instruct the students in the science of nature and the human form. In his efforts on behalf of the Academy, Mengs had the loyal assistance of Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Maëlla. The latter’s pictures are deficient in invention, in vigour of execution, and in variety; indeed his cold pearl-coloured creations have nothing to compensate their feeble and unimpressive handling and colour. Bayeu was gifted with peculiar intelligence and as an artist displayed fertility, capacity in composing a picture, and a skilful touch, but his designs lack vigour and delicacy, and his colour is disagreeable. When Goya reappeared in Madrid in 1775, Mengs was dictator of art, and Bayeu was the Court painter. Goya’s art owed nothing to contemporary influence or example, but to these two officials he was indebted for employment and for his wife. The young Aragonese knew nothing of the bitterness of long apprenticeship; his rise in the esteem of the art world of Madrid was rapid. This, in a measure, was due to his genius, but his worldly prospects were assisted by his marriage to Josefa Bayeu, the sister of the Court painter, and by the influence of Mengs, which secured for him a commission to execute a series of designs for the tapestries woven at the Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara. This first series were designed for the decoration of the dining-room and bed-chamber of the Prince of the Asturias in the Palace of El Pardo. Goya delivered the first picture on October 31, 1776; on January 26, 1778, the tenth and last cartoon was delivered. Between 1776 and 1791 Goya executed the forty-six tapestry cartoons which now hang in the Prado, and he repainted many of his designs on a smaller scale for the Countess of Benavente at the Alameda. As late as 1802 the Santa Bárbara factory wove tapestries from Goya’s pictures, and up to 1832 some of the more favoured designs had been reproduced four times. Isabella II. presented some of these fabrics to King Leopold of Belgium, but the greater number adorn the royal palaces of Madrid, El Pardo, and the Escorial.