They represent 'Christ shown to the people by Pilate,' the 'Bearing of the Cross,' and the 'Entombment.'
In each there is at the bottom a shelf narrower than the carving above, and uniting the two, a broad band wider at the top than at the bottom, most exquisitely carved in very slight relief, with lovely early renaissance scrolls, and with winged boys holding shields or medallions in the centre. Above is a large square framework, flanked at the sides by tall candelabrum shafts on corbels, and finished at the top by a moulding or, above the 'Bearing of the Cross,' by a crested entablature, with beautifully carved frieze. Within this framework the stone is cut back with sloping sides, carved with architectural detail, arches, doors, entablatures in perspective. At the top is a panelled canopy.
In the 'Ecce Homo' on the left is a flight of steps leading up to the judgment seat of Pilate, who sits under a large arch, with Our Lord and a soldier on his right. The other half of the composition has a large arch in the background, and in front a crowd of people some of whom are seen coming through the opening in the sloping side.
In the 'Bearing of the Cross' the background is taken up by the walls and towers of Jerusalem. Our Lord with a great T-shaped cross is in the centre, with St. Veronica on the right and a great crowd of people behind, while other persons look out of the perspective arches at the side. ([Fig. 73].)
In all, especially perhaps in the 'Ecce Homo,' the composition is good, and the modelling of the figures excellent. Unfortunately the faces are much decayed and perhaps the figures may be rather wanting in repose, and yet even in their decay they are very beautiful pieces of work, and show that João de Ruão—if he it was who carved them—was as able to design a large composition as to carve a small pulpit. Under the 'Ecce Homo,' in a tablet held by winged boys who grow out of the ends of the scrolls, there is a date which seems to read 1550. The 'Quitaçam' was signed on the 11th of September 1549, and if 1550 is the date here carved it may show when the work was finally completed.[141]
There once stood in the refectory a terra cotta group of the 'Last Supper.' Now nothing is left but a few fragments in the Museum, but there too the figures of the apostles were well modelled and well executed.
Of the other works ordered by Dom Manoel the only one which still remains are the splendid stalls in the western choir gallery. These in two tiers of seats run round the three walls of the gallery except where interrupted by the large west window. They can hardly be the 'cadeiras' or seats mentioned in Gregorio's letter of July 1518, for it is surely impossible that they should have been begun in January and finished in July however active the Seville master may have been, and judging from their carving they seem more Flemish than Spanish, and we know that Flemings had been working not very long before on the cathedral reredos. The lower tier of seats has Gothic panelling below, good Miserere seats, arms, on each of which sits a monster, and on the top between each and supporting the book-board of the upper row, small figures of men, with bowed backs, beggars, pilgrims, men and women all most beautifully carved. The panels behind the upper tier are divided by twisted Manoelino shafts bearing Gothic pinnacles, and the upper part of each panel is enriched with deeply undercut leaves and finials surrounding armillary spheres. Above the panels, except over the end stalls where sat the Dom Prior and the other dignitaries, and which have higher canopies, there runs a continuous canopy panelled with Gothic quatrefoils, and having in front a fringe of interlacing cusps. Between this and the cresting is a beautiful carved cornice of leaves and of crosses of the Order of Christ, and the cresting itself is formed by a number of carved scenes, cities, forests, ships, separated by saintly figures and surmounted by a carved band from which grow up great curling leaves and finials. These scenes are supposed to represent the great discoveries of Vasco da Gama and of Pedro Alvares Cabral in India and in Brazil, but if this is really so the carvers must have been left to their own imagination, for the towns do not look particularly Indian, nor do the forests suggest the tropical luxuriance of Brazil: perhaps the small three-masted ships alone, with their high bows and stern, represent the reality. ([Fig. 74].)
As a whole the design is entirely Gothic, only at the ends of each row of stalls is there anything else, and there the panels are carved with renaissance arabesque, which, being gilt like all the other carving, stands out well from the dark brown background.
These are almost the only mediæval stalls left in the country. Those at Thomar were burnt by the French, those in the Carmo at Lisbon destroyed by the earthquake, and those at Alcobaça have disappeared. Only at Funchal are there stalls of the same date, for those at Vizeu seem rather later and are certainly poorer, their chief interest now being derived from the old Chinese stamped paper with which their panels are covered.
Coimbra, Sé Velha.