these experiences, he executed a curious picture, now in the Prado, in which he has represented in an ensemble the successive stages of an auto-de-fé. It commemorates one that actually took place in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid on June 30, 1680, lasting from eight in the morning until half-past nine at night. The function had afforded a spasm of zest to the wretched religious maniac, Charles II, who commanded the painting. It contains some three thousand figures, and, considering that Rizi was seventy-five years old when he executed it, is an achievement as surprising as unnecessary. One of Francisco Rizi’s pupils was José Antolinez (1639-1676), a native of Seville. Something of southern sweetness of sentiment pervades his pictures as may be seen in _The Assumption_ of the Munich Pinakothek, _The Glorification of the Virgin_ in the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam and the _Ecstasy of the Magdalen_, of the Prado. The last named represents the penitent floating in a seated posture, upborne by angels. Two others hold above her the jar of ointment, while an older angel plays the lute. The drapery is of ashy purple silk brocaded with mauve arabesques, a fine passage of color suggestive of the influence of Van Dyke, which at this period began to find its way into Spain. One may discover it again in the elegantly sentimental style of Mateo Cerezo, who was originally a pupil of Carreño. Examples that may be quoted are the _Penitent Magdalen_ in the Gallery of the Hague, and the _S. John the Baptist_ of the Cassel Gallery, both of them characterised by affectation. A more important example, because of its decorative composition, is the _Assumption of the Virgin_ in the Prado. Down below, the faithful are peering into a sarcophagus, filled [Illustration: PRESENTATION OF JESUS IN THE TEMPLE LUIS MORALES THE PRADO] with flowers, while overhead the Virgin and her supporting angels make an elegant mass of white and blue silk and fluttering wings. But the picture is fatally pretty, characteristic of the decline of devotional feeling and artistic taste. This allusion to the decadence of the School of Castile which marks the end of the seventeenth century may be closed by a reference to Claudio Coello (d. 1693). The work which brought him greatest fame in his own day is the altar-piece of _La Santa Forma_ at the south end of the sacristry of the Escoriál. It represents a perspective view of the room in which you are standing as you look at the picture. Thus the great school of Spanish naturalism passes out in the meretricious glamour of a looking-glass picture. SCHOOL OF VALENCIA, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY