‘St. Maurice,’ the rejected altar-piece of the Escorial, for instance, in the ‘Baptism of Christ’ and the ‘Descent of the Holy Spirit,’ in the Prado, and in many pictures in Toledo, easily recognised, in which realities are replaced by a series of conventions. It is not necessary to wait to particularise examples. Certainly one does not see in the pictures of other painters those greens, those ashen whites and crimsons, those livid blacks; El Greco’s use of colour is unusual and his own. Light is not used as he uses it, as a quantity for emotional appeal; those faces, so elongated or contracted, and with such extravagant expressions, those figures with hard anatomical outlines, do not correspond with life as we see it. Yes, this is true. But look longer at these pictures.... Well, would it be possible to gain their _effects_ without the _defects_? If things are forced out of harmony it is for the sake of “telling strongly.” All this search for expression is done quite consciously. El Greco throughout was strong enough to be true to himself and to his imagination. He knew that no system of art is final, that the achievements of artists are, in truth, the stones wherewith the Temple of Art is built. Imagination does not see commonplaces. And we recall the statement of Blake--he, too, a painter of visions of the mind: “He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light, than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.”

El Greco might have said these words.

And the man? There is a portrait Domeniko Theotokopuli has left of himself now in the Museum of Seville. In it we see the long, striking profile, with its large, strong nose, restless eyes and straight mouth, cruel slightly, framed by the great white ruff that forms such fitting setting to the fine head. The forehead is high, the dark hair scant upon the temples. We may read in the face, and still more in the perfectly shaped hands--the left holds a square palette upon which are the five primary colours, white, black, yellow-ochre, vermilion, and lake, the colours he used most frequently--the fastidiousness of the artist, the instinct for beauty; we may read a peculiar suggestion of mysticism and ardour; self-assertion, too, and impatience--both wait in those long, nervous fingers. It is a face of genius, but of a kind restless, unbalanced, decadent perhaps. And we understand the driving energy that burned to fever, so that at times the balance was lost between the painter’s aim and the result, and we realise that the work of such a man must be introspective, experimental, neurotic.

We know nothing almost of El Greco’s life, and if external happenings were all, the most original painter of Spain would remain an unexplained personality. His very name is uncertain, and contemporary writers, disregarding the Theotokopuli, speak of him as Domeniko Greco. We do not know the year in which he was born, for the information given by Palomino in “El Museo” must certainly be questioned, no register of his birth as yet having been found among the Cretan archives, or in the parochial books of the Greek colony in Venice, the city in which it seems certain that he lived--a pupil, we may well think, of Tintoretto, rather than of Titian; and this in spite of the letter of his friend and compatriot the miniature-painter, Clovio,[B] in which Clovio speaks of the young Greek painter’s skill, tells of his coming to Rome, and, after commending him to the patronage of the Cardinal Nepote Farnese, refers to his having learnt his art from the greatest Venetian. But the testimony of his work gives more truth than this statement; his early pictures, their authorship so long unknown, again and again have been attributed to Tintoretto, to Bassano, to Veronese even, never to Titian.

That El Greco was a Cretan we know by his signature, always in Greek, on many pictures, Λομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος Κρήσεποίει--the ‘San Maurice,’ in the Escorial, is one. And again, when called, in 1582, by the Tribunal of the Inquisition to act as interpreter in the case of a Cretan accused of being a Morisco, he describes himself as “Domeniko Theotokopuli, native of Candia, painter, resident in Toledo,” as we learn from a document discovered by Señor Cossio, to whose research, and to that of Señor Foradada and of Señor de Beruete, we owe the few discovered facts of El Greco’s life.

We know that Domeniko Greco came to Toledo some time before 1577, and in that year he was at work in the convent of Santo Domingo el Antigua, where the Church was built and its statues carved by him, and where he painted the screens of the fine retablo; that further, he would seem never to have left Toledo; that he married there, and had a son, George Manuel, who was architect and sculptor to the cathedral from 1628 to his death in 1631, and also a daughter, whose portrait figures in several pictures--in ‘Christ Despoiled of his Vestments,’ in the cathedral, for one; that he died in Toledo, and was buried in Santo Domingo el Antigua on April 7, 1614[C]--and that is about all. We have record of much work--Toledo still has more than fifty Grecos--and there were pictures painted for the small town of Illescas, and also for Madrid. We read of two lawsuits, one undertaken to compel the Cathedral Chapter to pay in full for the ‘Expolio,’[D] the second to vindicate the painter’s right to sell his pictures without paying the tax levied upon merchandise. These lawsuits, his pictures, with their dates and signatures, certain contracts and receipts, are the few facts to be reported.

