It is, of course, likely that nothing is proved as to the authorship of certain paintings by the presence or absence of the exotic plants or other details ascribed to one or other of the brothers. Supposing the assumed visit of Hubert to Southern Europe to be a fact, Jan may have made use of his brother's studies to embellish his landscapes; or Hubert may have utilized Jan's studies. But either supposition is extremely unlikely. We have certain proof that Jan did several times visit the South, while Hubert's sojourn in these parts is pure surmise; and not only is it likely that, rather than make use of second-hand material, Hubert left portions of the pictures to be painted by Jan, but the examination of the various pictures reveals the same hand in the painting of the {35} recurring details. We must, then, take the facts and the most likely deductions in preference to deductions drawn from data which are merely conjectural. Documentary evidence proves that Jan, immediately after his reception by the King of Portugal on January 12, 1429, began the work of painting the portrait of the Infanta, which, by the way, was executed in tempera, and not in oil. This painting is, unfortunately, lost, and though there are several portraits of Isabella now extant, of which one at least may be a copy of Jan's picture, there is nothing in any of them that can be traced to this master. He took a month over its completion, and while the Court and Embassy were awaiting the decision of Philip, to whom the picture had been sent, Jan and his colleagues had time to visit several places of interest and people of distinction. They travelled to the north to see the shrine of St. Iago of Compostella; then to the south, where they were received in turn by the Duke of Arjona and the King of Castile; and then to Granada, in the extreme south, where they visited the King of that city. It is stated that they also visited many other places; and, as from Granada they returned to Lisbon, {36} they must have passed through the country lying between Cordova and Seville. Now, through the whole of the south-eastern portion of the peninsula the palmetto, or dwarf-palm, flourishes abundantly, and Jan could not fail during his tour to become well acquainted with it. In a letter which Mr. Marks quotes in his paper read at the Royal Society of Literature, June 24, 1903, Mr. Luffmann, Director of the School of Horticulture in Melbourne, says that the triangle formed by Seville, Cordova, and Osuna, is "a piece of country which is literally overrun by the plant," and that the root of the palmetto is commonly used in those parts as fuel. In Italy it is but of rare occurrence, though it grows in some of the islands of the Mediterranean; whilst in the parts of Spain and Portugal visited by Jan it is almost impossible for the visitor to avoid seeing it.