ABSTRACT
Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco Humanist training was initially intended to lead to an ecclesiastical career, but his interest in art eventually took precedence and became his vocation for most of his life. Palomino advanced his career by moving to Madrid in 1678, where he received painting commissions as well as studied geometry at a Jesuit college. Nina Ayala Mallory had noted that the biographical volume in particular was an “immediate success,” evidenced by the numerous reprint and translated editions that were issued in the eighteenth century. Palomino researched the lives over many years; in addition to his own observations, he gathered information from artists’ relatives and acquaintances as well as from the limited documentation on earlier artists. Luisa Roldan is one of the few documented women sculptors of the seventeenth century, and the only Spanish artist included in this anthology due to a lack of life stories published prior to 1800 concerning women creators from that country.
