Another carving in the same style, with the same faults and the same qualities, is the Virgin of the Swords in the monastery Capilla de Nuestra Señora de las Agustinas, also at Valladolid. It must be remembered that these works can be appreciated only by the student who understands Spanish art. Certainly Juni is more Spanish than Italian. Juan de Juni opened the way for his successor Gregorio Hernandez, the sculptor who may be said to have inherited, and afterwards personally expressed, all that his predecessors had accomplished. For the great difference between Juni, Becerra, and even Berruguete and the great master of Galicia is that they, in greater or less degree, were content with imitation, while he, warned possibly by their extravagances, studied nature with patient care, and said what he had to say for himself, and in this way he purged the plastic art of scholastic mannerisms. This is why Gregorio Hernandez occupies the most important position in the history of Northern Spanish sculpture. Gregorio Hernandez did not study in Italy, indeed it has been said that he never went from Valladolid. But this is a mistake. He studied and worked in that city, but we know that he was married in Madrid, and that in 1604 he was in Vittoria, executing the altar-screen for the Church of San Miguel. No actual mention is made of Hernandez’ residence in Valladolid before the year 1605, when in certain contracts we find that he acted as assistant sculptor to the Italian artist Millan Vilmercati. M. Marcel Dieulafoy places the date of his first coming to Valladolid about 1601, the year in which a number of famous artists were summoned to the royal city by Philip II. and the Duke of Lerma. Of the life of Hernandez we know few details. He was born in Galicia in 1570, a date furnished by the inscription on his portrait, now in the Museum of Valladolid. He died in 1636 at the age of sixty-six, as is shown by the register in the archives of the Church of San Ildefonso. It would seem that he never left Spain. His first known work undertaken as a sculptor was the altar-screen of San Miguel at Vittoria, but he must have executed earlier carvings, as is proved by the payments made for this work--4208 reals for the sculpture, and over 604 reals for the statues in relief--and also by the importance of the position he occupied. Hernandez directed the whole work, choosing as his assistants the master-carpenter Cristobal Velazquez, and the painters Francesco Martinez and Pedro de Salazar.