PAINTING. 111 
Velasquez, and gained for him a great number of commissions. His 
beautiful picture of St. Anthony of Padua in the cathedral, which is 
regarded as his finest work, was painted by him in the year 1656. His 
most brilliant period, however, was from 1670 to 1680, when among other 
things he painted the eight pictures in the church of the hospital of St. 
George, for which he received 78,115 reals. The pictures of Murillo are 
valued very highly: for instance the English banker Angerstein paid for two 
of them 18,000 dollars. Murillo possessed an amiable character: he treated 
the mistakes of his pupils, of whom he had a great number, with gentleness, 
and referred them constantly to nature. His pictures are to be met with 
through all Europe; as he was uncommonly industrious, and his works were 
always held in high esteem. Many too have been given as presents by the 
kings of Spain to other rulers or have been sold for high prices; and hence 
it is that no gallery of consequence is without a picture of Murillo, although 
many of them no doubt were only executed in his school. The Dresden 
gallery possesses a few pictures by this master, and among them a very 
beautiful Madonna and Child (pl. 17, fig. 8), which indisputably belongs 
to Murillo’s best period. We find in his pictures two characteristic styles: 
one is vigorous and powerful and the execution true to nature; while the 
other shows a certain sweetness which Murillo derived from his manifold 
studies after Italian masters and after Vandyck, but which he discarded in 
some paintings of this style found in the Soult gallery in Paris. Murillo left 
many imitators and a respectable school, which, however, soon degenerated. 
In Spain also art sank by degrees from the high point to which it had been 
raised by the masters of the 16th and 17th centuries ; and although occasion- 
ally one master or another cast a ray of light over the domain of art, no serious 
revival was produced in it until the advent of Mengs. 
3. France. The first traces of painting in France present themselves in 
the time of bishop Gregory of Tours, who in the 9th century caused many 
churches to be adorned with paintings;*the tomb of Fredegunde was also 
decorated with mosaic paintings, the execution of which was at that time 
well understood, the art having been handed down from antiquity. At the 
time of the Norman invasion (in 865), miniature painting was not unknown 
in France. There is still extant a manuscript of that period, the four 
Gospels in the National Library in Paris, which contains several miniatures, 
among others that of the emperor Lotharius; and there is also a Bible of 
the time of Charles the Bald containing paintings, among which is one 
representing the king on his throne surrounded by eleven priests, guards, 
and magnates of the kingdom. A work has come down to us from the year 
1065 which, though not properly a painting, is nearly enough allied to one. 
We mean the great tapestry of Bayeux, 212 feet in length and over 2 feet 
in breadth, on which queen Mathilda and her maidens depicted in em- 
broidery the deeds of William of Normandy. To be sure the drawing on 
this tapestry is truly barbarous ; nevertheless it is of great historical impor- 
tance if only on account of the inscriptions it contains. There are also 
fresco-paintings of that time, which represent William the Conqueror, his 
queen Mathilda, and his sons Robert and William, besides other works of 
) 495 
