It is now necessary to say something about what is to an architect the chief glory of this noble church--its grand western entrance, fitly called the Portico de la Gloria. On the whole, with no small experience to warrant my speaking, and yet with a due sense of the rashness of too general an approval, I cannot avoid pronouncing this effort of Master Matthew’s at Santiago to be one of the greatest glories of Christian art.[162] Its scale is not very grand, but in every other respect it is quite admirable, and there is a freshness and originality about the whole of the detail which cannot be praised too much. If we consider the facts with which we are acquainted, we may understand how it is that it has these great merits. Let us assume that Master Matthew was, as he no doubt was, extremely skilled when the king sent him to Santiago with his special warrant and recommendation. From that time until the happy day came, after twenty years of anxious labour, when he was able to write his inscription on the lintel of the door, it is probable that this same man wrought on slowly but systematically on this great work. During all this time he had but a very moderate opportunity of studying similar works in his own neighbourhood, or of receiving incitement by the competition of others of his craft; and I think the whole work bears about it evidence that this was its history. There is up to a certain point a conformity to common custom and precedent, and yet at the same time a constant freshness and originality about it which seems to me to show that its sculptor was not in the habit of seeing other similar works during its progress. The figures are almost all placed in attitudes evidently selected with a view to giving them life and piquancy. But these attitudes are singularly unconventional; and though they are by no means always successful to an eye educated in the nineteenth century, they have all of them graces and merits which are almost entirely unseen in the productions of nineteenth century sculptors; whilst, again, in strong contrast to what is now almost the invariable rule, there is no doubt that here we have the absolute handiwork of the sculptor, and not a design only, the execution of which has been relegated to a band of unknown and unrewarded assistants! The detail of some of the smaller portions, as _e.g._ of the sculptured shafts, is exquisitely refined and delicate, beautifully executed, and with a singular appreciation, in some respects, of the good points of classic sculpture.