Francisco Zurbaran grew up in Seville, the city which administered Spanish colonies in the 17^th century and the main port shipping goods and treasure to and fro. The son of a draper, he became a painter with a naturalistic style, heavy shadows and chiaroscuro, and usually a Catholic religious subject. He nonetheless managed to beat Marc Chagall in depicting Jacob and his dozen sons, in paint rather than stained glass.

Yesterday we went to the Frick Gallery here to see the Jewish family portraits, which are huge and brilliant and rarely seen. Jacob and his eldest 11 sons normally hang in Auckland Castle in the north of England, and Benjamin, bought by a rival of the Durham Bishop when it was auctioned, in a different castle. 
 A mystery is why after the Inquisition and during the peak of the counter-reformation the paintings were commissioned at all. One theory is that the Spaniards believed that their subjects in America were descended from the 10 lost tribes of Israel, and wanted to ease their way to converting to Catholicism with the paintings, to be hung in a church. In the end, the paintings stayed in Europe. One of the brothers, Zebulon, wears a pair of striped short trousers which recall costumes of Latin American Indians. As a draper’s son, Zurbaran was a brilliant painter of clothing and cloth.

Because the castle is being restored, its pictures were allowed to be moved to be shown here and the Frick persuaded the owner of Benjamin to let her picture join the Durham ones. It is a wonderful show.

Yesterday funds had to file their last 13-F report on major holdings changes to the SEC. The main impact of the news is on one of our favorite long-time holdings. But there is gold in other reports as well. The Greenwich, CT-based Bridgewater Capital hedge fund sold short euros 14 bn in stocks in the Dec. quarter, expected a share crash. At least one of our stocks was affected as it was third on the sell list. 
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If I am right and Bridgewater now has to buy back the stocks it shorted, our share will rise. My information came from a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which today covered only the major German stock shorts.

With the dollar expected to sink in part because the US Administration likes that, and with higher interest rates and inflation threatening, I think shorting euro stocks is madness. Currency factors will boost their share prices and dividends when converted into US$s. The only thing to watch out for is companies which do too much selling in the USA.

In the most recent quarter, the eurozone economy grew 0.6% in the quarter, and 2.7% from the prior Q4, ahead of the US 2.3% for the year but behind the 2.5% in Q4. This is not a clarion call for shorting Europe.