It is fitting to say a few words about his art. Montañés occupies the same position in the Southern school that Gregorio Hernandez held in the North. Like that master, he drew his inspiration directly from Nature. He had the same respect for truth, the same simplicity, and, stronger even than these qualities, the same Spanish religious sentiment and noble idealism. It is true that he used and made his own the methods of the Italian Renaissance, which were dominating the Sevillian artists, and which he would seem to have imbibed from a study of the classical models in the Casa de Pilatos of the Duke of Alcala; but with this outside influence he retained a powerful personality. Thus his work is entirely removed from the Italian style, as it expressed itself in the Peninsula with its fantastic mingling of Christianity and paganism. In nobility of form and religious sentiment the statues of Montañés surpass all other works of their class. Once again, and more emphatically than the carvings of any other artist, unless indeed we except Gregorio Hernandez, they give an answer to those who would discredit the beauty of polychrome statuary. From the year 1607 onwards, up to his death in 1649, Montañés carried out numerous orders for the churches, convents, and religious brotherhoods of Seville; the greater number of these works still remain in the city. But of some it must be said that, though doubtless executed in the master’s studio and bearing his name, they were the work of his pupils. Fortunately it is not difficult to distinguish these spurious pieces which have been fathered upon Montañés. We have in the archives of the churches an exact record, usually with dates, of most of his works. Thus we are able to follow chronologically the evolution of his talent. The earliest undertakings of Montañés after the execution of the infant Jesus for the Santísimo Brotherhood were two portrait-statues of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier (Plates 140 and 141) which were commissioned in the year 1610 on the occasion of the beatification of the former saint, and which are now in the University Chapel. Of these idealised portraits Professor Justi writes that they are “marked by noble severity of character and pathos of expression.”