Tolsa and Tres Guerras have many points of likeness; both, professing another art,--the one statuary, the other painting--dedicated themselves later to construction; both cultivated the same style, that of the Renaissance, and succeeded in imparting majesty to their buildings. Tolsa is more severe, elegant, and grand; Tres Guerras better knows how to express grace and is more audacious. This one sometimes lacks good taste, the other--rather frequently becomes heavy. Withal, both are notable architects; and, if one wins constant applause, the other gains an enduring fame. Although it might be thought that Tres Guerras felt Tolsa’s influence, nothing is further from the truth, since Tres Guerras had already constructed the Carmen and the Laja bridge, before Tolsa had reared his edifices. With these two artists, the cycle of vice-royal architecture ended. Beginning rude and coarse it developed brilliant and overloaded, and ended simple and correct, ever showing itself strong and robust as the virile, conquering, race that produced it. WOOD CARVING IN PUEBLA. When these glaring offenses against art were not only condoned, but authorized by religion, it will be appreciated how great credit is due to a group of modest and industrious artists, who, in the City of Puebla, about the second half of the past, and the beginning of the present, century, without good masters nor great models for imitation, cultivated the sculpture of images, forming their own canons. The Coras, with all their defects, play the rôle of restorers to respect of an art, which could not fall to a more lamentable extremity. There were three principal--though other artists of lesser value figure in turn--José Villegas de Cora, the master of all; Zacarias Cora, and José Villegas, who also took the surname Cora, as an honorific title. José Villegas de Cora, called in his time the _Maestro Grande_, from having been the founder of the school, was the first to insist upon the observation of the natural, from which indeed he himself took but a general idea, leaving the arrangement of the details of the projected work to fancy; from this proceeds the arbitrary character, to be observed in the minutiæ of almost all of his images. At the same time he sought naturalness in the arrangement of draperies; that for which he was most esteemed, was the grace and beauty of the faces, particularly those of his Virgins; which, like most of his other works, were made to be clothed. Zacarias Cora made show of some knowledge of anatomy, accentuating the muscles and veins, which did not prevent his figures from frequently lacking proper proportions and appearing to have been supplied with them from sentiment rather than accuracy. In expression, he competed with his master. His best work was the _San Cristóbal_ with the infant Jesus, which is in the temple of that name in Puebla.