His next proceedings were at Illescas where, having built the Church of Our Lady of Charity, painted retablos and carved statues, it was seriously proposed to tax his pictures as common merchandise. El Greco went to law again, and this time, too, won his case. Only this was not merely a personal triumph, it was a big justice wrung in these far-off days from the stupid bourgeois to art. Palomino, commenting on it, writes: "Immortal thanks are due to El Greco for having broken a lance for art and thus forced the proclamation of its immunities." He compelled the court to accept his theory that art was a thing apart from merchandise, not like mere fabrications, subject to the control of taxes or to the law of duty. While the process went on, El Greco refused to sell any of his pictures, but simply hired them out for a certain sum, as the good counsellors of Illescas only proposed to tax _sold_ pictures. As the case with the chapter of Toledo was concluded before that of Illescas, he only accepted a loan on account of the future sum, from the canons for the Expolio. His fame now was spreading through Spain, and that on no common unattuned voice. His superb portrait of the monk, Felix de Artiaga, won from that distinguished poet the first of the two celebrated sonnets to El Greco. "Divino Griego de tu obrar yo admira Que en la imagen exceda a el ser el arte" it begins, and having descanted on the superiority of the artist's creature to God's, wittily ends: "Y contra veinte y nueve años de trato Entre tu mano y la de Dios, perplexa Qual es el cuerpo, en que ha de vivir duda." The second sonnet was brought forth by El Greco's tomb of Queen Margarita, when Fray Felix de Artiaga addresses him: _Huesped curioso, a qui la pompa admira_ _De este aparato real_, MILAGRO GRIEGO! _No lugubres Exequias Juzgues ciego,_ _Ni marmol fiel en venerable pyra_ _El sol que Margarita estable mira_ _Le arraneo del fatal desassossiego_ _De esta vana Region, y en puro fuego_ _Vibrantes luces de su rostro aspira_ _A el Nacer que vistió candido, pone_ _Toledo agradecido_ POR VALIENTE MANO _en aquesta caxa peregrina._ _Tosca piedra la maquina compone_ _Que ya su grande Margarita ausente_ _No le ha quedado si España piedra fria_.