The little church of Santo Tomé, with its beautiful old tower, stands but a few hundred yards from El Greco’s house at Toledo, and for this church he painted perhaps the most beautiful and certainly the most important of all his works--“El Entierro del Conde Orgaz.” For an artist the “Entierro” has almost as much interest and instruction as “Las Meninas” of Velázquez. The subject is a local legend. Saint Augustine and Saint Stephen come down to carry to burial the corpse of the charitable Conde de Orgaz--of whom we read that he “employed his life in holy works and so came to a holy death”--and the chief citizens of Toledo mourn him. In this long line of faces El Greco shows his full mastery as a portrait-painter. And we may see in them all the race of Castille--Castilian dignity, frankness, nobility, sadness, resignation, pride, haughtiness, intensity, ascetic mysticism. We seem, as we look, to hear the solemn rhythm of Jorge Manrique’s verses--[118]
“Este mundo es el camino Para el otro, que es morada Sin pesar; Mas cumple tener buen tino Para andar esta jornada Sin errar. Partimos cuando nacemos, Andamos mientras vivimos, Y llegamos Al tiempo que fenecemos; Así que cuando morimos Descansamos.”
The light of the torches burning in long thin flame and the upward look of the priest in plain surplice draw the eye up to the second part of the picture, the _Gloria_, where the Conde de Orgaz appears before Christ and the Virgin in a heaven thronged with apostles and saints and supported by angels. The beauty of the lower part is as easily recognizable as that of a picture of Velázquez, but the _Gloria_ takes longer to appreciate, having a fuller measure of El Greco’s mannerism. Partly for this reason the picture may displease at first, permanently displease if seen once only in a cursory glance, but on a more leisured study it assumes its right place as one of the wonderful and most beautiful pictures of the world. It requires time, too, to realize the infinite beauty of detail, the figures on St. Augustine’s robe, the scene of St. Stephen’s stoning on that of St. Stephen, and the skill with which all monotony is avoided in the mourners, in spite of their being nearly all of the same height, and nearly all wearing white ruffs and pointed beards.