fame, as the last appearance of the great painter in public, and the possible proximate cause of his death. To him, as aposentador-mayor, were confided all the decorations and arrangements of this costly and fatiguing pageant he was also to find lodging on the road for the king and the court; and some idea of the magnitude of his official cares may be derived from the fact, that three thousand five hundred mules, eighty-two horses, seventy coaches, and seventy baggagewaggons, formed the train that followed the monarch out of Madrid. On the 28th of June the court returned to Madrid, and on the 6th of August its inimitable painter expired. The merits of Velasquez are now generally appreciated in England; and the popular voice would, we think, ratify the enthusiastic yet sober dictum of Wilkie, "In painting an intelligent portrait he is nearly unrivalled." Yet we have seen how he could rise to the highest subject of mortal imagination in the Crucifixion; and the one solitary naked Venus, which Spanish art in four hundred years produced, is his. Mr Stirling, though he mentions this picture in the body of his book, assigns it no place in his valuable and laboriously-compiled catalogue, probably because he was unable to trace its later adventures. Brought to England in 1814, and sold for £500 to Mr Morritt, it still remains the gem of the library at Rokeby.

Long may the Spanish queen of love preside over the beautiful bowers of that now classic retreat! We sum up our notice of Velasquez in Mr Stirling's words:"No artist ever followed nature with more catholic fidelity; his cavaliers are as natural as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar, nor vulgarised the refined.

We know the persons of Philip IV. and Olivarez as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the Pardo with Digby and Howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their characters. In the portraits of the monarch and the minister,

The bounding steeds they pompously bestride,

Share with their lords the pleasure and the pride,'

and enable us to judge of the Cordowese horse of that day, as accurately

as if we had lived with the horsebreeding Carthusians of the Betis. And this painter of kings and horses has been compared, as a painter of landscapes, to Claude; as a painter of low life, to Teniers: his fruit-pieces equal those of Sanchez Cotan or Van Kessel; his poultry might contest the prize with the fowls of Hondekooter on their own dunghill; and his dogs might do battle with the dogs of Sueyders."-(Vol. ii. p. 686.)

While Velasquez, at the height of his glory, was painting his magnificent Crucifixion, a young lad was displaying hasty sketches and immature daubs to the venders of old clothes, pots, and vegetables, the gipsies and mendicant friars that frequented the Feria, or weekly fair held in the market-place of All Saints, in the beautiful and religious city of Seville. This was Bartolemè Estevan Murillo, who, having studied for some time under Juan del Castillo, on that master's removal to Cadiz in 1640, betook himself to this popular resource of all needy Sevillian painters. Struck, however, by the great improvement which travel had wrought in the style of Pedro de Moya, who revisited Seville in 1642, the young painter scraped up money sufficient to carry him to Madrid, and, as he hoped, to Rome. But the kindness of Velasquez provided him a lodging in his own house, and opened the galleries of the Alcazar and the Escurial to his view. Here he pursued his studies unremittingly, and, as he thought, with a success that excused the trouble and expense of an Italian pilgrimage. Returning, therefore, in 1645 to Seville, he commenced that career which led him, among the painters of Spain, to European renown, second only to that of Velasquez. The Franciscans of his native city have the credit of first employing his young genius, and the eleven large pictures with which he adorned their convent-walls at once established his reputation and success. These were painted in what is technically called his first or cold style; this was changed before 1650 into his second, or warm style, which in its turn yielded to his last, or vapoury style. So warm, indeed, had his colouring become, that a Spanish critic, in the nervous phrase

ology of Spain, declared his flesh-tints were now painted with blood and milk. In this style did he paint for the chapter The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, in which the ladies of Seville admired and envied the roundness of a ministering maiden's naked arm; and a large picture of St Anthony of Padua, which still adorns the walls of the cathedral baptistery. Of this famous gem some curious stories are told: Don Fernando Farfan, for instance, relates that birds had been seen attempting to perch upon some lilies in a vase by the side of the kneeling saint; and Monsieur Viardot (Musées d'Espagne, p. 146) informs us that a reverend canon, who showed him the picture, recounted how that, in 1813, the Duke of Wellington offered to purchase it for as many gold onzas as would cover its surface; while, in 1843, Captain Widdrington was assured that a lord had expressed his readiness to give £40,000 for the bird-deluding picture. The belief in the gullibility of travellers is truly remarkable and wide-spread; thus, at Genoa, in 1839, our excellent cicerone gratified us with the information, that, sixteen years before, the English Duke Balfour had in vain offered £1600 for Canova's beautiful basso-relievo of the Virgin Clasping the Corpse of our Saviour, which graces the ugly church of the poor-house in that superb city. In 1658, Murillo laboured to establish a public academy of art; and, in spite of the jealousies and contentions of rival artists, on the 1st of January 1660, he witnessed its inauguration. The rules were few and simple; but the declaration to be signed by each member on admission would rather astonish the directors of the Royal Academy in London. We would recommend it to the consideration of those Protestant divines who are so anxious to devise a new test of heresy in the Church of England: thus it ran-"Praised be the most holy sacrament, and the pure conception of Our Lady." Nothing, perhaps, can show more strongly the immense influence religion exercised on art in Spain than the second clause of this declaration. It was the favourite dogma of Seville: for hundreds of years sermons were preached, books were written, pictures

