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 what is at present known about the schools must be accepted subject to critical revision hereafter. [Illustration: FIG. 70.--MURILLO. ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA. BERLIN.] The earliest school seems to have been made up from a gathering of artists at Toledo, who limned, carved, and gilded in the cathedral; but this school was not of long duration. It was merged into the Castilian school, which, after the building of Madrid, made its home in that capital and drew its forces from the towns of Toledo, Valladolid, and Badajoz. The Andalusian school, which rose about the middle of the sixteenth century, was made up from the local schools of Seville, Cordova, and Granada. The Valencian school, to the southeast, rose about the same time, and was finally merged into the Andalusian. The Aragonese school, to the east, was small and of no great consequence, though existing in a feeble way to the end of the seventeenth century. The painters of these schools are not very strongly marked apart by methods or school traditions, and perhaps the divisions would better be looked upon as more geographical than otherwise. None of the schools really began before the sixteenth century, though there are names of artists and some extant pictures before that date, and with the seventeenth century all art in Spain seems to have centred about Madrid. Spanish painting started into life concurrently with the rise to prominence of Spain as a political kingdom. What, if any, direct effect the maritime discoveries, the conquests of Granada and Naples, the growth of literature, and the decline of Italy, may have had upon Spanish painting can only be conjectured; but certainly the sudden advance of the nation politically and socially was paralleled by the advance of its art.