Beruete admits that his idol, Velasquez, was affected by the study of El Greco’s colouring.  Canaille Saint-Saens, when Liszt and Rubinstein were compared, exclaimed:  “Two great artists who have nothing in common except their superiority.”  It is bootless to bracket Velasquez with his elder.  And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco’s resemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco was, but not trivial nor a charlatan.  As to his decadent tendencies we side with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.:  “Certain pedants have written as if the world would be better without its disorderly geniuses.  There could, I think, be no sorer error.  We need the unbalanced talents, the poetes damnes of every craft.  They strew the passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own.  They fight valiantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the only unpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference.  Greco should always be an honoured name in this ill-destined company.”

In the Prado Museum there is a goodly collection.  The Annunciation, The Holy Family, Jesus Christ Dead, The Baptism of Christ, The Resurrection, The Crucifixion—­a tremendous conception; and The Coming of the Holy Ghost; this latter, with its tongues of fire, its flickering torches, its ecstatic apostles and Mary, her face flooded by a supernal illumination, mightily stirs the aesthetic pulse.  The Prado has two dozen specimens, though two of them at least—­a poor replica of the Orgaz burial, and another—­are known to be by El Greco’s son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli; of the numerous portraits and other pictures dispersed by time and chance to the four quarters of the globe, we have written earlier in this volume, when dealing with the definitive work on this Greek by Senor Manuel B. Cossio.  El Greco, through sheer intensity of temperament and fierce sincerity, could pluck out from men who had become, because of their apathy and grotesque pride, mere vegetable growths, their very souls afire; or if stained by crimes, these souls, he shot them up to God like green meteors.  To be sure they have eyes drunk with dreams, the pointed skull of the mystic, and betray a plentiful lack of chin and often an atrabilious nature.  When old his saints resemble him, when young he must have looked like his saints, Sebastian and Martin.  With his ardent faith he could have confuted the Gnostic or the Manichean heresies in colourful allegory, but instead he sang fervid hosannahs on his canvases to the greater glory of Christ and His saints.  Perhaps if he had lived in our times he might have painted heads of fashionable courtesans or equivocal statesmen.  But whether primitive or modern, realist or symbolist, he would always have been a painter of dramatic genius.  He is the unicorn among artists.

VELASQUEZ IN THE PRADO