The place of honor in the museum is given to Zurbarán’s “Santo Tomás,” a grand picture, painted for the Dominican college of Seville. In the centre is St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Dominican habit, resting on a cloud, with the four doctors of the church, in ample flowing robes, around him. He holds up his pen, as if for inspiration, to the opening heavens, where appear Christ and the Virgin, St. Paul and St. Dominic. Below, at the left, is Diego de Deza, the founder of the college, and other dignitaries; while on the right, attended by courtiers, is Charles V., in a splendid imperial mantle, kneeling on a crimson cushion, with one hand raised invokingly to the saint. The faces are all said to be portraits of Zurbarán’s time; that of the emperor, the artist himself. The coloring is rich, the perspective admirable, the costumes varied and striking, and the composition faultless. Zurbarán has another picture here, of a scene from the legend of St. Hugo, who was Bishop of Grenoble in the time of St. Bruno, and often spent weeks together at the Grande Chartreuse. Once he arrived at dinner-time, and found the monks at table looking despairingly at the meat set before them, which they could not touch, it being a fast-day. The bishop, stretching forth his staff, changed the fowls into tortoises. The white habits and pointed cowls of the monks, and the varied expressions of their faces, contrast agreeably with the venerable bishop in his rich episcopal robes, and the beauty of the page who accompanies him. The masterpiece of the elder Herrera is also here. Hermenegildo, a Gothic prince of the sixth century, martyred by order of his Arian father, whose religion he had renounced, is represented ascending to heaven in a coat of mail, leaving below him his friends SS. Leandro and Isidore, beside whom is his fair young son, richly attired, gazing wonderingly up at his sainted father as he ascends among a whole cloud of angels. This picture was painted for the high altar of the Jesuits of Seville, with whom Herrera took refuge when accused of the crime of issuing false money. It attracted the artistic eye of Philip IV. when he came to Seville in 1624. He asked the name of the artist, and, learning the cause of his reclusion sent for him and pardoned him, saying that a man who had so much talent ought not to make a bad use of it. There is no sculpture in the gallery of Seville, except a few statues of the saints――the spoils of monasteries, like the paintings. The finest thing is a St. Jerome, furrowed and wasted by penance, laying hold of a cross before which he bends one knee, with a stone in his right hand ready to smite his breast. This was done for the convent of Buenavista by Torrigiano, celebrated not only for his works, but for breaking Michael Angelo’s nose. He was sent to Spain by his protector, Alexander VI., who was a generous patron of the arts. Goya considered this statue superior to Michael Angelo’s Moses.