The Choir is enriched by a magnificent screen, lecterns, and stalls. The screen, or _respaldo_, which at one time seems to have been continued right across the transept, encloses the Choir on three sides, and consists of an arcade carried on fifty-two columns of jasper and marble, and supporting and enclosing admirable statuary and sculpture. Above the capitals of the columns is a series of fifty-six medallions in high relief, dating from 1380, and representing scenes from the Old Testament. These reliefs are worthy of close study, and are beautiful examples of simple and faithful mediæval treatment. The series is supplemented by a medallion with a bust by Berruguete and the statues of Innocence and Sin, by Nicolas de Vergara--works on which Street outpours the vials of his wrath. Of the wonderful Choir Stalls of Toledo everyone has heard. They are unsurpassed triumphs of the carver’s art. The lower tier, including fifty seats, is the work of Maese Rodrigo, and dates from 1495. The stalls are of walnut wood, and the carving portrays the campaign against Granada by the Catholic Sovereigns. The carving being almost contemporary with the events illustrated has given these reliefs an historical as well as an artistic value. The names of the fortresses are here and there indicated by labels, and the designs are somewhat marred by the introduction of fanciful monsters. The whole breathes very much of the mediæval spirit, and we can, therefore, hardly complain of a certain stiffness and lack of variety. They form an admirable contrast to the finer, more finished work of the upper tier of stalls, executed fifty years later by Berruguete and Philip of Burgundy, surnamed Vigarni. Thirty-five seats, including the Primate’s, are the work of the Spaniard, the thirty-six opposite exhibiting the skill of the Burgundian. “They were wrought,” says O’Shea, “in rivalry of each other, and finished in 1543; and as Cardinal Tavera’s inscription runs: ‘Certaverunt turn artificum ingenia; certabunt semper spectatorum judicia.’” The stalls are placed in recesses of alabaster, and separated by fine red jasper columns, with capitals in white marble. Over the recesses is a series of alabaster figures in low relief of the prophets and patriarchs. The carvings on the stalls themselves depict episodes from both the New and Old Testaments. The work breathes the spirit of the Renaissance, interpreted by Berruguete and his colleague with a skill, it has been truly observed, worthy of Benvenuto Cellini himself. Berruguete was a pupil of Michelangelo. His work is more vigorous than that of Vigarni, who excels in elegance and softness of outline. Street’s denunciations of these triumphs of the carver’s art are a curious instance of the length to which an artistic bias may lead a clever writer and critic. The reliefs representing the visits of the Blessed Virgin to Purgatory and to St. Ildefonso are not by Philip of Burgundy, but by his brother Gregorio.