El Greco’s conception of portraiture enters largely into his pictures at the Louvre, from which we must exclude as an imitation by an inferior hand the _St. Francis and a Novice_ (No. 1729A). It is certainly an important feature in the large _Christ on the Cross, with Two Donors_, one of the comparatively recent acquisitions, which still hangs on a screen in Gallery XV. This great altarpiece has little of the master’s fierce passion and lightning flashes of colour. The expression of the two Donors, Diego and Antonio Covarrubias, who are seen to the waist at the foot of the Cross, does not go beyond normal pious devotion; and the Saviour seems rather to stand with spread arms than to hang on the Cross with all the weight of His characteristically elongated body. A leaden grey dominates the whole colour scheme. The composition is singularly empty and simple for a master who seemed to have a perfect horror of empty spaces. The picture, which is fully signed, must have been painted soon after El Greco’s arrival at Toledo (and not, as Sñr. Cossío thinks, between 1590 and 1600), since one of the Donors, the priest Diego Covarrubias, died in 1577. Comparison of the two Donors’ faces with their portraits by the same master in the Toledo Library can leave no doubt as to their identity. The _Christ on the Cross_ was offered by the deputy Isaac Pereire of Prades (Pyrenées-Orientales) to the local parish church, but was refused and hung in the Palais de Justice at Prades, whence it was removed to the Mairie in 1904, and finally sold to the Louvre in 1908 for £1000. The picture measures 8 ft. 8 in. by 5 ft. 8 in. The _St. Louis of France and a Page_ (No. 1729B), which was formerly wrongly catalogued as _King Ferdinand the Catholic_, is a more typical example of El Greco’s management of colour. The boldly painted armour is identical with that of the St. Martin on horseback, at Toledo. The probable date of the picture, which was bought in 1904 at the high price of £2800, is between 1594 and 1600. By El Greco’s favourite pupil and assistant, Luis Tristan (1586-1640), is the realistic half-figure of _St. Francis of Assisi_ (No. 1730). A more scientific classification of the works by the Toledo painters has reversed Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell’s judgment that Tristan had all the virtues and none of the faults of his master. He was in reality a mediocre imitator of El Greco, without a spark of his master’s genius and without any of his distinction. THE SCHOOL OF SEVILLE