his favourite pupil, Villavicencio, in whose arms he died at Seville in 1682. There is a picture by this painter, who was of a noble family, and rather an amateur than an artist, in the Madrid Gallery, representing a group of boys at play. It has no great merit, but shows how he attempted to imitate his master in this class of subject. He was born in 1685, and died in 1700. The imitations and copies of Murillo by Tobar (d. 1758) are so successful that they frequently pass for originals. The same may be said of some by Meneses, who died early in the 18th century.
Amongst the contemporaries of Murillo was Iriarte (b. 1620; d. 1685), one of the few landscape-painters that Spain has produced. His landscapes were much esteemed by Murillo, but they are not entitled to rank with the works of any of the great masters in this branch of the art. The Madrid Gallery contains five examples of them.
The following painters may be mentioned amongst the best and most characteristic of the second class in the Spanish school:—Francisco de Zurbaran, born in Estremadura in 1598, died at Madrid, 1662, was essentially a religious painter, and his sombre colouring, and the subjects of his pictures, are characteristic of Spanish bigotry and of the Inquisition. In Spain he is chiefly known by his altar-pieces for churches and convents; out of Spain by his monks and friars. A few figures of female saints prove that he was not insensible to grace of form and beauty of colour. But he is usually mannered, and without dignity. A disagreeable reddish hue pervades his larger pictures. He formed himself, like his cotemporaries, on the study of the Italian painters of the Naturalistic school. Philip IV. is said to have named him “Painter of the King, and King of Painters.” He enjoyed the first title, but did not merit the second. His best work in Spain is, perhaps, the ‘Apotheosis of S. Thomas Aquinas,’ which is considered his masterpiece, in the Seville Museum. It is a grand, but somewhat stiff and unpleasing composition. Zurbaran is badly represented in the Madrid Gallery. The ‘Christ Sleeping on the Cross’ (No. 1133) is the most popular in it. One or two of his works are to be found in the Academy of San Fernando.
Alonso Cano (born at Granada, 1601; died there, 1667) enjoys the highest reputation in Spain after Zurbaran. He was painter, sculptor, and architect, and, moreover, carved and painted wooden figures of the Virgin and Saints, an art in which he attained great success and renown. Many examples of his skill may be seen at Granada. One of the most celebrated is the statuette of St. Francis in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Toledo. Cano was a violent, but not unkindly man, constantly engaged in quarrels and law-suits. He ended by becoming a canon of the Cathedral of Granada, after narrowly escaping from the clutches of the Inquisition. His drawing is carefully studied, but is frequently exaggerated, and wants ease and flow; his colouring conventional and somewhat weak; but there is a delicacy of expression and refinement in his works which have earned him the praise of some critics. The Madrid Gallery contains a few of his pictures: amongst them a Dead Christ (No. 672); but he is best seen at Granada.
Francisco Herrera el Viejo, or the elder (b. 1576; d. 1656). His principal works are at Seville and out of Spain. The Madrid Gallery contains nothing by him. Spanish writers on art attribute to him the introduction into Spain of a new style of painting, characteristic of the national genius.
