San Andres de, a town of Spain, province of Barcelona, and 4 miles north of that town. It contains a small church of Moorish style, a court-house, and several schools. Weaving, spinning, and lace-making are carried on; and the town is in a flourishing state. Pop. 4345.

PALOMINO DE CASTRO Y VELASCO, Acisclo Astronio, "the Vasari of Spain," was born of a good family at Bujalance in 1653. He received an excellent education at Cordoba in grammar, philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence; but his taste for art triumphed over his love of letters. Cordoba was visited by Valdés Leal in 1672, and by Alfaro in 1675. They were both painters of reputation, and they bestowed much care on the instruction of Palomino. Both did what they could to stimulate him in the study of his art, and both strove to smooth his way to advancement. Having a vague hankering towards the church, he took minor orders sometime before 1678, when, on the advice of Alfaro, he repaired to Madrid to prosecute the study that lay nearest his heart. Here painting and mathematics, the society of artists and men of letters, occupied his time till the death of his friend Alfaro in 1680 called him to complete the pictures left by that artist on the easel. Palomino soon afterwards married a lady of rank, was appointed alcalde of the Mesta, and was thus raised to the rank of nobility. He continued to prosecute his art with some degree of success; and in 1688 was made painter to the king. He visited Valencia in 1697, where he remained three or four years, and left behind him a number of feeble frescoes in the principal churches there. Salamanca, Granada, and Cordoba were visited successively in a professional capacity between 1705 and 1715. It was during the latter year that the first volume of his great work on art made its appearance. On its completion in 1724, it bore the title El Museo Pictorico y Escuela Optica, 2 tom. fol., Madrid, 1715-24. The first volume contains some valuable disquisitions on painting, much silly gossip about miraculous images, and numerous practical hints to artists, at once prolix and pragmatical. The portion of his work devoted to the biography of Spanish artists, entitled El Parnaso Español Pintoresco Laureado ("The Picturesque Laurelléd Spanish Parnassus"), without being remarkable for accuracy, is nevertheless a perfect storehouse of facts, traditions, and quaint, facetious stories, of which subsequent writers have freely availed themselves. There is an honest, garrulous simplicity about his narrative; and, curious to say, he is much more given to praise than to blame his brethren of the brush when he has occasion to be critical. As a writer he does not stand much higher than as an artist; yet the learning and industry which he brought to bear upon his history of art have formed the mainstay of his reputation, and have preserved his name from oblivion. The latter days of Palomino were spent as a churchman. His wife dying in 1725, and his own health having given way, he received priest's orders during the same year. He died on the 13th of August 1726. Palomino's History was partially translated into English in 1739; an abridgment of it in the original appeared at London in 1744, afterwards translated into French, with additions, in 1749; and a reprint of the entire work was issued from the press at Madrid in 1797. (See Stirling's Annals of the Artists of Spain, vol. iii., pp. 1120-1134.)