It is a stone bust of a woman of life size. The lips and part of the hair still retain traces of red colour. The expressive face, delicate and yet strong, has suffered little. She wears enormous ear pendants of Oriental style, and two great wheels frame her head. Around her neck hangs a Greco-Phœnician necklace, such as women wore from the time of the Peloponnesian War. It is this that fixes the date of the statue. It would seem to be the work of a native artist who was under the combined influences of Greece and Phœnicia. Only a Spanish artist could have thus immortalised the character of Spanish womanhood. Indeed it is this special Spanish quality which is the most interesting feature of this remarkable work. Mr. Havelock Ellis has pointed out the resemblance which the Lady of Elche bears to Velazquez’ “Woman with the Fan.” And this is no fanciful idea. There is a strange likeness in all Spanish art--a likeness which is at once its strength and also its weakness, and which may be traced to the strong and persistent character of this race that has altered so little in the passing of the centuries. It is this marked individuality that speaks even more strongly in Spanish sculpture than in Spanish painting. The Lady of Elche stands for all that is Spain. Apart from the Lady of Elche no important single example of Iberian art remains to us. Statues have been found, such as the _Cirro de los Santos_ and the _Llano de la Consolacion_, which certainly were painted. M. Marcel Dieulafoy believes that this was also the case with the statue of a bull facing a bearded man, in the Museum of Valencia; that of the griffin and the anthropoid sarcophagus at Cadiz; and the interesting heads of bulls in bronze, found at Costig, Majorca, which bear some resemblance to the Susian bulls and Grecian bronzes, and, like them, have some parts gilded. Then it will not do to neglect the strange stone figures of bulls scattered in different places in Spain and Portugal, one fine example being in the square of Avila. Little is known as to the origin and purpose of these remarkable examples of Iberian art, but some still bear traces of vermilion colouring. The existence of these works, as well as many other notable fragments in different churches in Spain, prove at least that the native Iberian carver had attained a skill certainly remarkable at this early date. But then followed, as is so often the case, a long night, of which nothing of special interest is known. The Roman sculptures, which follow chronologically those of the Iberian epoch, are not remarkable in any way. They do not reveal any special character.