It would seem that this strange, self-contained life wished to be silent; for it is perhaps not too fanciful to read this meaning into that answer given by El Greco when asked, in connection with the writ served on him for the ‘Expolio,’ whether he had been brought to Toledo to paint the retablo of Santo Domingo: “I am neither bound to say why I came to this city nor to answer the other questions put to me.” Here we gain hints of certain very real traits of character.

And, if the facts of his life are meagre enough, we can find suggestions of this same temper, silent, yet passionate, in that visit of Pacheco to the Toledan painter when he was old, in 1611, of which we have spoken before. Pacheco tells us that El Greco was a student of many things, a writer on art, a great philosopher given to witty sayings, a sculptor and architect as well as a painter. He writes of much work that he saw, and speaks in particular of a cupboard in which were models in clay of each picture El Greco had finished. The two painters talked on many subjects, of colour and its supreme quality in painting, of Michael Angelo and his failure as a colourist. But in all the account of Pacheco, always so minutely laborious, it is significant to note in one sentence the impression he formed of Domeniko Greco: “He was in all things as singular as in his painting.”

Nor will it do to overlook the testimony of Giuseppe Martinez, whose “Practical Letters on the Art of Painting,” though not printed until 1866, were written a century before. He too speaks of Domeniko Greco as of extravagant disposition, and in proof recounts that he engaged musicians to play to him that he might “enjoy an additional luxury during meals.” The prudent Aragonese condemns this “too much ostentation,” but we capture again some fresh clues and hints of this strangely effective personality--a fanatic of life, a fanatic of painting.

But we have not settled the account of genius when we have called it unusual, fanatic, or decadent. It is the solution of the dull that genius is extravagant consciously. El Greco can have had no desire, no power, to repeat the easy, the commonplace. If strange, exaggerated even, his art is without a trace of affectation. When he painted a vision he felt it natural to symbolise his idea in the way that he did. In colour, in form, he painted only what his imagination saw, gaining in colour fresh harmonies for himself, and a new suggestion of movement in his imaginative compositions, to which our imagination must find answer.

El Greco understood all nature as a Living Presence; his art was a series of experiments to express this. And every one must be struck with the peculiar development of this special personality in his art from stage to stage--stages that with sufficient accuracy may be divided into three periods.

The first is the pupil’s search for truth; the Venetian stage, in which we find a consciousness of tradition, showing itself in the still-fettered design, in the attitudes of the figures, in the use of warm colour, in a flowing quality in the paint, and, especially perhaps, in the landscape backgrounds, so Venetian with palaces and marble-paved piazzas; yet mingled with all this tradition is an emphatic personality, an ardour of expression, very difficult to define, seen in such early pictures as ‘The Blind Man,’ in the Parma Gallery, or ‘The Cardinal,’ in the National Gallery, both painted before 1577. Over the whole Venetian period the influence of Tintoretto is obvious; while the portraits of these years recall in their method the work of the Bassani; and of the pre-Spanish pictures, as, for instance, the ‘Cleansing of the Temple,’[E] now in the possession of the Countess of Yarborough, and the replica of the same subject on a small scale, in the Cook collection at Richmond, Surrey, a picture of real beauty that testifies to El Greco’s skill in miniature--these, and many other works, were thought until quite recently to be the work of the Venetians, the first being attributed to Paul Veronese, the latter to Tintoretto, and this in spite of their marked character.

And the Venetian influence remained in the first years in Toledo. It is seen in the beautiful Virgin in the early ‘Assumption,’ painted for the central altar-screen of Santo Domingo el Antigua, but now in the Prado.[F] But the chief work of this period is the ‘Christ Despoiled of His Vestments,’ still in the sacristy of the cathedral in Toledo, for which it was painted in 1577. Here, perhaps, in the fine simplicity of the grouping, in the dignity of the inspired head of the Saviour, in the rich and strong colour and in the vivid light and shade, we have the best results of all El Greco learnt in Venice. But even in this beautiful picture we see the development, or rather the co-existence, of his two styles: on the one hand carefully and thoroughly worked-out qualities, a balanced art remembered from Venice, but with it all a power that was his own, that seized the elements in the picture and gave them life--his life. And again, we have in the excessive height of the Christ, in the hands of many of the figures in this picture and in the ‘Assumption,’ first hints of the special conventions with which the name of El Greco is certainly most associated.

