Painting needed reinforcement; it went to school with the Italians to master principles of drawing, foreshortening, perspective, and composition, as well as the art of fuller and more refined expression. It had to serve an apprenticeship of imitation before it could develope its own individually native strength in the seventeenth century. But it was otherwise with architecture. The fundamentals of the art were thoroughly understood by the Spaniards through Gothic tradition and, when they came under the spell of the Italian, it was in the way only of modifying the design, especially the character of the decorative elements, in which they were assisted by their sculptors. In place of the flamboyant decoration of the late Gothic there grew up a new style of more refined ornament. And it was also a new style, both in its character and in the use made of it; a style created by Spanish architects and sculptors and confined to Spanish art, and known as _estilo plateresco_ or silversmith’s style. =Plateresque Style.=--The Spaniards had inherited from the Moors a consummate skill in metal-craftsmanship; and now the inflow of silver from the New World gave a stimulus to the craft of the silversmith. It reached extraordinary development in the making of church plate, particularly in the _custodias_ or tabernacles, designed to hold the “Host,” which reached the magnitude of lofty structures, simulating towers and decorated with a wealth of intricate ornament of the most exuberant and yet delicate fancy. Foremost among these artists in silver was the family of Arphe, consisting of Enrique de Arphe, his son Antonio, and grandson Juan. Their work, which extended throughout the sixteenth century, began by being Gothic in character, but gradually reflected the Italian influence. It was so remarkable in its exuberant creativeness and so widely spread throughout the country--in =Toledo=, =Cordova=, =Santiago=, =Seville=, =Valladolid=--that its enormous effect upon architectural decoration is quite comprehensible. The plateresque style is a combination of several elements: the freedom of the Gothic, the delicate profusion of Moorish ornament, and the ordered refinement of Raphael’s arabesques, mingled into a new and living medium of decorative expression by the vitality and fecundity of the Spanish fancy. And a corresponding originality was displayed in the manner of using it. It was massed chiefly around the doors and windows. Its earliest appearance is in the decorated portals, added to the Gothic cathedrals or to the newly erected secular buildings, of which a famous example is the doorway of the west façade of the =University of Salamanca=, in the province of Castile.