Sefior Bernete y Moret, the biographer of Velazquez, has written
an interesting volume dealing with The School of Madrid (Duck- worth and Co., '78. 6d. net). To most people Maze, Carron°, and others are merely names, but by means of this book their separate qualities as painters are made clear to us. The author is zealous for the reputation of Mazo, for he attributes to him two pictures in London generally acknowledged to be by Velazquez, the father- in-law of Mazo. These pictures are the "Admiral" in the National Gallery, and the " Prince Balthasar in the Riding School" at Grosvenor House. The reasons given for the change of ascription are purely __internal and inconclusive, depending as they do largely on individual taste. If the discoverers of signa- tures further give to Maze the Rokeby " Venus," his reputation will be quite a growing one. To judge by the illustrations in this book, none of the undisputed works of Mazo are of anything like the excellence of the pictures attributed to him by his last biographer.
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