Manuel Bartolomé Cossío

Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, painted in 1908 and now at the Hispanic Society of America, depicts the Spanish art historian and educator who was the foremost authority on El Greco and a leading figure in the Institucion Libre de Enseñanza — the progressive educational institution that shaped liberal Spanish intellectual life from the 1870s onward. Cossío's monumental study of El Greco, published in 1908 — the same year Sorolla painted his portrait — was a landmark of Spanish art historical scholarship and helped to establish El Greco's international reputation in the twentieth century. The portrait of a man who had dedicated himself to recovering a misunderstood master for a new era carries a particular resonance: Sorolla, himself a Spanish painter gaining international fame, painting the scholar who was rehabilitating Spain's greatest earlier master.

The portrait's indoor, scholarly setting uses a controlled light source that models the face without the dramatic chiaroscuro of Sorolla's plein-air work. Cossío's face is painted with the warmth Sorolla consistently brings to sitters he knows and respects, the characterisation thorough without being harsh. The background is kept simple to concentrate attention on the sitter's intelligent, slightly ascetic features.