Antonio Palomino

Acislo Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco (1655 – 13 April 1726) was a Spanish painter of the Baroque period, and a writer on art, author of El Museo pictórico y escala óptica, which contains a large amount of important biographical material on Spanish artists.

[1] After taking minor orders Palomino moved to Madrid in 1678, where he associated with Alfaro, Claudio Coello, and Juan Carreño de Miranda, and executed some indifferent frescoes.

The artist visited Valencia in 1697, and remained there for three or four years, again devoting himself to fresco painting, including the ceilings of the Church of Santos Juanes.

Between 1705 and 1715 he spent considerable amounts of time in Salamanca, Granada and Córdoba; in the latter year the first volume of his work on art, El Museo pictórico y escala óptica, appeared in Madrid.

[1] A modern English translation of the abridgment by Nina Ayala Mallory came out in 1987 from Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0-521-33474-8).