history does not say.  The painter took up his abode in Toledo and is not known to have left Spain thereafter.  Pacheco visited him at Toledo and reported him to be as singular as his paintings and of an extravagant disposition.  He was also called a wit and a philosopher.  He wrote on painting, sculpture, and architecture, it is said.  He made money; was, like most of his adopted countrymen, fond of litigation; lived well, loved music—­and at his meals!—­and that is all we may ever record of a busy life; for he painted many pictures, a careful enumeration of which makes Cossio’s book valuable.

There are Grecos scattered over Europe and the two Americas.  Madrid and Toledo boast of his best work, but as far as St. Petersburg and Bucharest he is represented.  In the United States there are eleven examples, soon to be increased by Mr. Archer M. Huntington’s recent acquisition from the Kann collection.  In Boston at the Museum there is the portrait of Fray Paravicino, a brilliant picture. (The worthy monk wrote four sonnets in glorification of the painter, whom he calls “Divino Griego.”  Quoted in one of the Cossio appendices.) There is an Assumption of the Virgin in Chicago at the Art Institute, and an Apostle, belonging to Charles Deering.  In Philadelphia Mr.  “J.  Widner” (read P.A.B.  Widener) owns a St. Francis, and at the Metropolitan Museum, hanging in Gallery 24, there is The Adoration of the Shepherds, a characteristic specimen of Greco’s last manner, and in excellent condition.  The gallery of the late H.O.  Havemeyer contains one of the celebrated portraits of the Cardinal Inquisitor D. Fernando Nino de Guevara, painted during the second epoch, 1594 to 1604.  It furnishes a frontispiece for the Cossio volume.  The same dignitary was again painted, a variant, which Rudolph Kann owned, and now in the possession of Mrs. Huntington.  The cardinal’s head is strong, intellectual, and his expression proud and cold.  Mr. Frick, at a private club exhibition, showed his Greco, St. Jerome, a subject of which the painter was almost as fond as of St. Francis (of Assisi).  The National Gallery, London, owns a St. Jerome, Madrid another.  Mr. Frick’s example belongs to the epoch of 1584 to 1594.  Mr. Erich in New York possesses three pictures, St. Jerome, a portrait of St. Domingo de Guzman and a Deposition.  El Greco is a painter admired by painters for his salt individualism.  Zuloaga, the Spaniard, has several; Degas, two; the critic Duret, two; John S. Sargent, one—­a St. Martin.  Durand-Ruel once owned the Annunciation, but sold it to Mrs. H.O.  Havemeyer, and the Duveens in London possess a Disrobing of Christ.  At the National Gallery there are two.