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Updated: April 30, 2025
To a cynical observer, on the lookout for characteristic temperamental lapses, two recent interpretations of El Greco may be especially commended. I mean the Secret of Toledo, by Maurice Barres, and an article in the "Contemporary" of April, 1914, by Mr. Aubrey Bell.
To regard work as mad and beautiful as this as anything but individual Imagination, is to insult the mystery of personality. El Greco re-creates the world, in pure, lonely, fantastic arbitrariness. His art does not represent the secret Truth of the Universe, or the Everlasting Movement; it represents the humour of El Greco. Every artist mesmerizes us into his personal vision.
But far beyond all others in grace, excellence, perfection, and versatility, has soared Alessandro Cesati, surnamed Il Greco, who has executed cameos in relief and gems in intaglio in so beautiful a manner, as well as dies of steel in incavo, and has used the burin with such supreme diligence and with such mastery over the most delicate refinements of his art, that nothing better could be imagined.
This is the house where El Greco lived, and you'd see his easel, his bedroom, his kitchen and furniture just as he left them. In a small museum next to the house you'd find paintings by El Greco, mostly pictures of saints and portraits of famous Spaniards of his time.
"And you will doubtless deal nobly by me for old acquaintance' sake, Messer Greco, so I will not stay to fix the small sum you will give me in token of my service in the matter. It seems to me a thousand years now till I get out of the piazza, for a fair is a dull, not to say a wicked thing, when one has no more goods to sell."
But he rails against the Roman scholars who want to make us all talk Latin again: `My ears, he says, `are sufficiently flayed by the barbarisms of the learned, and if the vulgar are to talk Latin I would as soon have been in Florence the day they took to beating all the kettles in the city because the bells were not enough to stay the wrath of the saints. Ah, Messer Greco, if you want to know the flavour of our scholarship, you must frequent my shop: it is the focus of Florentine intellect, and in that sense the navel of the earth as my great predecessor, Burchiello, said of his shop, on the more frivolous pretension that his street of the Calimara was the centre of our city.
Pinkney's Morning Post before he lets him have it; and neglects the letters of the inmates of the chambers generally. Miss Rumbold, his sister lives with him, by the way; but with that young lady of course we have nothing to do. I knew both these gentlemen at Rome, where George wore a velvet doublet and a beard down to his chest, and used to talk about high art at the "Caffe Greco."
This statue, of the marble called at Rome Greco duro, is reckoned one of the finest extant of the mirth-inspiring deity. It is paved with curious marble, and independently of the Muses, and their leader, Apollo, here are also assembled the antique portraits of poets and philosophers who have rendered themselves famous by cultivating them.
Betty couldn't find the photograph I wanted to show you. It's a picture that El Greco painted of the city he loved, and it's truer than any photograph. Come and sit at the table." Philip dragged his chair forward, and Athelny set the photograph before him. He looked at it curiously, for a long time, in silence. He stretched out his hand for other photographs, and Athelny passed them to him.
Tell him I'll give him his price for it. And I thought of going after you to Nello's to-morrow; for it's my opinion of you, Messer Greco, that you're not one who'd see the Arno run broth, and stand by without dipping your finger." Tito had lost no word of what Bratti had said, yet his mind had been very busy all the while. Why should he keep the ring?
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