Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/496

466 Painting Italy and Spain. When Charles V. united the two penin- sulas under the same government, and founded the vast empire which extended from Naples to Antwerp, Italy- had just attained the zenith of her glory and splendour. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Correggio had produced their incomparable masterpieces. On the other hand, the capture of Granada, the discovery of America, and the enterprises of Charles V. had just aroused in Spain that intellectual movement which follows great commotions, and impels a nation into a career of conquests of every kind. At the first news of the treasures to be found in Italy — in the churches, in the studios of the artists, and in the palaces of the nobles — all the Spaniards interested in art, either as their profession or from love of it for its own sake, flocked to the country of so many marvels, richer in their eyes than Peru or Mexico, where numbers of adventures Were then hastening, eager to acquire more material riches. " Only choosing the most illustrious, and those merely who distinguished themselves in painting, we find among those who left Castile for Italy, Alonso Berruguete, Gaspar Becerra, Navarrete (el Mudo) ; from Valencia, Juan de Joanes and Francisco de Bibalta; from Seville, Luis de Vargas; from Cordova, the learned Pablo de Cespedes. All these eminent men brought back to their own country the taste for art and the knowledge which they had studied under Italian masters. At the same time, foreign artists, attracted to Spain by the bounty of its kings, prelates, and nobles, came to complete, the work begun by the Spaniards who had studied abroad. " Four principal schools were formed in Spain, not suc- cessively, as those in Italy, but almost simultaneously.