painted, legends recorded in honour of Our Lady's spotless conception; and round many a picture by Cano, or Vargas, or Joanes, is yet to be read the magic words that had power to electrify a populace," Sin Pecado Concebida." The institution thus commenced flourished for many years, and answered the generous expectations of its illustrious founder.

The attention of the pious Don Miguel Mañara de Leca, the "benevolent Howard" of Seville, was attracted about 1661 to the pitiable state of the brotherhood of the holy charity, and its hospital of San Jorge: he resolved to restore it to its pristine glory and usefulness; and, persevering against all discouragements and difficulties, in less than twenty years, at an expense of half-a-million of ducats, he accomplished his pious design. For the restored church Murillo painted eleven pictures, of which eight, according to Mr Stirling, are the finest works of the master. Five of these were carried off by plundering Soult, but "the two colossal compositions of Moses, and the Loaves and Fishes, still hang beneath the cornices whence springs the dome of the church, "like ripe oranges on the bough where they originally budded." Long may they cover their native "walls, and enrich, as well as adorn, the institution of Mañara! In the picture of the great miracle of the Jewish dispensation, the Hebrew prophet stands beside the rock in Horeb, with hands pressed together, and uplifted eyes, thanking the Almighty for the stream which has just gushed forth at the stroke of his mysterious rod. As a composition, this wonderful picture can hardly be surpassed. The rock, a huge, isolated, brown crag, much resembles in form, size, and colour, that which is still pointed out as the rock of Moses, by the Greek monks of the convent of St Catherine, in the real wilderness of Horeb. It forms the central object, rising to the top of the canvass, and dividing it into two unequal portions. In front of the rock, the eye at once singles out the erect figure of the prophet standing forward from the throng; and the lofty emotion of that great leader, looking with gratitude to heaven, is finely contrasted with the downward regards

of the multitude, forgetful of the Giver in the anticipation or the enjoyment of the gift. Each head and figure is an elaborate study; each countenance has a distinctive character; and even of the sixteen vessels brought to the spring, no two are alike in form."-(Vol. ii. p. 859.) But Cean Bermudez, who enjoyed the privilege of seeing all these eight masterpieces hanging together in their own sacred home, preferred The Prodigal's Return, and St Elizabeth of Hungary-with whose touching history the eloquent pens of the Count Montalembert and Mr A. Phillipps have made us familiar-to all the

rest.

The Franciscan convent, without the city walls, was yet more fortunate than the hospital of Mañara, for it possessed upwards of twenty of this religious painter's works. Now, not one remains to dignify the ruined halls and deserted cloisters of that once magnificent convent: but seventeen of these pictures are preserved in the Seville Museum; among them Murillo's own favourite that which he used to call "his own picture" the charity of St Thomas of Villanueva. In 1678, Murillo painted three pictures for the Hospital de los Venerables, two of which, the Mystery of the Immaculate Conception, and St Peter Weeping, were placed in the chapel. "The third adorned the refectory, and presented to the gaze of the Venerables, during their repasts, the blessed Virgin enthroned on clouds, with her divine Babe, who, from a basket borne by angels, bestowed bread on three aged priests." These were nearly his last works; for the art he so loved was now about to destroy her favourite son: he was mounting a scaffolding to paint the higher parts of a great altar-piece for the Capuchin church at Cadiz, representing the espousals of St Catherine, when he stumbled, and ruptured himself so severely, as to die of the injury. On the 3d of April 1682, he expired in the arms of his old and faithful friend, Don Justino Neve, and was buried in the parish church of St Cruz, a stone slab with his name, a skeleton and Vive moriturus," marking the

spot-until the "Vandal" French destroyed the last resting-place of that great painter, whose works they so unscrupulously appropriated. Was the last Lord of Petworth aware of this short epitaph, when he caused to be inscribed on the beautiful memorial to his ancestors which adorns St Thomas's Chapel in Petworth Church, the prophetic,* solemn words-"Mortuis moriturus?”

