Alfaro-Y-Gamon, Juan D'

, a Spanish painter of considerable eminence, was born at Cordova in 1640, educated under Castillo, and completed his studies with Velasquez at Madrid, whose style he copied, particularly in his portraits. Velasquez, who was the first painter to the king of Spain, procured Alfaro favourable opportunities to study the fine pictures in the royal collections; and Titian, Rubens, and Vandyke, became his principal models. Many of his pictures, particularly his small ones, are very much in the style of Vandyke. As he principally followed the lucrative business of portrait-painting, both in oil and miniature, he probably would have realized a considerable fortune, but a weakly state of health soon plunged him into melancholy, of which he died in his fortieth year. Mr. Cumberland attributes his death to grief, upon account of the banishment of the admiral of Castille, in whose family he was an inmate, and to his having been rejected when he went to pay his respects to the admiral on his release. Alfaro was not only a good painter, but wrote sensibly on th, art. Of his pictures, there is an “Incarnation” at Madrid, and a “Guardian Angel,” and a portrait of Don Pedro Caldefona, in the church of St. Salvador, which are verj conspicuous monuments of his skill. ²