The secular _Representaciones_ deal with simple incidents and show no real sense of dramatic composition; but with the other six they may be looked on as a connecting link between the old religious “Mysteries” and “Miracle Plays” of the early Middle Ages and the coming Spanish drama. Their author indeed stands out as “Father” of his art in Spain, for a learned authority of the reign of Philip IV. has placed it on record that “in 1492, companies began to represent publicly in Castile plays by Juan del Enzina.” If the literature of Spain during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries may be described by the general term “transitional,” marking its development from crudity of ideas and false technique towards a slow unfolding of its true genius, painting at the same date was still in its infancy; while architecture and the lesser arts of sculpture, metal-work, and pottery had already reached their period of greatest glory. Schools of painting existed, it is true, at Toledo and in Andalusia; but the three chief artists of the Court of Isabel came from Flanders; and most of the pictures of the time exhibit a strong Flemish influence, which can be recognized in their rich and elaborate colouring, clearly defined outlines, and the tall gaunt figures so dear to northern taste. Of Spanish painters, the names of Fernando Gallegos “the Galician,” of Juan Sanchez de Castro a disciple of the “Escuela Flamenca,” and of Antonio Rincon and his son Fernando, stand out with some prominence; but it is doubtful if several of the pictures formerly attributed to Antonio, including a Madonna with Ferdinand and Isabel kneeling in the foreground, are really his work. In architecture at this time the evidence of foreign influence is also strong. On the one hand are Gothic Churches like San Juan de Los Reyes at Toledo or amongst secular buildings, the massive castle of Medina del Campo; on the other, in contrast to these northern designs, Renaissance works with their classic-Italian stamp, such as the Hospital of Santa Cruz at Toledo or the College of the same name at Valladolid. Yet a third element is the Moresque, founded on Mahometan models, such as the horseshoe arch of the Puerta del Perdón of the old Mosque at Seville overlaid with the emblems of Christian worship. The characteristics of North, South, and East, are distinct; yet moulded, as during the previous centuries, by the race that borrowed them to express ideals peculiarly its own. “Let us build such a vast and splendid temple,” said the founders of Seville Cathedral in 1401, “that succeeding generations of men will say that we were mad.”