Spain occupies a peculiar place with respect to its Renaissance jewellery. In the sixteenth century the Spanish Peninsula was perhaps the richest part of the civilised world. Even at a time when universal luxury in personal ornaments reigned, Spain made itself an object of note by its extraordinary display in this direction. The union under the same dominion of three of the most powerful countries of Europe coincident with the newly developed wealth of America resulted in a desire among all classes for a more luxurious style of living and for more sumptuous ornaments. The natural instinct of wealthy and cultured individuals to surround themselves with the choicest productions of the fine arts led to the importation of the best of such objects from other countries and of the first foreign craftsmen of the day. Juan de Arphe, "the Spanish Cellini," himself of German extraction, devoted much attention to the naturalisation of Renaissance forms. Other jewellers also remained in so large a measure dependent on foreign influence, at first of Italian types, and then of the designs of French, German, and Flemish engravers of ornament, that it is often hard to arrive at a decision as to the precise provenance of their productions. But just as other works of art, the product of different countries, are stamped with certain indefinable characteristics, which in general circumstances may at once be detected, so jewels of Spanish origin betray the influence of national temperament in their composition and design. The series of drawings by Barcelona jewellers published by Davillier in his _Recherches sur l'Orfèvrerie en Espagne_, bear sufficient evidence of this native spirit. Nevertheless, the majority of the surviving examples of the Renaissance jewellery of Spain approach at times very near to those of Germany. And there can be little doubt that the Nuremberg and Augsburg jewels which, as has been shown, were in vogue not only all over Germany, but in France and England and the Low Countries, were imported and imitated, as Davillier says, by the goldsmiths of Spain. The most important Spanish jewels of the sixteenth century are in the form of enamelled pendants. Of these the Victoria and Albert Museum possesses a collection, excelled by that of no other public museum, which acquired at the sale in 1870 of the treasures of the sanctuary of the Virgen del Pilar at Saragossa. A species of pendant which in Spain above all places has always been popular was the reliquary. It assumed numerous shapes; and among the many kinds of adornment it received were small panels of painted glass commonly known as _verres églomisés_. This so-called _verre églomisé_, which had been handed down from antiquity and was used in the Middle Ages, was brought to high perfection at the Renaissance. Adopted from Italy, where it was also employed for jewellery, it met with considerable favour in Spain in the sixteenth century (Pl. XLIII, 4).