_Domenico Theotocopuli_ (Spanish: 1548-1625).
This artist, called "Il Greco," was of Greek descent and is
supposed to have studied in Venice. He was said to have been a
pupil of Titian, but his impetuous style seems rather to have
been modelled on that of Tintoretto. He settled at Toledo in
1575, and there acquired a great reputation. His picture of
"The Parting of Our Lord's Raiment," which still adorns the
sacristy of the cathedral at Toledo, is, says Stirling-Maxwell,
"truly admirable in drawing and composition; and the colouring
is on the whole rich and effective, although it is here and
there laid on in that spotted, streaky manner which afterwards
became the great and prominent defect of El Greco's style."
The picture in our Gallery No. 1457 in its energetic action
but faulty drawing is characteristic of him. The exaggerated
elongation of his figures is one of his common weaknesses.
The "St. Maurice with his Theban Legion," which he painted
for Philip II. in the Escorial is "little less extravagant
and atrocious than the massacre which it recorded"; this was
painted in 1580. A year or two later he executed the "Burial
of the Count of Orgaz" in the church of St. Tomé at Toledo.
This is usually esteemed his masterpiece. "The artist or lover
of art who has once beheld it will never, as he rambles among
the winding streets of the ancient city, pass the pretty brick
belfry of that church without turning aside to gaze upon its
superb picture once more." Theotocopuli has been described
as "an artist who alternated between reason and delirium,
and displayed his great genius only at lucid intervals." His
portraits, of which there are several in the Royal Gallery at
Madrid, are often mannered; but occasionally very fine. Into
the portrait of his daughter (now at Keir) he put all his
skill; her face, with markedly Greek features, is "one of the
most beautiful that death ever dimmed and that the pencil ever
rescued from the grave." Il Greco was much employed both as
sculptor and architect. He was a man of wit and learning, and
is said to have written on the three arts which he professed
(_Annals of the Artists of Spain_, ch. v.).
This picture passed when in the Hamilton Collection for the work of
Titian. The inscription on the book, "Cornaro aet suae 100-1566,"
is interpolated. The picture appears to be one of those realistic
representations of St. Jerome of which there are other examples by
Theotocopuli.