which is seated Matthew, in Oriental clothes, surrounded by others in Spanish costume of the period. It is an ambitious and rather tedious picture. Three painters of this period which call for brief notice are Antonio Pereda, Francisco Collantes and José Leonardo. Pereda (1599-1669) was born in Valladolid, but moved to Madrid to study art and remained there. In the Academy of San Fernando is an “allegory” by him, entitled _The Dream of Life_. It represents a young man of heavy, rather Dutch aspect, handsomely dressed, seated asleep before a table. The latter is strewn with a variety of objects--jewels, flowers, coins, weapons, music, a mask, a book--which contribute to the joy and fulness of life. Meanwhile, on the book rests a skull, while an angel in the background, gazing at the youth, holds a scroll inscribed--“Æterne pungit, cito volat et occidet.” The picture is blackened and murky, but the still-life is rendered with remarkable naturalness. Indeed, naturalistic veracity and a taste for ascetic or moral suggestion characterises Pereda’s art. Note, for example, the _S. Jerome_ of the Prado where the aged saint, stripped to the waist, sits in a spiritual daze, grasping a cross of rudely joined sticks, which lies upon a book. The latter contains an engraved illustration, represented with extraordinary _vraisemblance_, and the same quality is carried to a disgusting pitch in the rendering of the withered, flabby flesh. Even more revolting and commonplace in its excessive naturalism is an adjoining _Ecce Homo_--blood that looks like blood, a rope unmistakably a rope, and a cross made out of a tree, the bark of which is realised with ridiculously ineffectual exactness. The two pictures have neither the vigor of handling nor the dignity of conception to be found in Ribera’s corresponding subjects. They represent naturalism for the sake of naturalism; and anticipate the general decadence which settled down on the School of Castile toward the end of the seventeenth century. Collantes (1599-1656), a pupil of Vincente Carducho, is represented in the Prado by a _Vision of Ezekiel_. In the foreground is confusion of opened tombs and risen bodies and skeletons; in the background the ruins of a stately classic city, and in the center, raised on an eminence, the prophet preaching to the awakened dead. The scene both in composition and chiaroscuro is quite impressive. Collantes is also represented in the Louvre by _The Burning Bush_.