_ There were seen two
emigrations of the young men of Spain, eastward and westward. The latter
went for gold and material conquest into the American wilds; and the
former, led by the sacred love of art, to that land of beauty and
wonder, then, now, and always the spiritual shrine of all
peoples,--Italy.
A brilliant young army went out from Spain on this new crusade of the
beautiful. From the plains of Castile and the hills of Navarre went,
among others, Berruguete, Becerra, and the marvellous deaf-mute
Navarrete. The luxurious city of Valentia sent Juan de Juanes and
Ribalta. Luis de Vargas went out from Seville, and from Cordova the
scholar, artist, and thinker, Paul of Cespedes. The schools of Rome and
Venice and Florence were thronged with eager pilgrims, speaking an alien
Latin and filled with a childlike wonder and appreciation.
In that stirring age the emigration was not all in one direction. Many
distinguished foreigners came down to Spain, to profit by the new love
of art in the Peninsula. It was Philip of Burgundy who carved, with
Berruguete, those miracles of skill and patience we admire to-day in the
choir of Toledo. Peter of Champagne painted at Seville the grand
altar-piece that so comforted the eyes and the soul of Murillo. The wild
Greek bedouin, George Theotocopouli, built the Mozarabic chapel and
filled the walls of convents with his weird ghost-faces. Moor, or Moro,
came from the Low Countries, and the Carducci brothers from Italy, to
seek their fortunes in Madrid.
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