Portrait of Spanish scholar, humanist, and psychologist Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540). Vives was an educational theorist who strongly opposed scholasticism and was a big advocate of humanistic learning in the early sixteenth century. His works are not limited to education and dealt with a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, psychology, politics, social reform, and religion. Vives was born in Valencia to a family that had converted from Judaism to Christianity. He left Spain at the age of 17 to avoid the Inquisition. He studied at the University of Paris from 1509 to 1512 and was appointed professor of humanities at the University of Leuven in 1519. In Leuven, he met the Dutch humanist Erasmus, who commissioned Vives to write a commentary on St. Augustines City of God, which was published in Basel in 1522, with a dedicatory letter to Henry VIII. Artwork was created in 1777 by Emanuel Eichel after drawing by Georg Melchior Kraus.