Zurbaran--the contemporary of Velazquez--unites in a typical manner the two main characteristics of the Spanish School--asceticism in subject, realism in presentment. He is, says Stirling-Maxwell, the peculiar painter of monks, as Raphael is of Madonnas, and Ribera of martyrdoms; he studied the Spanish friar, and painted him with as high a relish as Titian painted the Venetian noble, and Vandyck the gentleman of England. In the Museum of Seville are several pictures which he painted for the Carthusians of that city. "The venerable friars seem portraits; each differs in feature from the other, yet all bear the impress of long years of solitary and silent penance; their white draperies chill the eye, as their cold hopeless faces chill the heart; and the whole scene is brought before us with a vivid fidelity, which shows that Zurbaran studied the Carthusian in his native cloisters with the like close and faithful attention that Velazquez bestowed on the courtier, strutting it in the corridors of the Alcazar or the alleys of Aranjuez" (_Annals of the Artists of Spain_, ch. xi.). Zurbaran was the son of a peasant, but having shown an early talent for drawing was released from the plough and sent to the studio of the painter-priest Juan de Roelas, at Seville. His abilities and his close study of nature soon gained him a high reputation; his forcible naturalistic style acquired for him the name of "the Caravaggio of Spain." He was employed in the cathedral of Seville, which remained his abode for the greater part of his life. In his picture of "St. Thomas Aquinas" in the museum there, the dark wild face, immediately behind the Imperial adorer, is traditionally held to be the portrait of Zurbaran himself. His habits were those of the recluse, but in 1650 he was, through the influence of Velazquez, called to Madrid. There he was set to a task little suited to his tastes--the production of a series of pictures (now in the Prado) to illustrate the labours of Hercules. Philip IV. used, we are told, to visit the artist whilst engaged on these pictures, and on one occasion expressed his admiration of his powers by laying his hand on his shoulder, and calling him "painter of the King, and king of the painters." "His best characteristic," says Burton, "is his power of imparting the sense of life to the heads of his figures. He was in fact a great, though not a professed, portrait painter."