The cathedral is the usual objective; instead, we first went to the church of Santo Tome.  It is a small Gothic structure, rebuilt from a mosque by Count Orgaz.  In commemoration of this gift a large canvas, entitled El Entierro, depicting the funeral of Orgaz, by El Greco, has made Santo Tome more celebrated than the cathedral.  It is an amazing, a thrilling work, nevertheless, on a scale that prevents it from giving completely the quintessence of El Greco.  No doubt he was a pupil of Titian; Gautier but repeated current gossip when he said that the Greek went mad in his attempt to emulate his master.  But Tintoretto’s influence counts heavier in this picture than Titian’s, a picture assigned by Cossio midway between Greco’s first and second period.  Decorative as is the general scheme, the emotional intensity aroused by the row of portraits in the second plan, the touching expression of the two saints, Augustine and Stephen, as they gently bear the corpse of the Count, the murky light of the torches in the background, while overhead the saintly hierarchy terminating in a white radiance, Christ the Comforter, His mother at His right hand, quiring hosts at His left—­all these figures make an ensemble that at first glance benumbs the critical faculty.  You recall the solemn and spasmodic music of Michael Angelo (of whom El Greco is reported to have irreverently declared that he couldn’t paint); then as your perspective slowly shapes itself you note that Tintoretto, plus a certain personal accent of morbid magnificence, is the artistic progenitor of this art, an art which otherwise furiously boils over with Spanish characteristics.

Nothing could be more vivid and various than the twenty-odd heads near the bottom of the picture.  Expression, character, race are not pushed beyond normal limits.  The Spaniard, truly noble here, is seen at a half-dozen periods of life.  El Greco himself is said to be in the group; the portrait certainly tallies with a reputed one of his.  The sumptuousness of the ecclesiastical vestments, court costumes, ruffs, and eloquent hands, the grays, whites, golds, blues, blacks, chord rolling upon chord of subtle tonalities, the supreme illumination of the scene, with its suggestion of a moment swiftly trapped forever in eternity, hook this masterpiece firmly to your memory.  It is not one of the greatest pictures in the pantheon of art, not Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, or Rubens; yet it stands close to them all because of its massed effect of light, life, and emotional situation.  We confess to liking it better than the Gloria at the Escorial Palace.  This glorification of a dream of Philip II does not pluck electrically at your heart-strings as does the Burial of Count Orgaz, though the two canvases are similar in architectonic.