significant as anticipating one of the characteristics of the Spanish
palette.] His distorted fever of movement--the lean, twisted bodies,
the frenzied, gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large calves that
taper down to pointed toes--usually fails to convince us. But in the
audacities of his colouring he revealed the possibilities of new
harmonies, of higher, brighter, cooler keys." The Count Orgaz burial
scene at Toledo Mr. Ellis does not rank among the world's great
pictures.

There is often a depressing morbidity in Greco; Goya is sane and
healthy by comparison. Greco's big church pieces are full of religious
sentiment, but enveloped in the fumes of nightmare. Curious it was
that a stranger from Greece should have absorbed certain not
particularly healthy, even sinister, Spanish traits and developed them
to such a pitch of nervous intensity. As Arthur Symons says, his
portraits "have all the brooding Spanish soul with its proud
self-repression." Señor Cossio sums up in effect by declaring that
Venice educated Greco in his art; Titian taught him technique;
Tintoretto gave him his sense of dramatic form; Angelo his virility.
But of the strong personality which assimilated these various
influences there is no doubt when confronted with one of his canvases,
every inch of which is signed El Greco.




"VELASQUEZ"