The first is the pupil’s search for truth; the Venetian stage, in which we find a consciousness of tradition, showing itself in the still-fettered design, in the attitudes of the figures, in the use of warm colour, in a flowing quality in the paint, and, especially perhaps, in the landscape backgrounds, so Venetian with palaces and marble-paved piazzas; yet mingled with all this tradition is an emphatic personality, an ardour of expression, very difficult to define, seen in such early pictures as ‘The Blind Man,’ in the Parma Gallery, or ‘The Cardinal,’ in the National Gallery, both painted before 1577. Over the whole Venetian period the influence of Tintoretto is obvious; while the portraits of these years recall in their method the work of the Bassani; and of the pre-Spanish pictures, as, for instance, the ‘Cleansing of the Temple,’[E] now in the possession of the Countess of Yarborough, and the replica of the same subject on a small scale, in the Cook collection at Richmond, Surrey, a picture of real beauty that testifies to El Greco’s skill in miniature--these, and many other works, were thought until quite recently to be the work of the Venetians, the first being attributed to Paul Veronese, the latter to Tintoretto, and this in spite of their marked character. And the Venetian influence remained in the first years in Toledo. It is seen in the beautiful Virgin in the early ‘Assumption,’ painted for the central altar-screen of Santo Domingo el Antigua, but now in the Prado.[F] But the chief work of this period is the ‘Christ Despoiled of His Vestments,’ still in the sacristy of the cathedral in Toledo, for which it was painted in 1577. Here, perhaps, in the fine simplicity of the grouping, in the dignity of the inspired head of the Saviour, in the rich and strong colour and in the vivid light and shade, we have the best results of all El Greco learnt in Venice. But even in this beautiful picture we see the development, or rather the co-existence, of his two styles: on the one hand carefully and thoroughly worked-out qualities, a balanced art remembered from Venice, but with it all a power that was his own, that seized the elements in the picture and gave them life--his life. And again, we have in the excessive height of the Christ, in the hands of many of the figures in this picture and in the ‘Assumption,’ first hints of the special conventions with which the name of El Greco is certainly most associated.