We have ranked Murillo next to Velasquez: doubtless there are many in England who would demur to this classification; and we own there are charms in the style of the great religious painter, which it would be vain to look for in any other master. In tenderness of devotion, and a certain soft sublimity, his religious pictures are unmatched; while in colouring, Cean Bermudez most justly says"All the peculiar beauties of the school of Andalusia-its happy use of red and brown tints, the local colours of the region, its skill in the management of drapery, its distant prospects of bare sierras and smiling vales, its clouds, light and diaphanous as in nature, its flowers and transparent waters, and its harmonious depth and richness of tone-are to be found in full perfection in the works of Murillo."-(Vol. ii. p, 903.) Mr Stirling draws a distinction, and we think with reason, between the favourite Virgin of the Immaculate Conception and the other Virgins of Murillo: the noòs of the former is far more elevated and spiritualised that that of any of the latter class; but, even in his most ordinary and mundane delineation of the sinless Mary, how sweet, and pure, and holy, as well as beautiful, does our Lord's mother appear! But perhaps it is as a painter of children that Murillo is most appreciated in England; nor can we wonder that such should be the case, when we remember what the pictures are which have thus impressed Murillo on the English mind. The St John Baptist with the Lamb, in the National Gallery; Lord Westminster's picture of the same subject; the Baroness de Rothschild's gem at Gunnersbury, Our Lord, the Good Shepherd, as a Child; Lord Wemyss's hardly inferior repetition of

it; the picture of our Lord as a child, holding in his hands the crown of thorns, in the College at Glasgow; with the other pictures, in private collections, of our Lord and St John as children, have naturally made Murillo to be regarded in England as emphatically the painter of children: and how exquisite is his conception of the Divine Babe and His saintly precursor! what a sublime consciousness of power, what an expression of boundless love, are seen in the face of Him who was yet

66 a little child,
Taught by degrees to pray;
By father dear, and mother mild,
Instructed day by day."

The religious school of Spanish painting reached its acmé in Murillo; and, at the risk of being accounted heterodox, we must, in summing up his merits, express our difference from Mr Stirling in one respect, and decline to rank the great Sevillian after any of the Italian masters. Few of Murillo's drawings are known to be in existence. Mr Stirling gives a list of such as he has been able to discover, nearly all of which are at the Louvre. We believe, in addition to those possessed by the British Museum and Mr Ford, there are two in the collection at Belvoir Castle: one, a Virgin and Child; the other, an old man-possibly St Francis-receiving a flower from a naked child.

After Velasquez and Murillo, it may seem almost impertinent to talk of the merits of other Spanish painters; yet Zurbaran and Cano, Ribera and Coello, demand at least a passing notice. Francisco de Zurbaran, often called the Caravaggio of Spain, was born in Estremadura in 1598. His

father, observing his turn for painting, sent him to the school of Roelas, at Seville. Here, for nearly a quarter of a century, he continued painting for the magnificent cathedral, and the churches and religious houses of that fair city. About 1625, he painted, for the college of St Thomas Aquinas, an altar-piece, regarded by all judges as the finest of all his works. It represents the angelic doctor ascending into the heavens, where, on clouds of glory, the blessed Trinity and the Virgin wait to receive him; below, in mid air, sit the four doctors of the

Church; and on the ground are kneeling the Emperor Charles V., with the founder of the college, Archbishop Diego de Deza, and a train of ecclesiastics. Mr Stirling says of this singular picture, "The colouring throughout is rich and effective, and worthy the school of Roelas; the heads are all of them admirable studies; the draperies of the doctors and ecclesiastics are magnificent in breadth and amplitude of fold; the imperial mantle is painted with Venetian splendour; and the street view, receding in the centre of the canvass, is admirable for its atmospheric depth and distance." -(Vol. ii. p. 770.) In 1650, Philip IV. invited him to Madrid, and commanded him to paint ten pictures, representing the labours of Hercules, for a room at Buen-retiro. Almost numberless were the productions of his facile pencil, which, however, chiefly delighted to represent the legends of the Carthusian cloister, and portray the gloomy features and sombre vestments of monks and friars; yet those who have seen his picture of the Virgin with the Infant Saviour and St John, at Stafford House, will agree with Mr Stirling that, "unrivalled in such subjects of dark fanaticism, Zurbaran could also do ample justice to the purest and most lovely of sacred themes."-(Vol. ii. p. 775.)

