“Marvellous was the invention made by the old painters for the ornamentation of figures in relief and the architecture of altar-screens by gilding in burnished gold and damasking them. The colours must be the same, and chosen with the same care as those designed for illumination. They must be ground and prepared in water with the same limpidity, but in lieu of gum paste one should use the yolks of fresh eggs diluted in equal volume of water, fresh and clear, beaten to a froth. This paste must be mixed with the colours for damasking the burnished gold, taking care to size with white lead all the parts to be painted, be it either of grotesque figures or of vestments, of which the gold should serve as a background for divers colours. It is always well to know that blue does not require so strong a paste as carmine, vermilion, ochre, and other colours of little body, and that if the paste be more than a day old it is necessary to add with the egg a few drops of vinegar to prevent spoiling.” These significant passages may well end this chapter. It must be accepted that polychrome was an art highly esteemed, that colouring of statuary, and especially of the great altar-screens, was carried out with extreme care, and was regarded as work not beneath the dignity of the greatest artists. In Spain the sculptor and the painter were as one. CHAPTER VI THE RENAISSANCE, AND THE INFLUENCE OF MICHAEL ANGELO ON THE SPANISH SCULPTORS The Northern influences of Flanders and Germany, though far-reaching in their effects on Spanish sculpture, were not long-lived, and in the last decade of the fifteenth century they gave way to a new influence from Italy. Always responsive to newly imported art methods, her architecture, sculpture, and painting were invaded by the forms of the Italian Renaissance, and thanks to the flourishing condition of architecture and sculpture, and to a taste refined by the busy practice of these arts, the new influence found not only a willing, but an intelligent following. The Renaissance influences were not harmful to architecture and sculpture as they were to the sister art of painting. For one reason, both architecture and sculpture were much more advanced at this period than was painting. Then the new elements of taste made their way slowly, and the old influences remained active side by side with the new.