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Acisclo Antonio Palomino de Castro Y Velasco

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ACISCLO ANTONIO PALOMINO DE CASTRO Y VELASCO (1653-1726), Spanish painter and writer on art, was born of good family at Bujalance, near Cordoba, in 1653, and studied philosophy, theology and law at that capital, receiving also lessons in painting from Valdes Leal, who visited Cordoba in 1672, and afterwards from Alfaro (1675). After taking minor orders he removed to Madrid in 1678, where he associated with Alfaro, Coello and Careno, and executed some indifferent frescoes. He soon afterwards married a lady of rank, and, having been appointed alcalde of the mesta, was himself ennobled; and in 1688 he was appointed painter to the king. He visited Valencia in 1697, and remained there three or four years, again devoting himself with but poor success to fresco painting. Between 1705 and 1715 he resided for considerable periods at Salamanca, Granada and Cordoba; in the latter year the first volume of his work on art appeared in Madrid. After the death of his wife in 1725 Palomino took priest's orders. He died on the 13th of August 1726.

His work, in 3 vols. folio (1715-1724), entitled El Museo pictorico y escala optica, consists of three parts, of which the first two, on the theory and practice of the art of painting, are without interest or value; the third, with the subtitle El Parnaso espanol pintoresco laureado, is ' L a mine of important biographical material relating to Spanish artists, which, notwithstanding its faulty style, has procured for the author the not altogether undeserved honour of being called the "Spanish Vasari." It was partially translated into English in 1739; an abridgment of the original ( Las Vidas de los pintores y estatuarios espanoles ) was published in London in 1742, and afterwards appeared in a French translation in 1749. A German version was published at Dresden in 1781, and a reprint of the entire work at Madrid in 1797.