But it may be said that in many of these pictures the effect is forced; in the ‘St. Maurice,’ the rejected altar-piece of the Escorial, for instance, in the ‘Baptism of Christ’ and the ‘Descent of the Holy Spirit,’ in the Prado, and in many pictures in Toledo, easily recognised, in which realities are replaced by a series of conventions. It is not necessary to wait to particularise examples. Certainly one does not see in the pictures of other painters those greens, those ashen whites and crimsons, those livid blacks; El Greco’s use of colour is unusual and his own. Light is not used as he uses it, as a quantity for emotional appeal; those faces, so elongated or contracted, and with such extravagant expressions, those figures with hard anatomical outlines, do not correspond with life as we see it. Yes, this is true. But look longer at these pictures.... Well, would it be possible to gain their _effects_ without the _defects_? If things are forced out of harmony it is for the sake of “telling strongly.” All this search for expression is done quite consciously. El Greco throughout was strong enough to be true to himself and to his imagination. He knew that no system of art is final, that the achievements of artists are, in truth, the stones wherewith the Temple of Art is built. Imagination does not see commonplaces. And we recall the statement of Blake--he, too, a painter of visions of the mind: “He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light, than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.” El Greco might have said these words. And the man? There is a portrait Domeniko Theotokopuli has left of himself now in the Museum of Seville. In it we see the long, striking profile, with its large, strong nose, restless eyes and straight mouth, cruel slightly, framed by the great white ruff that forms such fitting setting to the fine head. The forehead is high, the dark hair scant upon the temples. We may read in the face, and still more in the perfectly shaped hands--the left holds a square palette upon which are the five primary colours, white, black, yellow-ochre, vermilion, and lake, the colours he used most frequently--the fastidiousness of the artist, the instinct for beauty; we may read a peculiar suggestion of mysticism and ardour; self-assertion, too, and impatience--both wait in those long, nervous fingers. It is a face of genius, but of a kind restless, unbalanced, decadent perhaps. And we understand the driving energy that burned to fever, so that at times the balance was lost between the painter’s aim and the result, and we realise that the work of such a man must be introspective, experimental, neurotic.