Spanish painter, scholar, and author, the last court painter to King Charles II of Spain.

After study at the University of Córdoba, Palomino was a student of the painter Valdes Leal and later Alfaro. In 1688 Palomino was appointed court painter and continued to concentrate on easel work until 1699. Thereafter he assisted Luca Giordano in the fresco decoration of El Escorial and continued to execute numerous large frescoes in churches in Madrid, Salamanca, Córdoba, Granada, and El Paular. Influenced by both Juan Carreño de Mirauda and Claudio Coello, he specialized in elaborate allegorical paintings marked by effects of light and a dignified elegance, as in “St. Michael” (Kansas City, Mo.).

He is most remembered for his writings. El museo pictórico y escala óptica (1715–24; “The Pictorial Museum and Optical Scale”) consists of two volumes, one on the theory and the other on the practice of painting, together with a collection of the lives of eminent Spanish painters and sculptors and of artists from other countries who worked in Spain. Modeled on Giorgio Vasari's biographies of Italian artists, it is the most valuable source for the history of Spanish painting in the 16th and 17th centuries.