A third artist who worked at this period, and a carver of more personal talent, was Capitan Cepeda, a native of Cordova, who, like Torrigiano was in turn a soldier and artist. He served in Italy and afterwards came to Seville, being summoned there by the goldsmiths of the city for the special work of arousing a devotion for the Crucified Christ. With this object Cepeda modelled the Cristo de la Expiracion which now stands on the altar of the small chapel of the museum. It is a work of Spanish realism, finely executed, with every detail of sorrow expressed and accentuated by the violent attitude and gesture. Again we would emphasise the fact that such a work can only be estimated truly by remembering the Spanish religious spirit. Cepeda represents in Seville the style which Juan Juni made popular in the Northern schools. Like that artist, his interest rests in the individuality of his work, which is national and wholly Spanish, while his contemporaries, Jerónimo Hernandez and Gaspar Nicolas Delgado, followed the newer influences from Italy. The Sevillian school had not yet produced a master. But the time was now ripe. In the closing years of the century there came to Seville the man who raised polychrome sculpture to its highest rank, and who was the greatest carver of Spain. His name was Juan Martinez Montañés. Of the early life of this great artist we know almost nothing beyond the fact that he was the pupil of Pablo Rojas, a sculptor of Cordova. We first have definite information about him in the year 1582, when he with his wife came to the Monastery of Dulce Nombre de Jesus at Seville, where we learn they were granted free residence for life in recognition of an Image of the Virgin executed for the brotherhood. Two years later, in 1590, Montañés was at work for the Carmelite nuns. Nothing further of the artist’s life is known until the year 1607, when he completed a Jesus for the Santísimo Brotherhood of the cathedral. The record of this work proves that Montañés was then living in the Arquillo de Roelas with Catalina Salcedo y Sandobal. Thus he must have lost his first wife and again been married. He was at this time fifty years old. Such is the scant record of the first half of this great artist’s life. In truth he came late to the fruition of his genius, for it was after these fifty years of living, when the work of most men is already accomplished, that Montañés created the greatest of those works which are the glory of Spain.