El Greco's portraits have none of the defects of his large compositions. The best perhaps is the admirable portrait of Cardinal Tavera in the _Hospital de Afuera_. This is in the full sense of the word a masterpiece. No blemish to irritate, no deliberate eccentricity to recall his wrong-headed theory that in painting colour alone is of importance and drawing of no value whatever. Here is a square of canvas of sober and solid worth, which might be the work of any of the best Italian masters for suavity and restraint, and has no fraternity whatever with the extraordinary St John the Baptist so near it, and so preposterously offensive. The other superb portraits by El Greco that Toledo holds are those of Antonio Covarrubias and Juan de Alava in the Provincial Museum at San Juan de los Reyes. The rest are chiefly at Madrid, and hold no inferior place in that glorious assembly. They stand out, individual, insistent, and seem to assure you with all the eloquence of so violent and marked a personality as El Greco's, that in spite of the general Venetian tone that so vividly recalls Titian and Tintoretto, with whom proximity invites contrast, it is no imitator who has painted these magnificent portraits of lean Castillian gentlemen, with their austere pride of regard, their air of imperturbable breeding and beautiful hands. They are the work of one of the world's masters, who himself created a school to which we owe Velasquez. CHAPTER VIII _San Juan de los Reyes, Santa Marta la Blanca, El Transito_