We come to the second stage, in which the painter, forgetting tradition, seeks to set down his vision in his own way; it is the period of experiment, as we see it first in the ‘St. Maurice,’[G] painted in 1581, that strange picture, rejected, as we may so well believe, by Philip II., who, misunderstanding, as many have done since, the intensity of feeling that animates the work, attributed its exaggerated expression to madness. Here, and in other pictures of this time, in the seizing ‘Vision of Philip II.’ and in the ‘St. John the Baptist’ in particular, we have splendid examples of imaginative work. Maybe the details are impossible, perhaps absurd--many have found them so--but for others the inspiration of the painter triumphs, and the longer they gaze at these visions the more they are impelled. For, be it remembered, the idea should be the starting-point in all imaginative pictures, and should control both the design and its treatment, and these Greco’s are splendid in this respect. Whether the imagination is exaggerated and perverted in wilful experiment, whether from an uncertain technical equipment, or whether it is, as we would think, the natural and true expression of intense dramatic vision, it is not easy to say. Who shall decide whether to call these mad pictures or visions that breathe the sublime? That is a question hard to answer in much of El Greco’s characteristic work. Perhaps the truth is that we dislike too readily what we do not easily understand. El Greco goes back to first principles and speaks in symbols with which we are not familiar. Those spectres of human kind that surprise us in so many of his pictures in Toledo, in those in the Prado, as well as in these two in the Escorial, do not suggest life as we see it; but they are inspired--they do convey his meaning. This painter’s method is a real enigma; he essayed surprising effects by separating colour into its original values; he used light as a means of emotional appeal, giving us sometimes most delicate harmonies, sometimes discordant contrasts. Domeniko Greco had to teach his world to see what he saw, and in this way he came, it may seem to some, to over-emphasise what to him was truth.

And his third stage was a fevered expression of his imaginative vision. We have entered a new world of extraordinary restlessness, the restlessness that must exist when spirit struggles from the bonds of the flesh. Toledo, the ardent arid city, burnt fiercely in El Greco’s blood, and, more and more, he seems to have felt that it was not enough to record facts; to have cared less to give æsthetic pleasure; but that the object of his art should be to clothe abstract ideas with life. It is something of all this that we find in his later pictures. In each there is emphasis--or, if you like, exaggeration--of statement; in the ‘Coronation of the Virgin’ in San José, for instance, a picture that in a strange, left-handed way carries us forward to the picture by Velazquez[H] on the same subject. The exaggeration is equally visible in the ‘Assumption’ in San Vicente, more beautiful, and the most interesting of these rare visions, a picture in which we have movement--the very sensation of a figure passing through the air as we have, perhaps, in no other picture. It is even stronger in the group of pictures in Madrid, the ‘Baptism,’ the ‘Descent of the Holy Spirit,’ the ‘Resurrection,’ and the ‘Christ Dead in the Arms of God’; it meets us again in the ‘St. Joseph with the Child Jesus,’ and in the ‘Virgin and Child with Saints Justa and Gertrude,’[I] both in San José, the church that is the museum of so much of the master’s work--pictures all similar in their intense sentiment; while emphasis burns to a white flame of ardent expression in the famed ‘St. John the Baptist,’ the wonderful picture of which we have spoken already. It is there, too, in the ‘Christ Crucified,’ one in the Prado, one in San Nicolas, surely the most terrible realisation possible of that scene of sacrifice, in which the agony of spirit so outweighs the agony of the flesh, and sky and earth seem to take their share in the struggle.

