Sfiunish School.
\Ve are not aware that any distinctive character of painting ever existed in Spain, so as to require the classi fying of its artists under the denomination of a Spanish school. Seville seems to have been the city where the arts were chiefly cultivated. The style of the Florentine school was originally followed, and subsequently that of Rubens. Like the Germans, they had not the benefit in their own country of being able to form their taste upon the models of ancient purity, and accordingly fell into a clumsy imitation of nature, and a servile habit of copying each other. Spain has, notwithstanding, produced seve ral very excellent painters, and particularly Diego Velas quez, born at Seville in 1594, who studied in Italy, and afterwards practised with great success in Spain; he had the peculiarity of painting with brushes of five feet long, to enable him to observe the effect as he proceeded. Ra phael Mengs bestows great eulogiums on the works of Velasquez, in the account he gives of the pictures con tained in the Royal Palace of Madrid. Ribero., called Spag niolette, was of Spanish parentage, but as a painter may be considered a Neapolitan. His style is strong and vigorous, though his selection of subjects is often disgust ing. Murillo, likewise of Seville, is a pleasing painter, possessing a very delicate taste in colouring with correct design, which render his works much esteemed all over Europe. He delighted in simple subjects, which he knew how to render attractive by the charms of animated ex pression. It is to be wished that he had selected nobler subjects than that of ragged boys, &c. which constitute the generality of his pictures. There is such a careless flow of unaffected hilarity about his beggarly urchins, and such a broad expression of natural feeling with which be ani mates his canvas, that Murillo may be regarded as unri valled in representing the instinctive impulses of untutor ed nature.
Moralez was a painter of celebrity in Spain, and was dignified with the appellation of the Divine, as much from his merit as a painter as from the nature of the subjects he selected. Ile painted generally on copper, with great deli cacy and taste.
Flemish School.
In Brabant, the art of painting flourished at a very early period, and moreover, to an ancient and distinguished artist of that country the world is supposed to be indebted for the discovery of oil painting. This merit is usually attributed to Jean de Bruges, or Van Eyck, towards the year 14t0, although there is reason to doubt the accuracy of this point. In Germany, the contrary opinion is main tained, upon the faith of a work written by Theophilus, a monk of the eleventh century, entitled, "De omni scientia artis pingendi," in which he describes the use of linseed oil in painting ; but his process is not correctly that of oil painting. There are some oil pictures at Vienna, by Thomas de Mutina, said to be so early as the twelfth or thirteenth century. And, in England, Lord Orford main tains the existence of oil painting nearly two centuries before the birth of Van Eyck. See a treatise on this spe cial question, by Mr. Raspe, and a paper in the 9th vol. of the Archmologia. Lanzi investigates this subject in the first and second volume of his Storia Pittorica d' Italia, pages 65, and 285 ; and Tiraboschi Literatura Italiana, vol. vii. p. 407. See Williams on Oil Painting, and Ilaspe's translation of Lessin.,s, vol. viii.
If oil painting was known in the ninth century, as is alleged, Van Eyck cannot be denied the merit at least of having brought it into successful practice, which is often far more creditable than the absolute invention ; in so far as the one may be purely casual, while the other is likely to result chiefly from reflection, and well directed experi ments. Oil colour was first used on wood, then on plates of copper, and finally on canvas. It was an early practice to paint on the back of plates of glass, so that the glass should come in place of varnish for the picture ; it must have been an exceedingly inconvenient mode of painting, as it became necessary to work up the whole subject at once, and without the facility of seeing properly how the process was succeeding. When the work was finished and dry, in order to give it opacity, a thick uniform coat of paint was laid over the back.