Palomino, Don Acislo Antonio Y Velasco

, a Spanish painter and writer on the art, was born at Bujalance, and studied at Cordova in grammar, philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence. The elements of art he acquired of Don Juan de Valdes Leal; and to acquaint himself with tht? style of different schools, went, in company of Don Juan de Alfaro, in 1678, to Madrid. Here the friendship of Carrenno procuring him the commission | of painting the gallery del Cierzo, he pleased the king and the minister, and in 1688 he was made painter to the king. He was now overwhelmed with commissions, for many of which, notwithstanding the most surprising activity, he could furnish only the designs; their ultimate finish was left to the hand of his pupil Dionysius Vidal hut whatever was designed and terminated by himself, in fresco or in oil, possesses invention, design, and colour, in the essential; and what taste and science could add, in the ornamental parts. His style was certainly more adapted to the demands of the epoch in which he lived, than to those of the preceding one, and probably would not have obtained from Murillo the praises lavished on it by Luca Giordano; but of the machinists, who surrounded him, he was, perhaps, the least debauched by manner.

Palomino may be considered as the Vasari of Spain; as copious, as credulous, as negligent of dates; too garrulous for energy, and too indefinite for the delineation of character, but eminently useful with the emendations of modern and more accurate biographers. His work is divided into three parts, theoretic, practic, and biographic. The two first bear one title, “El Museo pictorico y escala optica,” 1715, 2 vols. folio. The third part, distinguished by that of “El Parnaso Espannol Pintoresco laureado, &c. Tomo Tercero, Madrid,” 1724, though, perhaps, only intended as an appendix to the two former, is by far the most important and interesting. Palomino died in 1726.¹