The Church of his day seems to have prized his genius: the king underrated it, while contemporaries and posterity recognising him as bizarre, inclined to the theory that he was mad. It has been left to the judgment of the present day, reaching back scarcely more than twenty years, to appraise El Greco at his real valuation. The reasons for both the earlier and the most recent estimations are plain.
Philip II, patron of Titian, was enamoured of Italian art and, as we recall, imported Italian artists to decorate his palaces. Being a man of small and dogmatic mind he could not extend appreciation to work so different as El Greco’s, and set the fashion among laymen to ignore it. Later the whole trend of Spanish art in its emergence from Italianate imitation was toward naturalism. The seventeenth century was overshadowed by the genius of Velasquez. In the eighteenth century Spain followed the lead of other countries in the academic effort to revive the forms without the spirit of the Renaissance art, until she became suddenly aware of a native genius: Goya, the temperamental, objective, impressionist. The nineteenth century was occupied with the rediscovery of Velasquez. Its watchword became “truth”; truth of actual appearances, the seeing and rendering of objective facts as they really seem to be. Its artistic motive, in fact, notwithstanding that it included, as it could not help doing, the limitations and variations of the personal equation, was in essence photographic. It was concerned, like the camera, with what the eye can see. Not until the end of the century did this vogue of objective naturalism abate. The inevitable reaction against this naturalistic view of art set in; quickened by the gradual realisation that photography was crowding the painter from their common field of sight. Artists, on the one hand, began to realise that there are internal as well as external facts, facts of the spirit as well as facts of matter; and, on the other, that the chief value of a picture is not in its making something look like life, but in extracting from the life represented its fullest amount of expression. Expression, among progressive modern artists, has taken precedence of mere representation. It is therefore, our own day that is giving special honor to El Greco and Goya; to Goya, the master of material expression, to El Greco who joined this, in so extraordinary a degree, to spiritual expression.
Having thus established the point of view from which El Greco should be studied, we will briefly consider the conditions under which his genius developed and then the qualities, technical and spiritual, which his works exhibit. We shall find that he broke away from the Venetian use of color, employing a sober range of hues, of extreme subtlety and a chiaroscuro all his own. That he was also a great master of composition, decorating every part of his large canvases with meaningful details, so that there are no spaces perfunctorily filled or devoid of interest. A great draughtsman also, who, although he altered for his own purpose the proportions of figures and at times dared to indulge in “bad drawing,” realises the plastic qualities of form as few artists have done, and extracts from form, gesture and action a maximum of character and expression. Similarly, in his portraits we shall discover not only a vivid rendering of external personality, but also a penetrating insight into the soul of the subject. Finally, in the presence of his work one should be conscious of a rare and elevated spirit, the artist’s own, interpreting the spiritual genius of the Spain of his day.
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Almost nothing is known of El Greco’s life. No record of him exists until November 16, 1570, the date of a letter written by the Venetian miniature painter, Julio Clovio to Cardinal Nepote Farnese. It says—“There is in Rome a young man from Candia, a disciple of Titian, who in my opinion is a painter of rare talent. Among other things he has painted a portrait of himself, which causes wonderment to all the painters of Rome. I should like him to be under the patronage of your Illustrious and Reverend Lordship, without any other contribution toward his livelihood than a room in the Farnese Palace for some little time, until he can find other accommodation.” This letter establishes El Greco’s birthplace, corroborating the artist’s signature, as it appears on many canvases in Greek characters with the addition of “Cretan”; his experience under Titian in Venice; his visit to Rome and the fact that in the year 1570 he was a young man. How long he stayed in Rome is uncertain, but the next date of certainty, 1577, appears after his signature upon a picture of The Assumption of the Virgin for the Church of San Domingo el Antigua in Toledo. The fact of El Greco being engaged on this work is corroborated by documents relating to the church, in which it is recorded that the artist was paid 1000 ducats for eight pictures to adorn the high and side altars. Thus it appears that at some date between the years 1570 and 1577 El Greco reached Spain and settled in Toledo. Here he seems to have lived continuously until his death, the record of which is still preserved. “On 7th April, 1614, died Domenico Greco. He left no will. He received the sacraments, was buried in Santo Domingo el Antigua; and gave candles.” The position of El Greco’s tomb in San Domingo is not known. The only other documents in existence relate to contracts for commissions and occasional disputes and lawsuits over the prices. They have been summarised and used as data for establishing the order in which his pictures were executed by Albert F. Calvert and E. Gasquoine Hartley in their critical and richly illustrated book, “El Greco, An Account of his Life and Works.”
One document may be mentioned here, since it indicates El Greco’s brief relations with the Court. It is a royal order, dated 1580, which states that a commission had been entrusted to Domenico Theotocopuli, Greek painter, residing in Toledo, but that “the work was not being carried on for want of money and fine colors.” Therefore it is commanded, “That the said painter be supplied with money, also with the fine colors that he asks for, and, especially ultramarine, that the work may be executed with brevity as is suitable in my service.”
Since El Greco had finished his commission for Santo Domingo and had also painted an altar piece, El Expolio, or Christ Despoiled of His Raiment on Calvary, for the Cathedral, it would seem as if his plea of no
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