And there are other pictures of Fernandez in Seville: the great altar-piece in eight sections--one is a copy--that tells the story of Joseph, Mary, and the Child, in the old Church of San Julian; and there is a large “Adoration of the Magi,” the “Birth and Purification of the Virgin,” and the “Reconciliation of St Joachim and St Anne,” all in the Cathedral--the first in the Sacristía de los Cálices, and three others in unfortunate darkness, over the Sacristía altar. And if these larger pictures have not quite the fresh charm of the “Madonna of Santa Ana,” in each one we find a real understanding of beauty, and with it the Spanish gift of presenting the sacred stories as drama, just as the painter felt it all must have happened. Each figure in these scenes has life, has character. No lover of Spanish painting can afford to neglect any picture of Fernandez, and no estimate of the early art of the country can be true that does not include his work. Of his life we know nothing, merely that he came with his brother Juan from Cordova in 1508, called by the Chapter to work in Seville Cathedral. But it matters little that his life is unrecorded, for the work that he has left is his best history.
In these first years of the Sevillian school, when art was sincere and young, many pictures were painted, all strong work, all interesting, in lesser or greater measure, to the student, even if not to the art lover, as showing the growth of a national style. In many cases the names of the artists are unknown; no painter has left much record of himself. These pictures, which may be recognised very readily, are found in the Museo de la Merced, in the Cathedral, and still more in the churches, the true museums of Seville.
But fashion in art changes, and the sixteenth century witnessed the manifestation of a new mood in painting, the advent to Spain of the Italian influences of the Renaissance. This is not the place to speak of the blight which fell upon art. The distinctively Italian schools were only an influence of evil in Spain, and the inauguration of the new manner was the birth of a period of great artistic poverty. The main desire of the sixteenth-century painters was, as it were, to wipe the artistic slate. All pictures painted in the old style were repudiated as barbarous, cast aside as an out-of-date garment. The country became overrun by third-rate imitators of the Italian grand style, of Michael Angelo, of Raphael and his followers. The decorations, as you can still see them, of the Escorial, may be taken as typical of Italian art as it was transplanted into Spain. All national art that was not Italian in its inspiration was looked upon as worthless.