The complete list of titles falling to the little king upon his accession are in themselves an epitome of Spain’s former historic grandeur. King Alfonso’s full royal titles are: “His Most Catholic Majesty, Alfonso, King of Spain, Castile and Léon, Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, the Canary Islands, the East and West Indies, India, the Oceanic Continent, and King of Gibraltar.” CHAPTER XIII SPANISH ART, LITERATURE, AND SPORT I _PAINTING AND ARCHITECTURE_ Early Spanish paintings are feeble imitations of Italian and Flemish art. They lack the simplicity of the one and the realism of the other. In color they are somber and monotonous--two qualities which characterize the whole Spanish school. The value of this school has been curiously overrated. Comparatively speaking of brief existence, it has produced but two great painters--Velasquez and Murillo. Their contemporaries, Zurbaran, Del Mazo, Ribera, Alonso Cano, Herrera and Roelas, were men of ability, no doubt, but they were not masters. Excellent examples of Velasquez and of Murillo are to be found to-day in the Museum of the Prado at Madrid, and in the Art Gallery of Seville. The cathedrals and churches generally contain works of the principal painters, both of the early and later times; but placed, as a rule, in “Retablos” or altar-pieces, they are poorly exposed and difficult to view. * * * * * DON DIEGO VELASQUEZ DE SILVA, or simply VELASQUEZ, the greatest painter that Spain has produced, was born at Seville, in 1599, of parents of Portuguese origin, and died at Madrid in 1660. He married in his youth the daughter of FRANCISCO PACHECO, a painter of inferior merit, but a learned writer on art, from whose advice and instruction he derived much advantage. Velasquez showed from his childhood a genius for painting. He began by copying carefully from nature, still life, and living models, forming himself upon the study of pictures by Ribera and by Italian masters of the Naturalistic school, which had been brought from Italy to Spain. The best examples of his first manner are “The Adoration of the Kings” and his famous “Borrachos,” or drunkards, in the Madrid Gallery. In them the influence of Caravaggio and Ribera is very evident. In the twenty-third year of his age he went to Madrid, and, attracting the notice of influential persons, was soon taken into the service of Philip IV.--an enthusiastic lover of art, and himself a painter. He remained there for the rest of his life, and his pictures were almost exclusively painted for his royal patron and for the grandees of the Spanish court. A friendship with Rubens, who was in Madrid as embassador from the King of England, in 1628, and two visits to Italy, in 1629 and 1648, led him to modify his early manner. From the study at Venice of the masterpieces of Titian and Tintoret, he acquired a greater harmony and transparency of color, and a freer and firmer touch, without departing from that