It is impossible to translate the effect of these animated religious pictures into words. El Greco was not content to embody the old myths in fresh forms, but he gave fresh forms to the ideas that are, as it were, the soul of each myth--that which lives when the form of the stories change. Even in his pictures with few figures, such for instance, as the ‘Mary and Jesus,’ in San Vicente, the ‘St. Francis,’ of which there are four replicas in Toledo, or that earlier picture, a beautiful rendering of a difficult theme, ‘La Veronica,’ one of the series painted for the Santo Domingo el Antigua in 1575-76, we have this exaggeration. Then, sometimes, exaggeration, which in each picture, after all, only emphasises the idea, disappears altogether, and we are given figures of singular beauty, as the ‘San Martin,’ in San José, or the really fine Madonnas--dark, oval-faced angels that surprise us at times with a beauty of type we hardly expect from El Greco. But, as a rule, in the pictures of this period, roughly marked by the painting of that experimental picture the ‘St. Maurice,’ there is this intensity of expression; and especially we find a new, and often strange, use of colour; colour, as well as form, being used as a means of dramatic statement, with a result that to many is exaggeration. For El Greco learnt first, perhaps, from the Venetians, and afterwards certainly in Toledo, many new possibilities of colour--that it has a quality that speaks, and further that the appeal of a picture depends first of all on the tone of its colour. It is for this reason he used colour as a means of emotional appeal; it was another quality by which to convey his idea to the world. For El Greco held truly that the province of art is to interpret, not to imitate. Every development of his art seems to have come from his own mind, hardly at all from the work of other painters; from the first he was true to his ideals. And always his pictures seem to be more the work of his soul than of his hand; which, in other words, is to say that he was greater as an artist than as a painter.

Domeniko Greco, like so many of the painters of Spain, was great in portraiture; and some of his portraits, such as those of Antonio Covarrubias and of Juan de Alava, in the Museo de San Juan de Los Reyes, that of Cardinal Tavera, in the Hospital de Afuera, the whole series in the Prado, and many others not possible to name, are as fine portraits as have ever been done in the world. In his earliest portraits even, in that of Julio Clovio, in the Museum of Naples, or that of ‘A Student,’ a portrait, it well may be, of the young painter himself, we have the qualities of his later work; always it is the spirit of his model that he seeks.

And this inward interpretation of life is seen, too, in that picture which is accounted rightly the most interesting, though not perhaps the most typical, of his work, ‘The Burial of Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz,’ still in the Church of Santo Tomé, where it was painted in 1584. Look at this gallery of living portraits, all the life of Toledo--the life of Spain--is reflected back from those ardent faces. In St. Augustine, splendid in ecclesiastical robes, is the magnificent opulence of the Catholic Church; in the livid face of the dead count, in the cowled monk and two priests is the fervid piety of a people who have felt themselves in mystical communion with God; in the young, warm beauty of St. Stephen and the lovely acolyte is the full joy and rich colour of Spain; and lastly, in the long line of mourners who stand behind the group of the principal figures, and where the painter’s own nervous face is the sixth portrait counting from the right side, you have types unchanged in Castile to-day. And how individual is the rendering of the upper section of the picture in which Christ awaits in the heavens the spirit of the dead saint. Yes, this picture is one of the greatest pictures in Spain; it is always interesting.

TOLEDO

_Specially drawn for The Spanish Series_]

GENERAL VIEW OF TOLEDO FROM THE SOUTH-EAST]

VIEW OF TOLEDO FROM THE SOUTH-EAST]

GENERAL VIEW OF TOLEDO]

VIEW OF TOLEDO FROM THE CAMPO DEL REY]

GENERAL VIEW OF TOLEDO]

STATE OF THE RUINS OF THE CIRCO MAXIMO IN THE YEAR 1848, ACCORDING TO THE “ALBUM ARTISTICO”]

THE RIVER TAGUS]

ALCANTARA BRIDGE]

PERSPECTIVE OF ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE AND THE DIRECTION OF THE FORTIFIED LINES]

PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE SITE OF THE AQUEDUCT]

ENVIRONS OF TOLEDO]

PLAZA DE ZOCODOVER]

THE TOWN HALL]

THE MARKET-PLACE]

THE MARKET-PLACE]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

VISAGRA GATE]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

A STREET IN TOLEDO]

BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

ALCANTARA GATE

ALCANTARA PORTAL AND BRIDGE]

EXTERIOR OF THE NORTHERN CITY WALLS]

FORTIFICATIONS OF THE OLD BRIDGE OF BOATS, REPLACED BY THE BRIDGE OF ST. MARTIN]

REMAINS OF THE CITY WALLS OF “AL-HIZÉM,” FROM THE GATE OF THE DOCE CANTOS TO THE “PLAZA DE ARMAS” OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

REMAINS OF THE CITY WALLS, SOUTH-WEST, REBUILT AT THE TIME OF THE RECONQUEST]

REMAINS OF THE ROMAN RAMPARTS OF THE FIRST ENCLOSURE OF THE CITY]

