Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/502

This page needs to be proofread.

472 Painting latterly, chiefly at Madrid and Seville- One of the best painters of the Andalucian school, he brought, to his fellow-countrymen from Italy, the gift of Venetian colour- ing, which he had studied under the pupils of Titian and Tintoretto. Among his best works are in the cathedral, Santiago Mata-Moros assisting the Spaniards at the Battle of Clavijo ; at the church of the Cardinal's hospice, the Death of S. Hermenegildo ; in the church S. Lucia, the Martyrdom of the patron saint; and, lastly, in S. Isidor, the Death of the Archhishoy) of Seville, in a very imperfect state. Poelas was the instructor of Zurbaran. Francisco Pacheco (1571 — 1654) is famous for the academy which he opened for imparting instruction to young artists, and in which, if report be true, he improved his own style. Among his pupils in this school were his son-in-law, Velazquez, and Alonso Cano. In 1618 the Inquisition appointed him one of the guardians of the public morals, in which capacity he was responsible for the sale of any picture in which the human figure was repre- sented naked. As an artist, he succeeded best in por- trait painting ; and Cean Bermudez tells us that he was the first man in Seville who properly gilded and painted statues. He was also the first to paint the backgrounds and figures of basreliefs. Pacheco was rather a man of letters than a painter ; he wrote a treatise on the ' Arte de la Pintura ; ' as a painter, he cannot take high rank, and, as a writer on art, he exercised a detrimental influ- ence upon its development in Spain. Francisco de Herrera (1576 — 1656), commonly called " el Viejo " (the Elder) to distinguish him from his son, who bore the same Christian name. He studied painting under Luis Fernandez, and soon became one of the most