When you travel through Spain, it becomes readily apparent that the twin peaks of the Spanish Golden Age are El Greco (1541-1614) and Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). Towering, also, are Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). Later arose Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), who—bridging El Greco and Picasso—is known as both the last of the old and the first of the modern Spanish masters. Well into the 19th century, Murillo—the leading religious painter of Seville during his lifetime—was the most highly esteemed Spanish artist in Spain and throughout Europe, and practically the only one known internationally. Celebrated for fusing secular realism and spiritual allegory, Murillo was long equated with Leonardo and Michelangelo.

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