Side by side with this budding art—which was in a certain sense inspired by the schools of the north, but nevertheless began to display a national tendency—a few isolated artists, either by preference or training, still retained the Italian style. We recall the Santa Catalina of Hernando Yáñez de la Almedina ([Plate I.]), shown at the exhibition, a work which has not been sufficiently appreciated and must be regarded as a beautiful example of that period.
Arising at the close of the epoch of national unity, the House of Austria, in the person of its most exalted representative, the Emperor Charles V, commenced to govern the destinies of Spain. The victorious expansion of Spanish arms, both in the Old World and the New, during the first half of the sixteenth century, had but little influence upon artistic effort, and none of the Spanish painters of this period are regarded as the equals of their Italian, Flemish, German or Dutch contemporaries. And our artists, at a time when the entire national fortunes were hazarded in campaign after campaign, had enough to do to maintain an epoch of gestation, to comprehend the laws and trace the spiritual current of the Renaissance which now dawned upon the world of culture. This great movement failed also to take a national direction with Spanish artists, and the few books and treatises on art printed in Spain during this period are poor in conception and lacking in information.
Even to mention the names of the painters of the period, it would be necessary to burden this critical sketch with a list of artists of secondary importance. In his art Alonso Berruguete was certainly Italian, but in spite of this, he gave to his works a marked national stamp, maintaining in the central portion of the Peninsula a patriotic inspiration which resulted later in a separate school of culture. Valencia, with artists trained in Italy, was preparing a great reputation for the future, and then a painter of individuality, isolated in a minor province, and having few relations with the Court, created with his brush an austere art, a little dry and stiff, ascetic in its inspiration and scarcely suggestive at first sight, but striking in its individuality, and reflecting that spirit of Spanish theology and mysticism which was to dawn somewhat later. I refer to Luis de Morales, the maker of all these Dolorosas and Ecce Homos, so unmistakable and so much esteemed in Spain.
We come now to the reign of the son of Charles V, Philip II, a man whose memory has had to endure much criticism, but to whom, from the point of view of art, his country owes not a few of those works which it treasures most. The portraits of Moro, a wealth of Flemish and Italian paintings and, among others, a very complete collection of Titians, are due to the commands of Philip II, who, before he shut himself up in the Monastery of the Escurial, and during his visits to Italy, Germany and Flanders, was gathering choice examples of the art of that time, and of the period immediately preceding it, installing in the castles of Spain those paintings which are to-day the most important of the foreign collections housed in the Prado Museum.
But meanwhile the true national output of those years, mostly of religious pictures, was destined for the churches and convents, and must no longer be regarded as of minor importance. Meanwhile, also, by royal command, there arrived in Spain the works of foreign masters, and in Court circles there arose a style of painting exclusively devoted to the genre of the portrait, and which is known to-day as the school of portraitists of Philip II and Philip III. Its origin is known to us. It is due to the teaching which our painters received from that famous Hollander, Antonis Moor, who had so close a relation with our country that his name has become hispanicised, and who is equally well known to-day by his Dutch name, as by the more Spanish-sounding Antonio Moro. Patronised by Philip II, he gave instruction to certain Spanish painters, especially to one, Alonso Sanchez Coello, who was his disciple and successor in art. Another Spanish follower of his, besides Coello, was Pantoja de la Cruz, and the third and last of those who maintained this school and who completed its cycle, was Bartolomé González, who flourished during the first years of the reign of Philip IV. Other portrait painters, disciples and imitators of these might be mentioned, but the artists alluded to typify this school, brief in its development, very distinguished and typical, though, as we have said, not of Spanish origin. Their characteristics are quite unmistakable. They paint a life-like portrait, dry, hard, minute in execution, and complete in all its details, to the treatment of which they pay much attention, especially as regards personality. But although skilful and sincere, their school degenerated and the last of its manifestations is practically an imitation of the first, possessing little excellence and scanty inspiration. Portrait painters of the Court, as we have indicated, the works of these men, though in general replete with strong personality, especially as regards the royal family portraits, have been scattered throughout the world, and were practically confined to the palaces of other reigning houses.
