(bapt. Sanlúcar de Barrameda, nr. Cadiz, 3 Nov. 1564; bur. Seville, 27 Nov. 1644). Spanish painter and writer, active in Seville. He was a man of great culture, a poet and scholar as well as a painter, and his house was the focus of Seville's artistic life (Palomino describes it as a meeting place for ‘the greatest minds’ in the city). As a painter he was undistinguished, working in a stiff academic style (though his portraits are fresher than his religious works). He was an outstanding teacher, however, for (in spite of his own limitations) he was sympathetic to the more naturalistic style that was then developing. Moreover, he was generous enough in spirit to acknowledge openly that his greatest pupil, Velázquez (who became his son-in-law in 1618), was a much better painter than himself: ‘I consider it no disgrace for the pupil to surpass the master.