REMAINS OF THE ROMAN RAMPART OF THE FIRST ENCLOSURE OF THE CITY. (PLAZA DE ARMAS DEL PUENTE DE ALCANTARA)

VISIGOTH CAPITAL TRANSFORMED INTO A FOUNTAIN BASIN. (No. 9 CALLEJON DE LA LAMPARILLA)]

PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE TO THE HOUSE OF THE BATHS OF ABEN-YA-YIX BAJADA AL COLEGIO DEL INFANTES

SEPULCHRAL ARCH OF THE INFANTE DON FERNANDO PEREZ IN THE BELEN CHAPEL IN THE CONVENT OF THE COMENDADORA DE SANTIAGO]

RUINS OF POLAN CASTLE. FOURTEENTH CENTURY]

GUADAMAR CASTLE]

REMAINS OF THE ROMAN RAMPARTS OF THE FIRST ENCLOSURE OF THE CITY]

THE EXTERIOR WALLS

REMAINS OF THE FORTIFICATIONS IN THE JEWISH SUBURB]

GATE OF THE “ALMOFALA” (BIB-AL-MOJADHA) REBUILT IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

“THE ABBOT’S TOWER” IN THE NORTHERN WALLS]

RUINS OF THE AQUARIA TOWER, COMMONLY CALLED “HORNO DEL VIDRIO”]

REMAINS OF THE AQUEDUCT (LEFT BANK OF THE RIVER)

REMAINS OF THE AQUEDUCT (RIGHT BANK OF THE RIVER)]

REMAINS OF THE ROMAN CONSTRUCTION IN THE TOWER OF THE PLAZA DE ARMAS OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

EAST SIDE OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

POSTERIOR FAÇADE OF THE DEFENSIVE TOWER OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

DEFENSIVE TOWER OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA. ANTERIOR FAÇADE]

ALCANTARA GATE]

COMMEMORATIVE INSCRIPTION IN THE AVENUE OF THE DEFENSIVE TOWER OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

COAT OF ARMS OF THE CATHOLIC SOVEREIGNS IN FRONT OF THE DEFENSIVE TOWER OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA

“THE KHALIF’S CAPITALS” AT No. 13 CALLE DEL COLISEO]

PERSPECTIVE OF THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA]

ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE]

ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE

FAÇADE OF SANTA CRUZ]

DEFENSIVE TOWERS AT THE ENTRANCE OF ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE AND THE TOWN

RESTORED POSTERIOR FAÇADE OF THE ARCH DE LA SANGRE]

REMAINS OF THE AQUEDUCT (RIGHT BANK)]

EAST SIDE OF ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE]

DEFENSIVE TOWER OF ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE. FAÇADE SEEN FROM THE BRIDGE

DEFENSIVE TOWER OF ST. MARTIN’S BRIDGE. FAÇADE SEEN FROM THE HIGHWAY]

MALBARDÓN GATE. ELEVENTH CENTURY]

VISAGRA GATE]

UPPER PART OF THE VISAGRA GATE. BUILT IN 1550]

TOWER IN THE CITY WALLS OF “THE SUBURB OF SAN ISIDORO,” NEAR THE NEW BRIDGE OF VISAGRA]

HYDRAULIC MACHINE AND REMAINS OF THE WALLS IN THE QUARTER OF THE CURTIDORES, NEAR THE RIVER

WALLS OF THE SUBURB OF SAN ISIDORO]

ANCIENT GATE OF VISAGRA]

ANCIENT GATE OF VISAGRA. THE SIDE WHICH JOINS THE WALL AND THE SIDE DEFENSIVE TOWER]

ANCIENT GATE OF VISAGRA. DEFENSIVE AND SIDE TOWER]

ANCIENT GATE OF VISAGRA. REMAINS OF THE EASTERN FAÇADE]

DETAIL OF THE PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE OLD GATE OF VISAGRA

INTERIOR OF THE OLD GATE OF VISAGRA]

ANCIENT GATE OF VISAGRA]

THE TOWER CALLED “PUERTA BAJA DE LA HERRERIA,” NOW “GATE OF THE SUN”]

CASTLE OF SAN SERVANDO]

CASTLE OF SAN SERVANDO. ANCIENT ENTRANCE IN THE WEST FAÇADE

CASTLE OF SAN SERVANDO. SOUTH-EAST ANGLE]

DOOR OF THE CASTLE IN SAN SERVANDO]

GATE OF VALMADRON]

GATE OF CAMBRÓN]

BAÑO DE LA CAVA]

ENTRANCE TO CAVA BATHS]

RUINS OF THE TOWER OF THE OLD BRIDGE OF BOATS, CALLED “BAÑO DE LA CAVA”]

DETAILS OF THE CONVENT OF SANTA FE.

