admiration may be deplored, there are reasons enough for the canonisation of El Greco in the church of art.  Violent to exaggeration in composition, morbidly mystic, there are power and emotional quality revealed in his work; above all else he anticipated Velasquez in his use of cool gray tones, and as a pupil or at least a disciple of Titian he is, as his latest biographer, Senor Manuel B. Cossio, names him, “the last epigone of the Italian Renaissance.”  But of the man we know almost nothing.

We read his exhaustive study, a big book of over seven hundred pages fortified by a supplementary volume containing one hundred and ninety-three illustrations, poor reproductions of El Greco’s accredited works (El Greco, por Manuel B. Cossio).  Senor Cossio has so well accomplished his task that his book may be set down as definitive.  A glance at the bibliography he compiled shows that not many writers on art have seen fit to pay particular attention to El Greco.  A few Spaniards, Senor Beruete heading them; Max Boehm, Carl Justi (in his Diego Velasquez); Paul Lafond, William Ritter, Arthur Symons, William Stirling, Signor Venturi, Louis Viardot, Wyzewa, Havelock Ellis, and the inimitable Theophile Gautier—­whose Travels in Spain, though published in 1840, is, as Mr. Ellis truthfully remarks, still a storehouse of original exploration.  But the Cossio work, naturally, tops them all.  He is an adorer, though not fanatical, of his hero, and it is safe to assert that all that is known to-day of El Greco will be found in these pages.  The origins of the painter, his visit to Italy, his arrival at Toledo, are described with references to original documents—­few as they are.

Then follows a searching and vivid exposition of the pictures in Madrid, Toledo, and elsewhere, a technical and psychological analysis which displays vast research, critical acumen, and the sixth sense of sympathy.  No pictures, sketches, sculptures, or retablos escape Cossio.  He considers El Greco in his relations to Velasquez and modern art.  He has all the authorities at his tongue’s tip; he views the man and artist from every angle.

“Domenico El Greco died at Toledo two years before his contemporary Cervantes,” says Cossio.  Domenicos Theotocopoulos was his original name, which was softened into Domenico Theotocopuli—­which, no doubt proving too much of a tongue-twister for the Spaniards, was quickly superseded by a capital nickname, “The Greek.”  His birthplace was the island of Crete and his birth-year between 1545 and 1550.  Justi was the first to demonstrate his Cretan ancestry, which was corroborated in 1893 by Bikelas.  In 1570, we learn through a letter written by Giulio Clovio to Cardinal Farnese, El Greco had astonished Roman artists by his skill in portraiture.  He was said to be a pupil of Titian, on Clovio’s authority.  Why he went to Spain has not been discovered.  He had a son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, a sculptor and architect.  Who the mother was