Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish CapitalLynch, Hannah
History
Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish Capital
Lynch, Hannah
Toledo (Spain) -- Description and travel; Toledo (Spain) -- History
Beyond two legal squabbles, we learn nothing of the man's life at
Toledo. He is said to have painted his own visage in the Burial of Count
Orgaz: lean, hard, nervous, exceedingly dark and striking, the face of a
man in whom energy was an unsleeping disease, who worked with his mind
concentrated upon the accomplishment of an ideal achievement, not as an
idealist, as a materialist rather with an ideal object in view. There is
the same curious modern expression in this dark, impassioned face that I
noticed in the desperate portrait of the Italian novelist, M. Gabriel
d'Annunzio, whom the face strangely resembles; an eager, ravenous, cruel
sensuality which knows neither rest nor satiety, and which gives meaning
to the charge of habits of harsh gallantry and deliberate ostentation.
He is said to have kept a band of musicians to play during his
carefully-prepared and selected repasts. Yet nothing could be less
sensual than the work of El Greco. He is colder than Velasquez, and only
understands feminine emotion in a certain austere intensity, passion fed
upon the perfume of incense and saintly legend, as in the striking head
of St Agnes in his great Virgin and Child of San José.
But this statement also is untrustworthy. It is incredible that a man,
who left so much behind him, whose life was so active, and whose
achievement was so important for a town in which he lived for so many
years, should be merely a name, leaving no evidence of social or civic
existence, no word of friend or foe in the annals of that town, nothing
in its contemporary letters to guide us to any knowledge of the man
himself. Pacheco in three lines reports a conversation with him, that is
all. We do not know even where he lived in Toledo, how he lived, who his
wife was, if he loved her, who his friends were, what manner of father
and citizen he was. We know that he painted pictures, that he built
churches, carved statues, and, since he was well paid for his work, that
he must have possessed considerable means, and was probably an
influential personage as well as a great master. Sir William Stirling
Maxwell possesses a portrait said to be that of El Greco's daughter by
him, but this, too, is regarded as doubtful. Of a son's existence,
however, we are certain, and the charming figure of the delicate and
pensive St Martin on horseback, as well as that of the dreamy youth in
the plan of Toledo of the Museum, are the portraits of George Manuel
Theotocopulos, architect, like his father. It is now certified that he
was buried in the church, built by himself, of the Dominican convent,
_Santo Domingo el Antiguo_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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