FRANCISCO, a distinguished Spanish painter, was born in Extremadura in 1598. His parents were of the poorer class; but when their son manifested his predilection for art, they had the good sense to encourage him to prosecute the profession to which his genius inclined him, and he was accordingly sent to study the art under a painter in Seville. His progress was rapid, and his earliest pictures were marked by the accuracy with which they were executed, and the special skill of the artist in delineating drapery. His fame rapidly spread, and in 1625 he was commissioned by the Marquis of Malacón to produce some paintings as altar-pieces for the Cathedral of Seville. In the same year he painted his famous picture of St Thomas Aquinas, a very large work, containing some figures of colossal size, and which was designed to ornament the high altar of the chapel in the college dedicated to Saint Thomas in Seville. Most of the other productions of this period of his life were intended for the same purpose, and many of them still adorn the churches and monastery chapels in Seville and its neighbourhood. About 1633 he removed to Madrid, where he was appointed painter to the king (Philip III.), and where he produced a number of his best paintings, which still ornament the royal palace. He was also royal painter during the reign of Philip IV.; but for some reason or other he left the capital, and returned to his native city, where he died in 1662. Zurbaran is one of the most highly esteemed of the Spanish painters; and from the resemblance of his style to that of the Italian Caravaggio, he is usually known as the Spanish Caravaggio. He is very imperfectly known, however, out of his native country. Most of his paintings are still in Seville, and they were hardly known out of Spain till the great picture-robbler, Marshal Soult, brought the pictorial spoils of the Peninsula to the galleries of the Louvre. A considerable number of Zurbaran's pictures are still in the Louvre, but they are not the best specimens of his art. In this country, the Duke of