It has to be recorded that in the last years of the sixteenth century Philip II brought from Italy several Italian decorative artists to paint in fresco the extensive walls of the Monastery of the Escurial. He may have wished to bring with him for the purpose some celebrated foreign masters, but this was not possible, for the most important epoch of the Italian Renaissance had come to an end; and instead of great masters, there came others, decadents, facile “hacks,” who in a short time covered these enormous wall-spaces with compositions of scanty inspiration. We mention the visit of these painters to Spain, not because of any importance it has in itself, but in order to show that Spanish painters, even those of standing, have in all times been lacking in the qualities which especially characterise the decorative painter. Philip II might have encouraged Spanish artists. But whom--Morales, El Greco, the artists of the Court, the lesser followers of El Greco in Toledo? No, none of these appear to have been qualified to bring such a task to a conclusion. This and nothing else was the cause of the coming of the Italians; and for the rest the King favoured the works of various Spaniards, placing many examples of their work in his palaces and in the religious houses he founded. And so Spanish painting remained in this particular position to the close of the sixteenth century and during the first years of the seventeenth, which is regarded as its golden century, when, in the midst of fruitful invention there arose four great figures, each to-day world-renowned--Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez and Murillo. What centres of artistic life did Spain possess at this time? Two, fundamentally; those two cities which have since produced the greatest number of painters and the most able--Seville, the capital of Andalusia, the open gate to the New World, and Valencia, a Mediterranean port exposed to the influences of that which had been the classical world, and in close and direct communication with Italy, which bequeathed to it the last sparks of the marvellous life of the Renaissance. In Valencia, Francisco Ribalta, a conscientious painter, who had studied in Italy, introduced a style of colouring after the manner of Ribera. In Seville, frequented by all the Andalusian intellectuals, Pacheco, a most cultured artist, came later on to be the master of Velázquez and Zurbarán. In the exhibition with which we are concerned Ribalta and Pacheco, more famous for the disciples they left than for the works they produced, were represented, the first by Saint Peter (Plate VII.) and his portrait of himself as _Saint Luke painting the Virgin_; and the second by the _Portrait of a Knight of Santiago_.