The former is regarded as Cano’s masterpiece. The type of the Virgin is of Granada, touched with Moorish warmth, a little more womanly and much more refined than Murillo’s. But, like the latter’s and like Raphael’s Roman Madonnas, it is beautiful only in a physical and emotional way; it has nothing of the spirituality of El Greco’s creations, so absorbed in the mystery of their sacred and miraculous estate. Yet among the Madonnas of the Southern artists there is probably none so pure in its loveliness and so lovely in its purity as this one of Cano’s. A similar quality of exquisitely fragrant maidenhood appears in the S. Agnes. Both this and the other canvas represent sentiment, raised to the highest pitch of elevated feeling; yet remaining sentiment. I make the point because Cano, no more than the other Spanish artists, for all the religiosity of their pictures, touched the soul of religion. The only artist of the Spanish School to do this was the alien, El Greco. * * * * * Francisco de Zurbarán was born in 1598 in the little town of Fuente de Cantos in the province of Estremadura. His father, a small farmer, convinced of his son’s talent for drawing, took him to Seville and placed him under the teaching of Roelas. But there is little or no trace of this painter’s influence in Zurbarán’s style. In a general way the latter came under the spell of Ribera and Caravaggio; indeed, at one period of his career Zurbarán in consequence of his dark shadows was nicknamed “the Spanish Caravaggio.” But you cannot become acquainted with Zurbarán’s various subjects without realising that he owed his style chiefly, almost entirely, to himself; that he had shaped it to the needs of his own temperament. He was an out and out naturalist; in a sense the most conspicuously naturalistic painter of the Spanish School. For there is an austerity in his point of view, which separates him from the sentiment of Murillo, the passionate virility of Ribera and the aristocratic distinction of Velasquez. Zurbarán consorted with Monks; took advantage of occasional opportunities of retiring from the world into the quiet of a monastic community; and in the simplicity and frugality of his tastes was at heart a monk. The bare walls of a cell or refectory, the plain habits of the brethren, and the orderly formality of their lives, were more to him than subjects for his brush. They were so in tune with his own instincts, that he derived from them inspiration for his art; affecting not only his habit of seeing but his technique. Both became characterised by largeness and simplicity and by more or less severity.