Another picture of the Prado, selected for reproduction on page 62, is _The Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple_. It is an important example, revealing a fuller capacity for ordered composition, in which there is a grandiose dignity, strangely
interrupted by a littleness of feeling. The latter is particularly noticeable in the highly finished rendering of the child’s body, disposed so affectedly amid the prim folds of the greyish white drapery. One may be conscious also of a certain exaggerated gesture of humility in the Virgin’s figure; but, on the other hand, how firm in its assertion of liberty of action is the supple figure of the maiden who holds the basket of doves! How excellently imagined, moreover, are the spotting of the several heads, the upright lines of the candles and the broad bold spaces of the white tablecloth!
The reputation of Morales has been injured by the number of _Ecce Homos_ and _Magdalens_, sentimentally mawkish, which, according to latest judgment, have been ascribed to him falsely. For, in an age of artistic copying, working for patrons who demanded an excessive display of pietistic ecstasy, he was distinguished by a considerable measure of individual temperament as well as of sincere religious feeling.
The signal example of an individual personality, is that of Domenico Theotocopuli, popularly called El Greco from the fact that he was born in Crete. Since he will form the subject of another chapter, it is sufficient here to recall the fact that he reached Spain by way of Venice and Rome and settled in Toledo. His art bridges the last quarter of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth, and, notwithstanding his foreign training, was deeply imbued with the Spanish spirit of his day.
Meanwhile, during the latter part of the sixteenth century a more direct infusion of Italian influence reached Spain through the artists whom Philip imported from Italy to decorate the Escoriál. During the first twenty-five years of his reign he had continued the patronage of Titian, commenced by his father, Charles V. The latter, after he had sat to the great Venetian, loaded him with marks of favor, including an order of nobility, and vowed that no other artist was worthy to paint Cæsar. Philip’s pride equally demanded the services of the artist who was accounted the greatest of his day, and Titian was willing to give them. “Is not my aim in life,” he wrote, “to refuse the services of other princes and to cling to that of your majesty?” The king’s commissions were for religious subjects, but Titian, knowing the other side of his patron’s nature, supplemented them with nudes and the so-called “poesies,” or subjects of more or less erotic significance. Hence the collection of over forty Titian’s which is one of the glories of the Prado Gallery.