Alonso Cano, 1601-1667, was not born in Seville, but came to the city, when quite young, to receive instruction from Pacheco and Juan de Castillo. He painted pictures for the Carthusians, and the other convents and churches, but a duel, fought with a brother artist, in 1639, drove him from the city. The finest instance of his work in Seville is Our Lady of Bethlehem, in the Cathedral. It was painted in Malaga for Señor D. Andres Cascentes, who presented it to Seville. The light is dim, and it can only be seen by the glow from the tapers which burn upon the altar. It is somewhat conventional in treatment, and bears distinct traces of Italian mannerism. Yet the picture is not without charm, and the Spanish national note is not entirely absent. The hands and feet are painted with extreme care, and the crimson robe and dark-blue mantle of the Virgin are exquisite in colour. The picture may be regarded as typical of his work. One of his chief faults was repetition, and he was frequently accused by his contemporaries of copying from the works of other masters; a charge which he is said to have challenged, with the following answer: 'Do the same thing, with the same effect as I do, and all the world will pardon you.' His power as an artist has been somewhat over-estimated, and his claim to be called 'the Michelangelo of Spain' rests solely upon the fact that he was sculptor and architect as well as painter. Juan de Valdés Leal, 1630-1691, lived until the time when Andalusian art was fast approaching its decline. His early life was embittered by jealousy of Murillo, and much of his energy was expended in useless quarrels with his brother artists. His pictures are mannered, but the best are vigorous, and their main defects are due to hasty execution. He appears to have had no power to finish his work; when he tried to be careful he became weak. The Museo contains many of his pictures. The Virgin bestowing the Chasuble on San Ildefonso in the _Cap de San Francisco_, in the Cathedral, is one of his finest works. The two pictures in the Hospital de la Caridad were painted to illustrate the vanity of worldly grandeur. They are theatrical, and have little 'literary' attraction, but the execution exhibits a certain power. In one of them a hand holds a pair of scales, in which the sins of the world--represented by bats, peacocks, serpents and other objects--are weighed against the emblems of Christ's Passion; in the other, which is the finer composition, Death, with a coffin under one arm, extinguishes a taper, which lights a table spread with crowns, jewels and all the gewgaws of earthly pomp. The words _In Ictu Oculi_ circle the gleaming light of the taper, while upon the ground rests an open coffin, dimly revealing the corpse within.