And as we wait with his pictures and note, after the first surprise has left us, the qualities of the work, throughout they confirm this. The very form of his composition is moulded upon Toledo. Just as its buildings cluster around the Alcazar, almost as bees swarming about their queen, so he groups everything around a central figure. Never, after he came to Toledo, did El Greco use Italian backgrounds. And in his long, lithe figures, so fantastic in their hard outlines, sometimes we catch that suggestion of the sword that haunts Toledo. Then when we come to more tangible things, we find to-day El Greco’s models in the dark peasants of Toledo. Nowhere else can we quite believe in the reality of those coldly fervent, self-absorbed, ecstatic men, who greet us with such fascination from his canvases, their lean, long profiles suggesting again that aspect of a sword. Then, El Greco’s colour was drawn from the landscape around him. And colour, if we may credit the truth of the conversation recounted by Pacheco, was to him the one quality in painting, form, drawing, all else, being of secondary significance. This, too, was learnt in Toledo, where colour has an allurement--illusive and insistent. Toledo it was showed him the existence of cold tones, and the fascination of its greys and livid greens led him to anticipate modern colour, at a time when every one else was painting warm tonalities. In the Convent of San Juan de los Reyes, now the Museo Provincial, is that ‘Bird’s-Eye View of Toledo,’ the picture in which we have a portrait of George Manuel Theotokopuli, El Greco’s son. At first you will be astonished, it is the strangest landscape in the world. But wait with the picture--always the danger with El Greco is that you will not linger enough. The painter who sees for himself must be studied, not dismissed as he who but sets down the common vision of things. And El Greco does give us the real Toledo in this fantastic landscape. Do you doubt this? Then go when night falls upon the city to some such vantage-point as the Puerta del Cambón, where beneath the dome of the evening sky you will see Toledo, heaped roof against roof, tower against tower. You will forget the strangeness of the picture’s statement, as you come to see that it is just this effect that El Greco has caught. Now you will recognise the reality of those bluish whites, those tones of green that surprised you, and, in gladness, you will yield to the truth, the beauty--are not the two the same?--of the painter’s vision, and avow how much he has taught you to see.