The other countries of Europe, however, were not without distinguished representatives of the wondrous art spirit of the time. In Germany, there were Albrecht Dürer and the Holbeins, in the Lowlands the Van Eycks' greatest work came just before the opening of the century and inspired Memling, Van der Weyden, Quentin Matsys and others. In Spain, such men as Zurbaran and Ribalta were worthy forerunners of the great geniuses Velasquez and Murillo, who represent the aftermath of the glorious harvest of the workers in the field of art during this Renaissance period. They were all willing to confess their obligations to the great painters of the preceding age and their work is really a continuation of that Renaissance spirit. The accomplishment of the painters of Columbus' period proved as copious in stimulus for subsequent painters as the great navigators' discovery of America proved the stimulus to explorers, discoverers and empire makers during the subsequent century. A great wind of the spirit was blowing abroad and men were deeply affected by it, and accomplished results almost undreamt of before, and even when the wind of the spirit was dying down it still moved men to achievements that had only been surpassed during the immediately preceding period and that were to be looked up to with admiration and {xxx} envy and given that sincerest of praise, imitation, during all the succeeding centuries. The artists of Columbus Century, this great Renaissance period, were never merely artists. Some of them, like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, though among the greatest painters in the world, preferred to think of themselves as something else than painters. Leonardo has painted the greatest of portraits, but was a great engineer, an architect, an inventor, a scientist, and anything else that he cared to turn his hand to. Michelangelo was undoubtedly a great painter, yet this was the least of his accomplishments, for he was greater as an architect, a sculptor, and perhaps even as a poet, than he was as a painter. Raphael, besides being a painter, was an architect and above all an archaeologist. It was a sad loss to classic archaeology that he did not live to accomplish his plan of making a model of old Rome. He was a great student of the technics of his art and if he had not died at the early age of thirty-seven would surely have accomplished much besides painting. Many of the painters and sculptors of the time had been goldsmiths or workers in metal, and nearly all of them were handicraftsmen, handy with their hands and capable of doing things. Practically all of them were architects and many of them proved their powers in this regard. A man of the Renaissance always thought that he could do anything well, and specialism was the last thing in the world thought of. Their confidence in their own powers gave them a wonderful breadth of ability to accomplish.