dant to the one last given just outside the choir of
Avila Cathedral, offers a contrast to its predecessor. We no longer meet
with a superposition of perforated plates, but the operations of beating
and chasing, and, indeed, cutting the metal with chisels, files and
hammers; working in fact as the Italians term it "a massiccio." The
basis of the design is no longer Gothic, but strictly of the regular
Spanish Plateresque Renaissance with balustrade columns, figures in
niches, and Arabesques imitated from the Italians. From all these
details, we may fairly be justified in ascribing this work to about the
middle of the sixteenth century.

The method of working this pulpit is no longer that of the simple smith,
but really corresponds much more closely with that of the armourer which
reached its zenith about this period. There can be no doubt that the
Spaniards gained much of their well-known skill in the manipulation of
iron and steel from the Moors, who had themselves obtained knowledge
from Damascus, and perhaps even improved upon the knowledge they had
derived from that source. From the times of the Carthaginians and
Romans, the Celt-Iberian mines had been known as amongst the richest
existing sources, from which iron could be procured. Many fragments of
finely wrought iron work, of the middle ages, still exist in Spain; but
for the most part in very fragmentary condition.[14] From the end of the
fifteenth century, however, in the Rejas, great seals and minor screens,
(such as that seen at the back of the pulpit in my sketch) of the
churches and cathedrals, and especially in the arms and armour of
Moorish and Christian Caballeros, (as attested by many splendid
specimens in the Real Armeria of Madrid), perfect examples are to be met
with of the skill of Spanish artificers in dealing with all the
metallurgical processes by which iron and steel can be made to assume
forms of grace and beauty. Charles V., Philip II., and Don Juan of
Austria, were boundless in their extravagance in the encouragement of
the best armourers, not of Toledo and Valladolid only, but of Milan and
Augsburg as well. There can be no doubt that the models of beauty bought
by these Sovereigns from artists in iron and steel, such as the Negroli
and Piccinini, tended to develope that perfection of workmanship, which
was attained in Spain in the reign of Philip III. The pains-taking
editors of the Catalogue of the Madrid Armoury cite Pamplona as at the
head