ELEVENTH CENTURY]

WEST PORTAL IN THE OLD HERMITAGE, NOW THE INN OF SANTA ANA, ON THE SISLA ROAD]

ALTAR-PIECE OF SAN JUSTO]

DETAIL OF THE CHURCH OF SAN JUSTO.

FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

DETAIL OF THE CHAPEL OF SANTOS JUSTO AND PASTOR]

EFFIGIES OF JUAN GUAS, ARCHITECT OF SAN JUAN DE LOS REYES, AND OF HIS SON. CHAPEL OF CHRIST AT THE COLUMN, IN THE PARISH CHURCH OF SAN JUSTO]

EFFIGIES OF MARI ALVARES, WIFE OF JUAN GUAS, AND OF HER DAUGHTER. CHAPEL OF CHRIST AT THE COLUMN, IN THE PARISH CHURCH OF SAN JUSTO]

MOSQUE OF THE TORNERIAS. EXTERIOR OF THE SOUTH FAÇADE, SOUTH-WEST ANGLE]

INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE DE LAS TORNERIAS]

ARCH OF THE “KIBLÁH” IN THE MOSQUE DE LAS TORNERIAS]

MOSQUE OF THE TORNERIAS. TREFOIL ARCHED WINDOW

MOSQUE OF THE TORNERIAS. HORSE-SHOE WINDOW]

MOSQUE OF THE TORNERIAS. ARCHED WINDOW

MOSQUE OF THE TORNERIAS. RECTANGULAR WINDOW]

MOSQUE DE LAS TORNERIAS]

MOSQUE OF THE TORNERIAS, BUILT OVER ROMAN REMAINS]

SUPPOSED ELEVATION OF THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM]

SUPPOSED PLAN OF THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM]

ACTUAL SITUATION OF THE NORTH-EAST FAÇADE OF THE ANCIENT MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM, A TRANSEPT AND _MUDEJAR_ APSIS OF THE HERMITAGE OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ]

THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM, HORSE-SHOE ARCH AND REMAINS OF THE DADO AND LITTLE ARCHES AND WINDOWS IN THE NORTH-EAST FAÇADE (RIGHT SIDE)]

THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM, HORSE-SHOE ARCH AND REMAINS OF THE DADO OF LITTLE ARCHES AND WINDOWS IN THE NORTH-EAST FAÇADE (LEFT SIDE)]

PRINCIPAL NAVE IN THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM]

ARCH IN THE SOUTHERN INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM

ACTUAL ENTRANCE TO THE CASTLE]

MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM. ARCH IN THE INTERIOR WALL, SOUTH-WEST ANGLE

DETAIL OF THE NORTH-WEST FAÇADE OF THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM]

BIB-AL-MARDÓM. “ARCH OF THE CROSS”

INTERIOR FAÇADE

EXTERIOR FAÇADE]

MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM]

NORTH-WEST FAÇADE OF THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM (HERMITAGE OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ), DISCOVERED IN FEBRUARY 1899]

THE EPIGRAPHIC MEDALLION ON THE NORTH-WEST FAÇADE OF THE MOSQUE OF BIB-AL-MARDÓM (HERMITAGE OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ), REBUILT IN THE YEAR 370 AFTER THE HEGIRA (A.D. 980)]

VISIGOTH CAPITAL IN THE OLD MOORISH PARISH CHURCH OF SAN SEBASTIAN

VISIGOTH BASE WHICH SERVES AS A CAPITAL IN THE OLD MOORISH PARISH CHURCH OF SAN SEBASTIAN]

SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ]

THE HERMITAGE OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ]

WALL-PAINTINGS OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ]

CHURCH OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ]

WALL-PAINTINGS OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ]

ANCIENT MOSQUE, NOW THE HERMITAGE OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ]

EXTERIOR OF THE HERMITAGE OF SANTO CRISTO DE LA LUZ, AND TOWERS OF VARIOUS CHURCHES]

DETAIL OF THE TRANSITO (SYNAGOGUE), BUILT IN 1360 AT THE EXPENSE OF SAMUEL LEVI]