Influence of Spanish The discovery of America and the sudden vast treasures that poured into Spain from over seas, the long struggle with the Moors, of Christianity against Mohammedanism, the rise of the Catholic Church and the birth of the temporal power of the popes and the consequent wars necessary for the maintenance of the powers and con ditions thereby engendered, were forces that worked inexorably to the shaping of all Spanish art, which had its origin in the Church and received its inspiration and encouragement con stantly from the same source. Italy was the great mistress of Latin art and the teacher of Spain, when she came to lay by her Gothic traditions, but Spanish art traveled a road dis tinctly different from that of Italy. In Spain art was very largely influenced by the traditions and dogma of the Christian Church, which con tinued to shape it to its ends and control its execution. In Italy it was classical and it ran after strange gods which also shaped it to their ends. In Italy art was free, unrestrained, licen tious the more orthodox Christians contended. In Spain it was bound by the canons of Church law, by the restrictions of ecclesiastical councils and by an intense fanaticism and a devotion to the Christine doctrine and legendary lore unknown in other countries. Upon it rested the heavy hand of asceticism and the sombre shadow of the Inquisition, a peculiarly Spanish institution. Yet the artists of Italy exercised an all-powerful influence upon those of Spain, for more than two centuries of changes vary ing always within a certain defined and re stncted area of activity. The ascetic Spanish taste did not change its Gothic attitude, when under Italian influence it changed its fashion in painting. While the Italian gloried in the nude of Greek and Roman art, the asceticism of Spain covered up the parts of the human body, wrapping them about with draperies, too often much less artistic than the freer treatment of Italy. While the Italian artist boldly attempted to depict the human anatomy in all its nude or semi-nude and almost wholly Pagan attitudes, the Spanish artist was forced to resort to sug-4 gestion to convey lasting impressions of what his asceticism had forced him to hide from sight. Thus, while the Italian artist, by his free and unconventional use of the nude, ob tained brilliant sculptural effects, the Spanish artist, in his efforts to reach the same ends, while draping his figures, became insensibly a colorist. So Murillo, the greatest of all Spanish colorists, has always been Spain's most popular artist.
It was therefore natural that, of all the Italian schools, the Venetian suited Spanish taste best; and of all the Venetian artists, Titian appealed most to the Spanish attitude of mind toward art. The brilliant coloring of the Venetians, their indistinct drawing and their neglect of the antique appealed to the re ligious ideas of the Spanish artists. So Titian became the motive spirit in the renaissance movement in Spanish art. A powerful but secondary influence exercised by the Hol lander, Antoine More, who, as a portrait painter. was little inferior to Titian. Vandyck also contributed to the making of Spanish art tra ditions. But the atmosphere of Spanish life and the fervid religious spirit of the land twisted all the foreign traditions of art and of schools to their own way of thinking and of viewing life and of acknowledging its obliga tions, with the result that Spanish art grew to be a thing apart from its own Gothic tra ditions, from the classical style which it im ported from Italy and the rigid Venetian school to which it very strongly inclined. The sombre, ardent, fanatical Spanish mind worked over all these materials and from the working sprang a new art which was peculiarly Spain's. For
more than two centuries this strange semi-artis tic, semi-ascetic spirit brooded over Spain, pro ducing the magnificent creations of Vargas, Morales, Sanchez, Coello, Joannes, Becerra (the great teacher), Fernandez el Mudo (the °Titian of Spain)), Cotan, Zubarin, Pereda, Velizques (the incomparable portrait painter) and Mu rillo, the superb master of color. And they all had, through their art which found its way across the Atlantic, their influence upon the artists of the colonies in America. Yet we look in vain in treatises on art for any adequate presentation of the work of the American artists or of the vast output of excellent paint ing by the Spanish colonies in America, all of whom followed the traditions of the mother country, modifying them more or less according to their several environments and local influ ences. Yet for more than two centuries, the followers of the Spanish masters in America, enthusiastic students of their creations, tireless workers, covered the two continents from San Francisco to Buenos Aires, from Cuba to Chile. In every provincial capital industrious schools of art existed; and all followed the traditions of Spain. At the exhortation of the Church and the insatiable demands of the dealers who made a business of shipping pictures over seas to the colonies, the Spanish artists at home redoubled their efforts; and a constant stream of canvases poured forth from their hives of art industry. No church, convent, college or university in the vast domains of Spain beyond the sea was so poor as not to possess at least one treasure from the art centres of the mother land. When the ecclesiastic dignitaries of Spain wished to show honor to some institution of the colonies, they forwarded to it a painting or other work of some noted Spanish artist. The king, the em peror and the nobles showed their favors in the same manner. New Spain, the favorite namesake of the mother land, became thus a storehouse of Spanish art. These treasures were to the Mexican artists what the pictures of Italy and Holland were to the artists of Spain. They copied them, they imitated them and they built upon them a Mexican art which, while it followed the traditions of the Spanish school, was yet, in many respects, distinctly Mexican, as the character of the Mexican people and their environments are distinct from those of Spain.
For more than 200 years the Spanish ar tist attended to only one of the manifesta tions of nature, that is, man and his relation to the deity and to heavenly manifestations. Mountains, streams, oceans, the sun, the moon, the beauty of the night and the glory of the day meant nothing to him except when they helped him to depict his deity, his saints, his religious traditions, his dogmas and his mira cles. In all this the Mexican artist followed his masters, faithfully, conscientiously, e•. nestly. But the spirit with which he enema: his tasks was noticeably different from that of his teachers. The stern, harsh character of a Spaniard is depicted in the hard lines of on the best of his artists up to the time he lea to leave behind him the vivid memory of hs terrific religious wars against the MC107S. When the °heathens of the New World been conquered and placed beneath his ha and he had filled with churches, shrines 2tai colleges their vast domain; when be had hised from his shoulders the burden of strife a behalf of altar and hearth, then the Sputa artist began to cover up the harsh lines c: Gothic and early Venetian art traditions ar.: feelings, thus engendering an attitude of ac.: that made possible the wonderful analyta representations of Velazquez and the brilhar coloring and softening effects of Murillo.