The Cretan, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, called El Greco (c. 1542-1614) studied in Venice in Titian's studio, and his first works bore the marks of their Venetian origin, mingled with the influences of Correggio and Michelangelo. He arrived in Spain about 158o and soon settled down at Toledo. There was no doubt a mysterious affinity between this late Greek, whose imagination seemed to have preserved the hieratic figures with wondering eyes of the Byzantine Mosaics, and the strange town, the heart of re ligious and military Spain, where everything spoke of ardour, secrecy, spirituality and a sort of passionate austerity. Theotoko poulos, the pupil of Titian, preferred the dramatic and tormented inspiration of Tintoretto to the nobly balanced conceptions of his master. He there led the life of a gentleman of fantastic dis position and, after a certain time, did not appear to wish to sell any more of his pictures. He painted only for his own pleasure and this was what gave to his best work the irresistible attraction which fascinates us. Though unequal he was always sincere to himself. This man, who in many aspects of his personality and his work seems more mediaeval than the most authentic Primi tives, links up with our most modern ideas of the pure essentials of art and the specific attitude of the artist. What sensation was to painters from the last third of the 19th century, an impulse of the soul was to Greco and, in spite of the spiritual abyss between the two principles, the plastic effects are not very different. No one perhaps has seemed more indifferent, more disdainful even, to material truth. His disproportionately long and twisted figures flout the most elementary rules of anatomy, and in spite of his ability as a portraitist, his construction of faces is not much more correct. He twists lines and colours at his despotic fancy. But, once these concessions are made to the rights of criticism, if we are content just to look, the incantation of this extraordinary and unique art takes hold of us. These undulating lines tending to the vertical, this coloration with its predominating blacks and whites, impoverished by a kind of ascetic will, all tend to an ex traordinary intensity of expression. These lines in truth have the trembling elevation of prayer and ecstasy, and they compose a marvellous melody sustained by a 'harmony resembling a night sky broken by violet-tinted clouds, silvery pallors, pale yellows and green lights. This man, who seems to care for nothing but what comes from his arbitrary fancy, was, by a miraculous paradox, a portrait painter when he wished to be, and he put ardent life into his livid faces in which no single drop of blood ever circulated.
His Coronations of the Virgin, his Assumptions, his Resurrec tions show us that he is the only painter who has really spread celestial visions before our mortal eyes ; he painted them as he saw them. And in the great canvas which is his masterpiece, the Burial of Count Orgaz, he achieved, as no one before him had done, and probably no one after him will do, an understanding and interrelation, which seem quite natural, between the supernatural and the material. We feel that this marvellous picture must have appeared complete to the imagination of the artist with its corn position so bold and, we may even say, so true. An almost uncom promising realism and a spontaneous mysticism are thenceforth the two poles of Spanish art. Even in periods in which, and in the works of painters in whom, the desire for realism seems pre dominant a sort of mystic vibration is never wholly absent.
We see this soon afterwards in the work of several great painters who represent the various regional tendencies, at Valencia in Ribera (1588-1652), at Seville in Herrera the Elder (1576-1656) and in Zurbaran (1598—?1669). All three had been subjected to Italian influences. Ribera in his early days was a real Neapolitan,
and at Naples was nicknamed Lo Spagnoletto. Zurbaran had been in Rome. But the national temperament was so strong in them all that there was no risk of their repeating the experiment of the 16th century and the Romanists. They had no wish to extract an aca demic formula from their Italian models. Besides they went by in stinct to the masters of naturalism and particularly to Caravaggio. Each in his own way, Herrera, Ribera and Zurbaran applied to all his subjects, whether sacred, profane or even popular, a disdain for convention which gives a new accent to traditional themes and a touch of the crude, the direct and the brutal to their vision of reality, but always with a feeling for the picturesque and the dramatic latent in all the scenes of life. The celebrated Monk at prayer in the National Gallery (officially called A Franciscan) shows clearly how Zurbaran, the most idealist and at the same time the most balanced of the three artists quoted, arrived at an extraordinary intensity of spiritual expression by realistic means, as much in the individual character of the half-hidden face, as in the striking rendering of the heavy robe and in the violent opposi tion of light and shade. This contrast of light and shade was carried by Ribera to its maximum of intensity and he drew from it by turns effects of realism, tragic horror and even of suavity. From Ribera's Club-Foot and the like derive the popular types of Velazquez, the beggars of Murillo, the grimacing or burlesque figures of Goya, and even certain early works by Manet.
Velazquez (1599-166o) owed much to these excellent painters. However he only called on Herrera and he was not the pupil of the frenzied Spagnoletto; but his youthful works show clearly the influence of Zurbaran. The life and career of Velazquez, as well as the part he played in the art of his country, remind us of Rubens. Both represent a magnificent expansion after a period of fruitful preparation. Both led brilliant lives and enjoyed the favour of princes. The duties of the court occupied an ever greater place in the life of Velazquez than in that of Rubens. From 1624 till his death, he hardly quitted the court, except for two journeys to Italy at an interval of twenty years; and even these visits were official missions.
Velazquez admired Greco and even possessed some of his canvases. He made Rubens's acquaintance during the latter's visit to Madrid. Above all, like Rubens himself, he had carefully studied the great Venetians whose masterpieces adorned the royal palace. All this explains the development of the most per fect artist produced by Spain, one of the most perfect ever seen anywhere. But it would have been insufficient without the gift of genius. We receive the impression that this intelligent but passionless artist, this accomplished example of civilised man, had an almost limitless power over his own faculties. He wished at first to learn his work by principles; he exercised his eye and hand in the manner of Zurbaran in "bodegOns," i.e., still-lifes and pictures depicting popular types. He succeeded from the first with a prodigious facility. He was not more than nineteen when he produced that Aguador de Sevilla, in which the distribu tion of light and shade, the truth of types and poses, their natural ness, the method at once sober and rich, are all perfect. From that moment it was clear that he was destined to be an admirable portrait painter, elegant even in his popular types and his real ism. If we were looking for a pretext for criticism we might say that the three figures in the picture were perfect in vain, their perfection being eclipsed by that of two marvellously painted "alcarazas" of unbaked clay set out in the foreground.