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Maurice in the chapter hall of the Escorial is a long step toward a new method of expression. At Toledo there are about eighty pieces of the master, not including his sculpture, retablos; like Tintoretto, he was accustomed to make little models in clay or wax for the figures in his pictures.
His father was a carver of "retablos," and brought the boy up to follow his profession. Cano was also a painter of considerable merit, but as a sculptor in wood he was particularly successful. His first conspicuous work was a new high altar for the church of Lebrija, which came to him on account of the death of his father, who was commencing the work in 1630, when his life was suddenly cut off.
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.
Alonso made this altar so beautifully, that he was paid two hundred and fifty ducats more than he asked! Columns and cornices are arranged so as to frame four excellent statues. These carvings have been esteemed so highly that artists came to study them all the way from Flanders. The altar is coloured, like most of the Spanish retablos.
They are, as it were, small churches or important annexes like that of the Condestable in Burgos, possessing a dome of its own absolutely independent of the cathedral itself, rich in decorative details, luxurious in the use of polished stone and metal, of agate and golden accessories, of gilded friezes, low reliefs, and painted retablos.
The effect from a distance is dazzling, the reds, blues, and gold mingle together and produce a multicoloured mass reaching to the height of the nave; on closer examination, the workmanship is seen to be both coarse and naïve, primitive as compared to the more finished retablos of Burgos, Astorga, etc.
We rang at the door, and after long delay a woman came and let us into an interior stranger ever than her being there as custodian. It was frescoed from floor to ceiling everywhere, except the places of the altars now kept by the painted retablos and the tombs and the statues of the various saints and heroes.
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