IT would not be right to start in upon the great
Spanish painters without some sort of prologue. I
shall not attempt to speak of the earliest stages of
pictorial art, nor of the primitives. Lovers of such
things will find delicate miniatures on codices in
the Escorial, such as those of the Cantigas of Alfonso
el Sabio; they betray, I am told -- and as one would
expect to find -- the influence of French art. Old
frescoes are scattered about in churches here and
there, in which connoisseurs detect Byzantine,
French, or Tuscan influences; and there are many
paintings of the fifteenth century, for instance, such
as the altar screens by cuatrocentistas catalanes, well
worth a leisurely study. But no real notability ap-
pears in the story of Spanish painting until the
famous journey of Jan Van Eyck, who came in the
train of the Burgundian ambassador ( 1428-29) for
the express purpose of painting a Portuguese prin-
cess, -- "peindre bien au vif la figure de madite dame
l'Infante," -- in order to enable his master, the Duke
of Burgundy, to decide whether he should like to
marry her. Van Eyck painted the princess, who
was charming, and probably traveled through Spain
from Santiago of Compostela to Granada. What
painters he saw and what his influence may have

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