Alonzo Cano, born at Grenada in 1601, was, like Mrs Malaprop's Cerberus, "three gentlemen in one;" that is, he was a great painter, a great sculptor, and a great architect. As a painter, his powers are shown in his full-length picture of the Blessed Virgin, with the infant Saviour asleep on her knees, now in the Queen of Spain's gallery; in six large works, representing passages in the life of Mary Magdalene, which still adorn the great brick church of Getafe, a small village near Madrid; and in his famous picture of Our Lady of Belem, in the cathedral of Seville. Mr Stirling gives a beautifully-executed print of this last Madonna, which,“in serene, celestial beauty, is excelled by no image of the Blessed Virgin ever devised in Spain."-(P. 803.)

Cano was, perhaps, even greater in sculpture than in painting; and so fond of the former art, that, when wearied of pencil and brush, he would

call for his chisel, and work at a statue by way of rest to his hands. On one of these occasions, a pupil venturing to remark, that to substitute a mallet for a pencil was an odd sort of repose, was silenced by Cano's philosophical reply," Blockhead, don't you perceive that to create form and relief on a flat surface is a greater labour than to fashion one shape into another?" An image of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church at Lebrija, and another in the sacristy of the Grenada cathedral, are said to be triumphs of Spanish painted statuary. (Vol. iii., p. 805.) After a life of strange vicissitudes, in the course of which, on suspicion of having murdered his wife, he underwent the examination by torture, he died, honoured and beloved for his magnificent charities, and religious hatred of the Jews, in his native city, on the 3d of October 1667.

The old Valencian town of Xativa claims the honour of producing Josè de Ribera, el Spagnoletto; but though Spain gave him birth, Italy gave him instruction, wealth, fame; and although in style he is thoroughly Spanish, we feel some difficulty in writing of him as belonging wholly to the Spanish school of art, so completely Italian was he by nurture, long residence, and in his death.

Bred up in squalid penury, he appears to have looked upon the world as not his friend, and in his subsequent good fortunes to have revelled in describing with ghastly minuteness, and repulsive force, all "the worst ills that flesh is heir to." We well recollect the horror with which we gazed spell-bound on a series of his horrors in the Louvre-faugh! At Gosford House are a series of Franciscan monks, such as only a Spanish cloister could contain, painted with an evident fidelity to nature, and the minutest details of dress that is almost offensive-even the black dirt under the unwashed thumb nail is carefully represented by his odiouslyaccurate and powerful pencil.

"Non ragioniam di lor

Ma guarda e passa.”

Had the bold buccaneers of the seventeenth century required the services of a painter to perpetuate the memory of their inventive brutality,

and inconceivable atrocities, they would have found in El Spagnoletto an artist capable of delineating the agonies of their victims, and by taste and disposition not indisposed to their way of life. Yet in his own peculiar line he was unequalled, and his merits as a painter will always be recognised by every judge of art. He died at Naples, the scene of his triumphs, in 1656.

The name of Claudio Coello is associated with the Escurial, and should have been introduced into the sketch we were giving of its artists, when the mighty reputation of Velasquez and Murillo broke in upon our order. He was born at Madrid about the middle of the seventeenth century, and studied in the school of the younger Rigi. In 1686 he succeeded Herrera as painter in ordinary to Charles II. This monarch had erected an altar in the great sacristy of the Escurial, to the miraculous bleeding wafer known as the Santa Forma; and on the death of its designer, Rigi, Coello was called upon to paint a picture that should serve as a veil for the host. On a canvass six yards high, by three wide, he executed an excellent work, representing the king and his court adoring the miraculous wafer, which is held aloft by the prior. This picture established his reputation, and in 1691 the chapter of Toledo, still the great patrons of art, appointed him painter to their cathedral. Coello was a most careful and painstaking painter, and his pictures, says our author, (vol. iii., p. 1018,) "with much of Cano's grace of drawing, have also somewhat of the rich tones of Murillo, and the magical effect of Velasquez." died, it is said, of disappointment at the success of his foreign rival, Luca Giordano, in 1693.

He

With Charles II. passed away the Spanish sceptre from the house of Austria, nor, according to Mr Stirling, would the Genius of Painting remain to welcome the intrusive

Bourbons :

Old times were changed, old manners gone,
A stranger filled the Philips' throne;
And art, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them, and at rest.

But we must say that Mr Stirling, in his honest indignation against