“Nobles, discretos varones,
Que gobernais à Toledo,
En aquestas escalones
Desechad las aficiones,
Codicio, temor, y miedo.
Por los comunes provechos
Dejad los particulares;
Pues vos fizo Dios pilares
De tan riquisimos techos,
Estad firmes y derechos.”
When the Toledans wore their famed steel, and damascene armour was the fashion and not a curiosity, the “discreet and noble males” Manrique so magnificently addresses, may have lived up to the high civic ideal of these verses, but it is much to be doubted if the modern Toledans, who no longer seek distraction in the excitement of excellent steel, and fashion paper-knives for books they never read, of damascene instead of exquisite armour, maintain this level of austere civic virtue.
To our lasting gratitude, Cardinal Quiroga, at the instance of the Augustines, ordered El Greco’s immortal and glorious picture of the “Burial of Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz.” It is no exaggeration to describe this picture as one of the greatest of Spain. One puts it only immediately below the
masterpieces of Velasquez. The Toledans went wild with admiration, and writing of it a century ago, Antonio Ponz describes their admiration as still unabated. At the time part of the excitement was due to the superb portraits of well-known personages, which the townspeople contemplated with ever fresh delight. We, who have not this interest in the picture, may wisely, nay, must enforcedly, follow their example to-day. “Since its appearance,” writes Ponz, “the city has never tired of admiring it, visiting it continually, always finding new beauties in it, and contemplating the life-like portraits of the great men of Toledo.”
How modern, how seizing, what a subtle, magnificent impressionist the man was! is the first surprised exclamation when confronted with all these living, speaking faces of old Spain. Faces so Spanish, so delicately and forcibly varied and individual in their maintenance of a rigid, racial type. Every shade of national character stands out separate and in union with the general expression: harsh pride, insane wilfulness, stupendous fanaticism, exalted and untender mysticism, a sensuality so dominant as to tread on cruelty, a delicate humour, an inflated self-consciousness, exquisite kindliness, morose indifference, the very genius of selfishness and a sterile sensibility. Did ever a canvas before so perfectly gather all the fugitive moods, all the underlying currents, all the grace and charm, the vices and defects of a single race, and give them complete stability in their wavering expression? This is to carry portraiture to the rarest perfection. Among these twenty or so living faces, there is not one that is insignificant or mediocre, not one that apart would not make a superb picture, not one that does not carry the enveloping stamp of moment, race and environment. In some the type is so unchanged that to-day in Spain such faces may be seen looking precisely as they did then; unaltered even by costume, so marked is the individuality, so seemingly imperishable the large strong utterance of the Castillian physiognomy. This picture has something of the eternal freshness of “Don Quixote.” There is the simple, unconscious stroke of Cervantes in the fashioning of these hidalgoes’ heads, something of his mild incomparable humour, something of his nobility and the underlying depth of sadness in his easy wit. No painter who was not both witty and humorous could observe so deeply, so wisely, with such an obvious kindliness of regard; could accentuate so suggestively, so delicately, national traits, and yet not break the consistent harmony of a solemn scene; could tell posterity so much with the most charming air of telling it nothing. “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz” proves El Greco something more than a complete artist; it proves his intellectual force, for here he brings all the distinguished qualities of the brain to the very different qualities of the painter’s eye and hand.
Of these latter it would be difficult to say too much. Look at the wonderful shadow of death in the livid grey of the corpse, and then at the brilliance of St Augustine’s episcopal robes! Examine above all the lovely head of the boy, St Stephen, not in the least Spanish, a dream of sweet and stainless youth, with warm-hued beauty to thrill the glance, and just enough of heaven about the young brown head to suggest the absent aureole. And from these fresh-tinted cheeks, so purely rounded, look at the two emaciated and pallid monks behind, and then down at little Acolyte, who has much more of the air of a proud and charming little princess, with a practised grace of gesture and an inherited dignity of glance than a church lad. Is it possible to paint more supremely four such different hours and moods of life—dawn, radiant morning, dull twilight, and cold night,—to unite in a higher degree the skill and power of a master? No wonder the enthusiastic sonneteer addressed him as “Miraculous Greek” and “Divine Greek.” This picture has indeed genius’s rare and inimitable touch of divinity. All else, with patience and talent, may be acquired but this, and had El Greco never painted anything else, by the “Burial” of Santo Tomé alone he would stand apart in the history of Spanish art, with the world’s select few.