Perhaps--in the temper of Alonso Cano towards the Chapter of Granada Cathedral--he threatened to destroy the “Expolio,” and the Chapter, having given him a hundred and fifty ducats on account, would be unwilling to lose their picture. Certainly El Greco would not say to himself with Frà Lippo Lippi-- “they must know! Don’t you think they’re the likeliest to know, They, with their Latin? so I swallow my rage, Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint To please them.” El Greco painted to please no one but himself and his individual vision. His next great picture, the “San Mauricio,” was painted by command of Philip II., but it did not please the King and in his lifetime was not placed in the Escorial, where it now is. _No le contentó á su Magestad_, says Sigüenza, and he goes on to say, “and this is small wonder, since it pleases but few, though it is said that it shows much art, _aunque dizen es de mucho arte_.” It is conceivable that the picture as a whole might seem ugly, and repel, especially on a first view, before the eye had embraced its wealth of beautiful details. The real reason, however, of its “not pleasing” was not the exaggerated drawing nor the harsh colouring, the dominant note of yellow and blue, but the realistic portrayal of the group of martyrs in the foreground. “Saints,” proceeded Sigüenza, “should be painted in such a manner that they may not take away the desire to pray, but may rather incite to devotion.” “‘Ay, but you don’t so instigate to prayer,’ Strikes in the Prior! ‘when your meaning’s plain It does not say to folks--remember matins-- Or, mind you fast next Friday.’” The Spanish Church would willingly have reduced art to skull and bones. But El Greco saw that his Saints must be human before they could be divine. He had now inaugurated that realism which was to find its highest expression in the art of Velázquez, but which is evident also in the Saints and Madonnas of Murillo.