triumphs, disarming criticism, making us not only forget, but even applaud the extravagances and lack of proportion of which his works are full. The work of El Greco may be divided into two distinct groups: one comprising human figures in general, portraits; the other divine figures, images, and religious paintings. In one work, the most complete and important of all, the _Burial of the Count of Orgaz_ (Plate V.), these two aspects are joined. The upper portion, the heavenly, which it would seem the painter suffused with his idealism, is peopled with divine figures, symbolic and incorporeal. In the lower part, which represents an earthly scene, the form and colouring have the qualities of things terrestrial. In the exhibition of the Royal Academy, in the salon set apart for the works of El Greco, there were gathered ten examples eloquent of these two phases of his effort. His _Self-portrait_ and _A Trinitarian_ exhibit the second; _The Annunciation_ and the _Christ embracing the Cross_ the first. Another canvas which occurs to one as affording a good example of his brilliance of colouring and individuality is the picture full of miniature figures, _The “Glory” of Philip II_ (Plate III.), sent to London by His Majesty King Alfonso XIII. In this collection of his works, as indeed, in all those from the brush of this master, one could study the origin of the greyish tonality characteristic of the Spanish school which he was the first to introduce and give effect to, and to which Velázquez, in later years, gave definite form, thus founding a technical characteristic of the school. It may interest those curious regarding such problems of painting that the shadows which abound in the works of El Greco, though intense, are never black, and this lends to them a singular profundity and atmosphere. From this relation of the light and shade, never attaining a pure black or white, there results a wonderful transparency and corporality, and all this is attained with fluid colours, in most instances blurred and rubbed and nearly always rather soft, slight only in the brighter places and in the points of light. He observes and understands that the reproduction of these things in the art of the painter is not due to faithful copying alone. The atmosphere, the light, the reflections, which these objects display to our sight, change according to conditions, and are represented on canvas not as they actually appear, but according to the aspect they present to the vision, modified by external agencies. Only thus is it possible to obtain the impression of truth, of movement, of depth. In the work of the copyist the objects and figures are petrifications, rigid and dead, in one and the same plane, in which, perhaps, the ability of the artist can more readily be appreciated, but which never gives the impression of movement or of life.