Ribera, Zurbaran, Murillo are hardly to be ranked with the painter of
the Burial of the Count of Orgáz. While this undiscriminating
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, Señor 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). Señor 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, Señor 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 Théophile 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.