one thought of attending to the position of a statue’s _feet_. In the façade in question all the feet are arranged with the most rigorous symmetry. No human being can remain with comfort in any one position for more than a given time; for the sake of ease our posture is continually changing. Mateo must have studied every position possible to the human frame. But his genius shows itself still more distinctly in the heads of his statues,--each is a portrait taken from life, the features are all in harmony. As you contemplate them you feel that you can almost read the character of the person represented. With what diligence must this artist have sought out his models; how peasants and tradesmen and nobles must have posed for him in turn. In the _Pórtico de Gloria_ we see the very people who walked about the streets of Santiago while the work was being done. Though the sculpture of the Middle Ages is in many respects inferior to that of the best period of ancient Greece (in actual form it is generally less perfect), it has in it a new element, it portrays, as Greek statuary never attempted to do, the intellectual element in the human being.[159] The artists of the Middle Ages did not consider only of the exterior; they tried to represent the thinking mind. Every one of Mateo’s statues has “a mind of its own.” As Lopez Ferreiro has put it, the statuary of the Greeks was the sister of poetry, that of the Middle Ages was the sister of psychology and philosophy. The whole masterpiece of Mateo may be described as an attempt at the interpretation of one great thought, or rather of a series of thoughts “toute une ordre d’idées,” which “is engaging the attention of all humanity.” Lopez Ferreiro notes how daringly Mateo made his attempt to push his art into the road along which two centuries later it was carried by Italy’s most celebrated artists.