We now reach that era of painting which flourished at the Court of Spain during the remainder of the seventeenth century. A long list of names of artists could be made, all estimable and some remarkable, who exhibited the proverbial vigour and picturesque temperament of the race, which, skilfully directed, and having received a noble and traditional tendency, commenced its onward progress without faltering. We mention, however, only Claudio Coello, who seems to close this period. A disciple of Rizi, whose decorative tendency he followed, he was more an artist in a general sense than a portrait painter, and above all he produced many religious subjects. By his work _The Sacred Form_, which is kept in the Escurial, he seems to be sealed to the School of Madrid. This picture is obviously a result of the atmosphere and the taste of the period in its fidelity to character and its happy solution of problems of perspective and effects of light. * * * * * For Spain the eighteenth century was a period of misfortune. The reasons for this are simple and evident. Grace and good taste--in the best sense of the term--lightness, came to be the characteristics of this century, and these qualities were displayed in a perfect manner in French art. And it was precisely these attributes which Spanish artists most lacked, and still lack. They are robust, strong and sincere, but without gracefulness, facility of expression or volatility. _A propos_ of this, it must be recalled that Spanish artistic expression appears to have been more or less influenced in its development by foreign tendencies which were allowed to work freely and with absolute spontaneity. The eighteenth century was a period in which the most powerful external influences, especially the French, the least adaptable to the Spanish temperament, had full play. These external influences were wholly ordained by the rule of the House of Bourbon, and incarnated in the first of its monarchs, Philip V, nephew of Louis XIV, who, doubtless meaning well, seemed to think it possible to transplant Versailles, with its marvellous spirit and exquisite culture, to the Castilian cities, which were still dominated by the sobriety and asceticism of the mystics of past centuries.