In the London exhibition we were able to study the most important of these several works, for example that of Pantoja, Portrait of Philip II ([Plate II.]), who is represented as elderly and on foot, a full-length portrait which faithfully reflects the appearance of this monarch, and which is housed in the Monastery of the Escurial. It appeared at the Royal Academy, being lent for the purpose by His Majesty the King of Spain. There were others, the property of His Britannic Majesty, which are housed in Buckingham Palace, the portraits by Sánchez Coello of the Archdukes of Austria, Wenceslaus, Rudolf and Ernest, the Portrait of the Infante Don Diego, and that of Margaret of Austria. That by Pantoja, Portrait of a Lady of the Palavicino Family (regarding the authorship of which various doubts have arisen), though not of artistic importance, certainly presents a critical problem, for while the art of portrait painting was being developed in Spain, in other countries and particularly in Italy, the disciples of the school of Moor created works which might at times be confounded with those of Spanish painters. Bartolomé González was also represented by the portrait of the Cardinal Infante Don Fernando of Austria, lent by the Marquis de Viana.
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About the year 1575 there came from Italy to the city of Toledo, a young artist, scarcely thirty years of age, born in the island of Crete, of Greek parents. He was called Domenico Theotocopuli, and was known then, as he is to-day throughout the whole world, as El Greco (“the Greek.”) There was reserved for this man the mission of shaping and, in the course of time, perfecting through the medium of his works, a technique, especially as regards execution, performance and character, which is manifest in all his creations, and the great enthusiasm which the lovers of Spanish Art evince for it is natural and explicable. The fame which the first works of El Greco aroused in Toledo reached the Court, and Philip II commanded him to work in the Monastery of the Escurial on pictures for the Church. They were at issue from time to time, the King and the painter, and do not quite seem to have understood one another. Philip II, used to an Italian and Flemish artistic atmosphere, and an enthusiastic admirer of Titian, was unable to comprehend the work of El Greco, which, though of the Venetian tradition, represented an innovation profound and complete, and to-day, as four centuries ago, it perplexes many people. But lovers of Spain, those who apprehend her true genius and have studied her characteristics and idiosyncrasies, see in El Greco one of the most interesting figures in international art. In the spirit which appears in his works, the genius with which they have been performed, the marvellous technique developed in them, and the workmanship which gives such brilliance and quality to the colour, so that it appears at times to have been executed with enamels, he triumphs, disarming criticism, making us not only forget, but even applaud the extravagances and lack of proportion of which his works are full.
The work of El Greco may be divided into two distinct groups: one comprising human figures in general, portraits; the other divine figures, images, and religious paintings. In one work, the most complete and important of all, the Burial of the Count of Orgaz ([Plate V.]), these two aspects are joined. The upper portion, the heavenly, which it would seem the painter suffused with his idealism, is peopled with divine figures, symbolic and incorporeal. In the lower part, which represents an earthly scene, the form and colouring have the qualities of things terrestrial. In the exhibition of the Royal Academy, in the salon set apart for the works of El Greco, there were gathered ten examples eloquent of these two phases of his effort. His Self-portrait and A Trinitarian exhibit the second; The Annunciation and the Christ embracing the Cross the first. Another canvas which occurs to one as affording a good example of his brilliance of colouring and individuality is the picture full of miniature figures, The “Glory” of Philip II ([Plate III.]), sent to London by His Majesty King Alfonso XIII.
In this collection of his works, as indeed, in all those from the brush of this master, one could study the origin of the greyish tonality characteristic of the Spanish school which he was the first to introduce and give effect to, and to which Velázquez, in later years, gave definite form, thus founding a technical characteristic of the school. It may interest those curious regarding such problems of painting that the shadows which abound in the works of El Greco, though intense, are never black, and this lends to them a singular profundity and atmosphere. From this relation of the light and shade, never attaining a pure black or white, there results a wonderful transparency and corporality, and all this is attained with fluid colours, in most instances blurred and rubbed and nearly always rather soft, slight only in the brighter places and in the points of light. He observes and understands that the reproduction of these things in the art of the painter is not due to faithful copying alone. The atmosphere, the light, the reflections, which these objects display to our sight, change according to conditions, and are represented on canvas not as they actually appear, but according to the aspect they present to the vision, modified by external agencies. Only thus is it possible to obtain the impression of truth, of movement, of depth. In the work of the copyist the objects and figures are petrifications, rigid and dead, in one and the same plane, in which, perhaps, the ability of the artist can more readily be appreciated, but which never gives the impression of movement or of life.