the
executioner with the paint-brush. The bulk of Spanish art was Church
art, done under ecclesiastical domination, and done in form without
question or protest. The religious subject ruled. True enough, there
was portraiture of nobility, and under Philip and Velasquez a
half-monarchical art of military scenes and _genre_; but this was not
the bent of Spanish painting as a whole. Even in late days, when
Velasquez was reflecting the haughty court, Murillo was more widely
and nationally reflecting the believing provinces and the Church
faith of the people. It is safe to say, in a general way, that the
Church was responsible for Spanish art, and that religion was its
chief motive.

There was no revived antique, little of the nude or the pagan, little
of consequence in landscape, little, until Velasquez's time, of the
real and the actual. An ascetic view of life, faith, and the hereafter
prevailed. The pietistic, the fervent, and the devout were not so
conspicuous as the morose, the ghastly, and the horrible. The saints
and martyrs, the crucifixions and violent deaths, were eloquent of the
torture-chamber. It was more ecclesiasticism by blood and violence
than Christianity by peace and love. And Spain welcomed this. For of
all the children of the Church she was the most faithful to rule,
crushing out heresy with an iron hand, gaining strength from the
Catholic reaction, and upholding the Jesuits and the Inquisition.

METHODS OF PAINTING: Spanish art worthy of mention did not appear
until the fifteenth century. At that time Spain was in close relations
with the Netherlands, and Flemish painting was somewhat followed. How
much the methods of the Van Eycks influenced Spain would be hard to
determine, especially as these Northern methods were mixed with
influences coming from Italy. Finally, the Italian example prevailed
by reason of Spanish students in Italy and Italian painters in Spain.
Florentine line, Venetian color, and Neapolitan light-and-shade ruled
almost everywhere, and it was not until the time of Velasquez--the
period just before the eighteenth-century decline--that distinctly
Spanish methods, founded on nature, really came forcibly to the front.

SPANISH SCHOOLS OF PAINTING: There is difficulty in classifying these
schools of painting because our present knowledge of them is limited.
Isolated somewhat from the rest of Europe, the Spanish painters have
never been critically studied as the Italians have been, and