hts of five steps and covered by a richly carved, marble
canopy, supported by slender Corinthian columns of red jasper and
alabaster. All the stalls are of walnut, fifty in the lower row, seventy
in the upper, exclusive of the archbishop's seat. The right side of the
altar, that is, the right side of the celebrant looking from the altar,
is called the side of the Gospel,--the left, the side of the Epistle.
The great carvings, differing in the upper and lower stalls in period
and execution, are the work of three artists. The carvings of the lower
row were executed by Rodriguez in 1495, those of the upper, on the
Gospel side, by Alonso Berruguete, and those on the side of the Epistle,
by Philip Vigarny (also called Borgona), both of the latter about fifty
years later (in 1543).

The reading desk of the upper stalls forms the back of the lower and
affords the field for their sculptural decoration. The subjects are the
Conquest of Granada and the Campaigns of Ferdinand and Isabella. We are
shown in the childish and picturesque manner in which the age tells its
story, the various incidents of the war, all its situations and groups,
its curious costumes, arms, shields, and bucklers, and even the names of
the fortresses inscribed on their masonry. We can recognize the Catholic
monarchs and the great prelate entering the fallen city amid the
grief-stricken infidels.

The spirit of the work is distinctly that of the period which has gone
before, without any intimations of that to come. It has the character of
the German Gothic, recalling Lucas of Holland and his school. If it has
a grace and beauty of its own, there is also a childish grotesqueness
without any of the self-assured mastery, so soon to spread its Italian
light. The imagination and composition are there, but not the
execution,--the mind, but not the hand.

The carvings of the upper stalls were executed by their masters in
generous rivalry and in a spirit that shows a decided classic influence.

Many curious accounts of the time describe the excitement which
prevailed during their execution and the various favor they found in the
eyes of different critics. Looking at them, one's thoughts revert to
that glorious dawn in which Cellini and Ghiberti and Donatello labored.
The inscription says of the two artists, "Signatum marmorea tum ligna
caelavere hinc Philippus Burgundio, ex adverso Berruguetus Hispanus:
certaverunt tum artificum ingenia; certabunt semper spectato