_Juan de Valdes Leal_ (Spanish: 1630-1691).
Valdes Leal, who was born at Cordova, settled afterwards at
Seville, where he became the first President of the Academy
in that city. It is to him that some critics have assigned
the "Dead Orlando" in this room (741). His most famous
picture--"one of the most repulsive, but also most impressive
ever painted," says Mr. W. B. Scott--is "The Two Dead Men,"
in the Hospital of Charity at Seville, representing a charnel
house with the partially-decayed corpses of a bishop and a
noble. So dreadful is the realism that Murillo said he never
could approach the picture without fancying he smelt the
horror. "Ah, my compeer," replied the flattered realist, "it
is not my fault; you have taken all the sweet fruit out of the
basket and left only the rotten."
In the present picture Valdes Leal has picked sweet fruit too;
indeed it is over sweet. The donatrix of the picture and her son
are shown in either corner, while in the midst the Virgin ascends
to Heaven, surrounded by bands of angels. The picture is thoroughly
characteristic, in its florid type of sentiment, of the Spanish school.