As far back as the prehistoric Iberian period we find traces of a vigorous school of sculpture in Spain, which, though based on Greek and Asiatic sources, yet attained a striking individuality of its own. Professor Pierre Paris of Bordeaux says of these prehistoric carvings that “the figures are simple and virile, while the women are distinguished by dignity of attitude and nobility of face, expressive of deep religious gravity.” The finest example--a supreme type of primitive Iberian sculpture, very fascinating in its curious originality--is the Lady of Elche, the bust in the Louvre, which Pierre Paris, in agreement with Reinach, dates about 440 B.C. Of this wonderful work Pierre Paris writes: “In her enigmatic face, ideal and yet real, in her living eyes, on her voluptuous lips, on her passive and severe forehead, are summed up all the nobility and austerity, the promises and the reticences, the charm and the mystery of woman.... She is above all Spanish, not only by the mitre and the great wheels that frame her delicate face, but by the disturbing strangeness of her beauty. She is indeed more than Spanish: she is Spain itself, Iberia arising still radiant with youth from the tomb in which she has been buried for more than twenty centuries.”[A] This is true. Sculpture has always been the most genuinely Spanish of the arts. The Visigoths were attracted to sculpture; and though many of the credited examples they were supposed to have left cannot be accepted, there are a few Visigothic carvings, which bear witness to this predominant expression of character. Belonging to a later date we find a surprising wealth of carving in wood and stone scattered throughout Spain in the cathedrals, churches, cloisters, and palaces. There is no town in Spain which does not possess some sculptured works. Spain has given to the world few great sculptors; none of her carvers stand on quite the high level of her most famous painters. Yet, if we except the great names of El Greco, Ribera, Velazquez, and Goya, her sculptors are at least equal in merit with her painters. Damian Forment, Berruguete, Gregorio Hernandez, Juan de Juni, Pedro Millan, Montañés, Alonso Cano, Roldan, Mena, as well as others, are worthy to take a high place in the temple of Spanish art. And a fact of even greater importance: they have impressed upon their work the national character in a far stronger degree than any of the contemporary painters. It is interesting to note that many of these sculptors were also painters; and, in all cases, their carvings are more distinctly Spanish than their paintings. Almost entirely sculpture escaped from the slough of neo-Italian imitation, which did so much to ruin painting in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Spanish sculpture is finely realistic and imaginative. Sometimes fantastic to extravagance in its naturalness, it is always vigorous, romantic, and religious in the highest degree.