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.