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EL Gr.ECO fo A NEW SERIES OF ART BOOKS THE TASTE OF OUR TIME Already published in the same series Monographs GAUGUIN-VANGOGH -LAUTREC-DUFY PICASSO - DEGAS - RENOIR - CEZANNE PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA - GOYA FRA ANGELICO - MANET - EL GRECO Forthcoming CHAGALL BRAQUE - UCCELLO - BOTTICELLI • The Great Art Revolutions IMPRESSIONISM (2 Vols.) Forthcoming CUBISM - SURREALISM FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM NEW TRENDS • A New Series Famous Places as seen by Great Painters MONTMARTRE From the Montmartre of the Romantics to the Montmartre Utrillo knew VENICE From Carpaccio to the Painters ofToday DISTRIBUTED IN U.S.A. BY SKIKA INC., PUBLISHERS 381FOURTHAVENUE,NEWYORK16,N.Y. $5.75 !M!{h'ri!riiM[irr!ii.'[rjii;(irifiii[ii; ;> 'A , ^ THE TASTE OF OUR TIME Collection planned and directed by ALBERT SKIRA BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY BY PAUL GUINARD TranslatedbyJames Emmons GRECO EL m Title page: St Luke (detail), cNa.ul^6ro5:-lf6«r,f* Uyrary of Confess Caia,og Car, I.,n the past half-century everything has been said that could be said about El Greco. Yet on many essential points we are none the wiser. Who was El Greco? Why didhepaint as he did? How is it that this Greek schooledin Italy came to settle in Spain, at Toledo? And there, afterthe masterpiecesofhismaturity, in which the Golden A.ge ofSpain saw the best ofitspiety mirrored, how didhe come to create the stark andsupernaturalart ofhis oldage? We shallnever know, andwe may as well resign ourselves to never knowing. In view of the paucity of firsthandinformationand, aboveall, the lossofthose mysterious treatises onpaintingandarchitecture attributedtoElGreco by early biographers, we must content ourselves with more or less ingenious speculations and interpretations, none of which add a particle of certainty to what we really know about the artist. It hasproved no more rewarding to look to El Grecofor the "secret ofToledo" than to look to Toledofor the "secret ofEl Greco." The most elementaryfacts about his life and the genesis ofhispictures (often signed, rarely dated) are largely wanting, nor is it reasonable to hopefor many more lostpictures or documents to come to light. Fortunately thefruit ofthe great renewal ofinterest felt in El Greco has been a vast increase in our knowledge ofhim now ascompared—with whatitwasin the 19th century. There is admittedly a negative side a host offakes and dubious attributions havingfound — theirway into so-called"complete" catalogues but on the whole agreat forwardstridehasbeen made. Problemsofchronology, ofsource material, ofinfluences exertedon andby El Greco, have been solvedor accurately localised. It is true that Cossio's monumental biography ofEl Greco, the veryfirst, published in 1908, has lost none of its critical solidity and itsfreshness. But we can readily measure the ground covered since thenbycomparingitwithsuch recentworksasthatoff. CamonA^nar, a veritable summa ofthe available knowledge ofEl Greco andhis art. One ofthe aims ofthis book will be that ofsumming up the positive results ofprevious research-work, approaching the subject analytically rather than synthetically; we shall be concerned with isolating the problems that remain unsolvedandwith carefully distinguishing between hypotheses, however clever or tempting, and the knownfacts. No speculations or lyricism here then, but a strictly matter-of-fact approach which, it is hoped, willprovide the reader with a useful introduction to El Greco.