We turn again to Madrid, to the Court where Velázquez, as we have indicated, stamped such character on painting and informed it with such excellence that artists flocked from all parts of the Peninsula to the capital. This resulted in the flourishing period of art--ending with the seventeenth century--fruitful and various, which is associated with the School of Madrid. It is not precisely the school of Velázquez, although equivocally so called. Velázquez had disciples who followed him, imitating and copying him, as his servant Pareja, the mulatto, did. But this notwithstanding, other painters of talent worked during these years in the capital, helping to form the school, even if they did not follow him in any decided manner. Nevertheless, he is its greatest figure, for he it was who gained the title of a school for the work of his contemporaries, and for the generation which followed him. The impulse which he gave by his technique and the composition of his palette, simple and sober, are characteristic of all this period. His son-in-law, Mazo, followed him blindly, and, working in his studio, was constantly impressed by the productions of his master, making use of the same methods--the same canvas, colours, brushes, and, giving rein to an extraordinarily imitative talent, he tried to make, and occasionally produced, actual facsimiles of his master’s works. The study of this curious problem of painting, of the distinctive note, the inclination of the time, as shown in the art of father-in-law and son-in-law, has been the subject of several works from our pen. We have not insisted on the point in these, nor have we space to do so in this brief synthesis; but we flatter ourselves that several paintings, especially those which belong to museums, have come to be more correctly attributed to Mazo rather than to Velázquez, and that those who are interested in these problems have come to distinguish the external aspect of the work of the one from that of the other, substantial and inimitable. We must remark, however, that Mazo had, besides the mere qualities of an imitator, a talent of his own of singular excellence, that of a landscape painter, which represented a relative novelty in the art of Spain at that period.