(b Leon, April 3, 1606; d Madrid, Feb 27, 1669). Spanish writer. He was a court servant, a singer in the Capilla Real and Chaplain to Charles II of Spain. He was a friend of Velázquez, whom he revered, as well as the painters Sebastián de Herrera Barnuevo, Pedro de la Torre and Juan Escalante. He wrote various works that are in manuscript form, most notably the three-volume Noticia histórica del principio de la Inquisición y la historia y nobleza del Reino de León y Principado de Asturias (vol. 1 destr. 1939; vol. 2 untraced; vol. 3, London, BL). His writings on art were collected in Varones ilustres (1656 and 1659; Madrid, Consejo Sup. Invest. Cient.), an unsystematic accumulation of notes taken from Italian and Spanish theoretical treatises. Its main function is to show the nobility and ingenuousness of painting and it continues the approach of Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos and Juan Alonso de Butrón. This work was later a source for the writers Acisclo Antonio Palomino y Velasco and Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez. Díaz del Valle also wrote some useful short biographies of Madrid painters such as Antonio de Pereda, Alonso Cano, Francisco Camilo and Antonio Arias Fernández. These follow the model of Vasari’s ...