El Greco—A Spaniard

Abstract

Twenty years ago, when I published the first edition of my History of Art, I already worried about the national character of El Greco's art and personality. I said there that Paravicini, the friend of El Greco, whose wonderful portrait is now in the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston, in a sonnet to the painter said: “Crete gave him life, Toledo, his brushes.” I retorted, saying that Paravicini was wrong, that Crete gave him his brushes, but life, real life, he found in Toledo. By this I meant that perhaps when El Greco came to Toledo, he knew as much as he ever knew of painting, but it was in Spain that he made his final metamorphosis, changing from the second-rate Venetian painter to the greatest master that Spain and the world have had. Indeed, a certain number of paintings attributed to Theotocopuli are being put forward by the critics as of the time when he was in Italy, and none of them gives great satisfaction. Of his works in Crete, if there were any, nothing is known.