Juan de Arellano (1614-1676), the painter of the _Flowers_ (No. 1701), worked at Madrid, unknown and in abject poverty, until at the age of thirty-six he began to devote himself to flower-painting, a branch of art in which he developed considerable skill, and rose to great popularity. Yet another Madrid painter who is but indifferently represented at the Louvre by a still life of _Fruit and Musical Instruments_ (No. 1720) in the La Caze collection, is Antonio Pereda (1599-1669). Although a contemporary of Velazquez and working in the same city, he was not appreciably influenced by that master. He was a pupil of Pedro de las Cuevas, and his style shows certain affinities with Ribera. His works are rarely to be met with outside the galleries and churches of his own country. The end of the seventeenth century marked the complete decadence of the Spanish school, which was precipitated and received its final seal by the advent in 1692 of the Neapolitan Luca Giordano, whose rare facility in the production of showy, flashy, meretricious works earned for him the sobriquet “Fa Presto,” and whose prodigious success was a powerful incentive to emulation. More fatal even than the influence of Luca Giordano was that of the German artist Raphael Mengs, an uninspired eclectic who became Court Painter to Charles III., and who is referred to in the chapter dealing with the German pictures at the Louvre. GOYA In this time of complete stagnation the fascinating personality of Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) flashes like a bright meteor through the dark night of Spanish art. Goya takes a unique position in the art of his country—or, indeed, of the world. He was as much the last of the old masters as he is the first of the moderns. A man of fiery temperament, impulsive, unruly, opposed to authority, he was terribly unequal in his performance. It is as unnecessary to state who were his masters as it is impossible to speak of his style in general terms, for there probably never was an artist who worked in so many different styles, experimented in so many different mediums, and treated so vast a range of subjects as Goya. He was a creature of moods, and changed his method of painting as easily as his political allegiance from Bourbon to Bonaparte and back again to Bourbon.