By far the best represented of all the masters at the Spanish school is Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1618?-1682). He was born at Seville, of poor parents, and studied as a boy under Juan del Castillo. Forced before he had reached manhood to gain his livelihood, he took to manufacturing artistically worthless devotional pictures on saga-cloth, for sale at the weekly fairs in the poor quarter of Seville. This early practice of rather mechanical production, and the habit, acquired by necessity, of working to please the public, clung to him in after life and are responsible for much that the modern mind finds distasteful in his art—a certain sickly sentimentality that often takes the place of real sentiment, and an artificiality of arrangement even where the types are realistic renderings of the people among whom he spent his days. With his small savings from the proceeds of his crude popular pictures Murillo proceeded to Madrid, where Velazquez assisted him by deed, advice, and example, though the two artists were probably never in the relation of master and pupil. After about two years thus profitably spent at Madrid, Murillo returned to Seville, where he continued to work until his death in 1682, and rose to the very summit of fame and popularity. At his best Murillo was a colourist of great charm and a technician of the rarest skill. His art is most admirable where he adheres most closely to the realistic tradition of his country. It is scarcely to be credited that the same hand which produced so many vaporous and vapid Madonnas is responsible for a picture painted with such superb breadth and incisive vigour as _The Young Beggar_ (No. 1717), which is almost worthy of the brush of Velazquez in his Sevillan period. The decidedly unsavoury subject is made acceptable by the consummate artistry of the treatment. “THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”