Charles IV was an amiable imbecile and his Queen, Maria Luisa, the shameless subject of notorious scandal. One of her favorites, Manuel Godoy, advanced from the rank and file of a regiment of the Guards to the title of Duke of Alcudia, was entrusted with the duties of prime minister. After embroiling the country in successive wars with France and England, he finally attached himself to the cause of Napoleon and favored the latter’s design to place his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. The French entered Spain in 1808 and compelled Charles to abdicate. But in the same year the Spaniards rose against the invaders, and the English came to their assistance. Then followed the Peninsular War, during which Wellington gradually expelled the French troops, but not until they had pillaged the cathedrals and churches and carried off a large number of the finest works of art. For Marshal Soult, with the predatory instincts of an unscrupulous dealer, sent his emissaries ahead of the army. Armed with the “Dictionary of Painters and Paintings” by Cean Bermudez, they identified and attached the most famous canvases, which the Marshal compelled their owners to part with at his own terms. On the conclusion of the war many of these were returned to Spain under the terms of the treaty of peace, but a number of masterpieces had already passed through Soult’s rapacious hands into the public and private galleries of Europe. This treaty of peace, which restored the Throne to Charles’ son, Ferdinand VII, is the end of the history of Spain so far as it concerns the growth and development and decline of her national art. She has had painters of repute since 1814; but not in sufficient numbers to constitute a school or even a noticeable artistic movement. Under weak and constantly changing governments, controlled by the Church and existing mainly for taxation, her arts, like her commerce and industries dwindled to an almost negligible condition, from which only recently there are indications of recovery. CHAPTER II CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH PAINTING