question of Spanish sculpture of the Renaissance. But of a purer and more elevated—at least of a more religious-style there was one who was a greater artist than either, of the time when Gothic art still held sway, even if its supremacy was already threatened. We hear little of Damian Formente or Forment, and details of his life are again provokingly absent. An architect and sculptor, he was born probably about 1470, and, it would appear, studied in Rome and Florence (not, however, under Donatello, though he was greatly influenced by the work of the Florentine master), whence he must have returned to Spain at an early age, for in 1501 he was at work on a retable in wood for the Gothic church of Gandia in Valencia, his native province: and, but a few years later, on his most famous production, the alabaster retable of the church of Our Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa. His studies in Italy certainly had not the effect of inclining him to Renaissance principles, against which he fought throughout his life with the greatest obstinacy. The retable of the Capilla del Pilar, and the still finer one in a similar style, in wood, of the church of San Pablo, also at Saragossa, are unsurpassed amongst the Spanish late Gothic work of this description of the time. fluenced by Berruguete, and refusing to be enticed by, even though he studied Italian ideas, Forment throughout his life was in the main faithful to Gothic sentiment. The retable of the Capilla del Pilar is in alabaster— now denuded of colour-a material which from its nature is amenable to almost identical treatment with woods of a hard kind. The themes depicted are scenes in the life of the Mother of Christ, the whole composition in arrangement and treatment of the panels, in the ornamental and architectural details, and in the groups and single figures, being certainly more suggestive of Flemish than of Italian teaching. But to whatever sources he may have gone, the work of Forment shows

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no slavish spirit of imitation, and it is surprising that his genius and individuality should not have been placed on a higher level than that accorded to his more celebrated contemporaries, Berruguete and Vigarny. The retablo of San Pablo, of wood, painted and gilt, and completed in 1517, is again quite Gothic. general character it is almost identical with the somewhat earlier retable of the Pilar. Yet in the details there are certain differences, and while the spirit is still Gothic, it would be idle to assert that this is true without reservation. Indeed it is evident that the sculptor has gone to various sources. Notwithstand

ing this, the national type strongly predominates. The Crucifixion group in the upper central panel, the figure of the Apostle beneath, the eight groups of episodes of the Passion, the four scenes in the life of St. Paul, crowded with figures, the canopies of complicated pinnacle work, the innumerable details, with hardly a square inch of the composition undecorated, and the elaborate arabesque foliage work of the borders, identical with those of the alabaster retable, leave an impression which is almost bewildering when we seek to characterize the style. It is Gothic, it is plateresque, it betrays a Flemish love of the dramatic and picturesque, it is markedly oriental, it certainly cannot be quoted as an example of a dislike for Italian teaching and models, or a systematic avoidance of their use; it is Spanish, yet it is not the art of Berruguete. It is, in fine, Damian Forment, and in execution it is a chef-d'œuvre.

Notwithstanding the terrible destructions and desecrations which the perverted ideas of Churriguera caused him to work in the latter part of the seventeenth century on decorative art of all kinds, both Gothic and of the Renaissance, there still exists throughout Spain a very large number of magnificent retablos. In the most famous cathedrals also, the silleria, by which term is meant the ranges of stalls with their canopies,

thrones, and other adjuncts, are additional monuments of wood-carving carried almost to extravagance in their bewildering profusion of details. Although in origin the retable was a simple background to an altar, and in the earliest Spanish examples a light open-worked construction, the tendency, even so early as the second half of the fourteenth century, was towards the gigantic and complicated edifices of which we may consider that of Seville, completed in the early part of the sixteenth century, the type and culminating point. From amongst these, none of which are earlier than the fifteenth century, a choice must be made which may fairly be considered illustrative, if inadequately, of the greater number. For this purpose we may take as an example of an extremely mixed style, yet one which, as a whole, remains Spanish and nothing else, the celebrated retablo of Seville. It has already been sufficiently suggested, and need hardly be further insisted upon, that in this altar work, as well as in the silleria, we are to find an art which, although so distinctive in character as to be recognized as Spanish by the least versed in styles, is yet hardly in any case of marked originality, but built up and adapted from various sources of even widely remote periods. The dominating elements which combined to form what we call the plateresque style of the Spanish Renaissance were, as has been stated, French, Flemish, or German and Italian. To these must be added the reminiscences of Oriental influences to which allusion has already been made. Such a distinct feature as the Spanish methods of polychrome or estofado will not of course be overlooked.

The retablo of the high altar of the cathedral at Seville, as it exists at present, is in style-if we should accept the decision of Cean Bermudez in his Descripción de la Catedral de Sevilla-Gothic. Yet it is a mixture of the most diverse elements, the product of many minds and the work of many hands

from the time when it was designed and begun by Dancart in 1492, and under the hands of numerous other entalladores, imagineros, and estofadores, whose names and the particulars of their collaboration are extant—until its completion nearly a century later in 1564. Constructed of larchwood, the screen, with its elaborate ornamentation and innumerable groups and single figures, extends the whole width of the choir, and in height to the vaulting of the roof. Ten groups of columns divide the composition into nine spaces, crossed by horizontal bands of complicated carving forming a series of 36 inches in four rows, the borders carved with an elaborate theme of foliage arabesques and bulbous oriental domelike ornaments, each niche or panel containing a scene in the life of Our Lord, and of His prototypes in the Old Testament, starting from the story of the Fall. There is no mistaking the German character of these scenes: they are of the North German schools, and despite the names recorded by Bermudez of some of the earlier imagineros and of painters and gilders such as Alejo Fernandez and Andrez de Covarrubias, one can scarcely help wondering whether they and some of the single figures are not of German origin. The whole structure is dominated by a Calvary of colossal style. That is a brief, prosaic description of one of the most important of the Spanish retablos in wood. To convey a general idea of these astonishing constructions it would be difficult to surpass the style of the great French descriptive writer Théophile Gautier. Whatever may be thought of his talent as a word-painter, it is certain that the impression which it leaves is a very truthful one. Those who have read his Moscow and have seen the building itself will have recognized the actuality and force of his description of the church of Vassili Blagennoi. Equally telling are some passages which I may venture to take from his Voyage en Espagne.