" Enrique de Egas had, at Ferdinand's
order, commenced building two years after Isabella's death. The grandson
enlarged it later, finding it "too small for so much glory."

The high altar with its retablo and the royal sarcophagi are separated
from the rest of the chapel by the most stupendous and magnificent iron
screen or reja ever executed. Spaniards have here surpassed all their
earlier productions in this their master craft. Not even the screens of
the great choir and altar of Seville or Toledo can compare with it. With
the possible exception of the curious Biblical scenes naively
represented by groups of figures near the apex, which still tell their
story in true Gothic style, it is a burst of Renaissance, or Plateresque
glory. It is not likely that the crafts, with all their mechanical
skill, will ever again produce a work of such artistic perfection. It
represents the labor of an army of skilled artisans,--all the sensitive
feeling in the finger-tips of the Italian goldsmith, the most cunning
art of the German armorer and a combination of restraint and boldness in
the Spanish smith and forger. The difficulty naturally offered by the
material has also restrained the artisan's hand and imagination from
running riot in vulgar elaboration. The design, made by Maestro
Bartolome of Jaen in 1523, is as excellent as the technique is
astonishing. It may be said that in grandeur it is only surpassed by the
fame of the Queen whose remains lie below. The material is principally
wrought iron, though some of the ornaments are of embossed silver plate
and portions of it gilded as well as colored. Bartolome's design
consists in general of three superimposed and highly decorated rows of
twisted iron bars with molded caps and bases. Each one must have been a
most massive forging, hammered out of the solid iron while it was red
hot. The vertically aspiring lines of the bars are broken by horizontal
rows of foliage, cherubs' heads and ornamentation, as well as two broad
bands of cornices with exquisitely decorated friezes. Larger pilasters
and columns form its panels, the central ones of which constitute the
doorway and enclose the elaborate arms of Ferdinand and Isabella and
those of their inherited and conquered kingdoms. The screen is crested
by a rich border of pictorial scenes, of flambeaux and foliated
Renaissance scrollwork, above which in the centre is throned the
crucified Saviour adored by the Virgin and Saint John. The cr