Zurbarán died in Madrid, probably in 1662. He is held in high estimation by the Spanish, but scarcely appreciated at his true worth by foreigners. To see him at his best, alongside of Murillo’s work, as you can in Seville, is to be disposed to question the latter’s claim to be considered the greatest artist of the Sevillian School. Certainly, as compared with Murillo, Zurbarán was more unequivocally the naturalist; he was at least as good a painter; a better, one may even think; and the qualities of his mind were superior. He had not the popular trait of sentiment and passion; but the higher gift of intellectuality and the rarer one of cold, dispassionate vision. [Illustration: CHARLES IV AND THE ROYAL FAMILY GOYA THE PRADO] CHAPTER XII GOYA From the death of Velasquez, in 1661, more than a hundred years had elapsed when Goya made his début in Madrid. He is the unexpected phenomenon of the Spanish School; coming as a surprise and even more surprising in the character of his art, since it anticipated by a hundred years an art-motive of our own times. Goya was the prophet of modern impressionism, and arrived upon the stage when the drama of Spanish painting seemed to have been played out. For the great names of the seventeenth century had been succeeded by painters of inferior ability and the positions of favor at court were held by foreigners. The decline of painting had kept pace with national decline. Spain under the Bourbon dynasty reaped the whirlwind that had been sown by the Hapsburg. Trade and commerce had been reduced to nothing; and while a few noble families had grown rich the country was poor, even the Court being impoverished. The Church had sunk from its high estate, and, devoted to worldly ambitions, had lost the respect of the community. The national character was demoralised. The lower classes had become brutalised, while society was callous and the Court openly profligate. When Goya entered on his prime, the impotence of the King, Charles IV, had permitted the government to slip into the hands of the Queen’s favorite, the ex-guardsman, Manuel Godoy. He had been raised to the rank of Duke of Alcudia and made prime minister of the realm. For bringing to conclusion a war with France in which he had needlessly engaged, he ostentatiously assumed the title of the “Prince of Peace.” It has been related in a previous chapter how he ratted to Napoleon and favored the design to place Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain, thereby subjecting Spain to the horrors of a French invasion under Murat and to the prolonged distress of the Peninsular war.