Acislo Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco

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Acislo Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco (1653-1726), Spanish painter and writer on art, was born of good family at Bujalance, near Córdoba, in 1653, and studied philosophy, theology and law at Córdoba, receiving also lessons in painting from Juan de Valdés Leal, who visited there in 1672, and afterwards from Juan de Alfaro y Gómez (1675).

After taking minor orders he removed to Madrid in 1678, where he associated with Alfaro, Claudio Coello, and Juan Carreño de Miranda, 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 King Charles II. He visited Valencia in 1697, and remained there for 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 Córdoba; 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 13 August, 1726.

His work, in a 3-volumes folio edition (1715-1724), entitled El Museo pictórico y escala óptica, consists of three parts, of which the first two, on the theory and practice of the art of painting, have had little influence; the third, however, with the subtitle El Parnaso español pintoresco laureado, is a mine of important biographical material relating to Spanish artists, which, notwithstanding its uneven style, has procured for the author the honor 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 españoles) 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. A modern English translation of the abridgment by Nina Ayala Mallory came out in 1987 from Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0-521-33474-8).