The gold and silver work of Christian Spain attained, throughout the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, a high degree of excellence (Plates xv., xvi., etc.). The best of it was made at Seville, Barcelona, Toledo, and Valladolid. Objects of great artistic worth were also produced at Burgos, Palencia, León, Cuenca, Cordova, and Salamanca. I have already mentioned some of the principal _orfebreros_ of Barcelona. Juan Ruiz of Cordova, whom Juan de Arfe applauds as "the first silversmith who taught the way to do good work in Andalusia," was also, in this region, the first to turn the precious metals on the lathe. A famous silversmith of Seville was Diego de Vozmediano, whom we find living there in 1525. Toledo, too, could boast, among an army of distinguished gold and silver smiths (Riaño gives the names of no fewer than seventy-seven), Cristóbal de Ordas, Juan Rodríguez de Babria, and Pedro Hernandez, _plateros_, respectively, to Charles the Fifth, to Philip the Second, and to the queen-dowager of Portugal; and also the silversmith and engraver upon metals, Pedro Angel, whose praise is sung by Lope de Vega in the prologue to his _auto_ called _The Voyage of the Soul_:-- "_Y es hoy Pedro Angel un divino artífice con el buril en oro, plata, ó cobre._" By far the greater part of all Toledo's gold and silver work was made for service in her mighty temple. Such were the statue of Saint Helen, presented by Philip the Second; the crown of the Virgen del Sagrario, wrought by Hernando de Carrión and Alejo de Montoya; the bracelets or _ajorcas_ made for the image of the same Madonna by Julián Honrado; and the exquisite chests carved in 1569 and 1598 by Francisco Merino from designs by the two Vergaras, father and son, as reliquaries for the bones of San Eugenio and Santa Leocadia, patrons of this ancient capital.[47] A magnificent silver lamp was also, in 1565, offered by the chapter of the cathedral to the church of Saint Denis in France, in gratitude for the surrender of the bones of San Eugenio to the city of his birth. These and other objects of Toledan gold and silver work are stated to be "worthy of comparison with the very best of what was then produced in Germany, Italy, and France."[48] [47] A full description of these chests will be found in Cean Bermudez, vol. iii. pp. 135-137. [48] Rada y Delgado, in his reply to the Count of Cedillo's address in the Royal Academy of History. For particulars of the silver lamp, which was made by Marcos and Gonzalo Hernandez, Toledanos, and by Diego Dávila, see Zarco del Valle, _Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de las Bellas Artes en España_, vol. lv. p. 580.