The chancel, which is of two bays, one wide, and one to the east narrower, has a low vault with many well-moulded ribs springing from large corbels, some of which are Manoelino, while others have on them shields and figures of the renaissance. It still retains an original window on each side, small, round-headed, with a band of beautiful renaissance carving on the splay.
Dona Brites lies on a plain tomb in front of which there is a long inscription. Above her rises a round arch set in a square frame. Large flowers like Tudor roses are cut on the spandrils, the ogee hood-mould is enriched with huge wonderfully undercut curly crockets, all Gothic, but the band between the two mouldings of the arch is carved with renaissance arabesques. The tomb of Ayres himself and that of his father João are much more elaborate. Each, lying like Dona Brites on an altar-tomb, is clad in full armour. In front are semi-classic mouldings at the top and bottom, and between them a tablet held by cherubs, that on Dom João's bearing a long inscription, while Dom Ayres' has been left blank. The arches over the recumbent figures are slightly elliptical, and like that of the foundress's tomb each is enriched by a band of renaissance carving, but with classic mouldings outside, instead of a simple round, and with a rich fringe of leafy cusps within. At the ends and between the tombs are square buttresses or pilasters ornamented on each face with renaissance corbels and canopies. The background of each recess is covered with delicate flowing leaves in very slight relief, and has in the centre a niche, with rustic shafts and elaborate Gothic base and canopy under which stands a figure of Our Lord holding an orb in His left hand and blessing with His right. The buttresses, on which stand curious vase-shaped finials, are joined by a straight moulded cornice, above which rises a rounded pediment floriated on the outer side. From the pediment there stands out a helmet whose mantling entirely covers the flat surface, and below it hangs a shield, charged with the da Silva arms, a lion rampant. ([Fig. 78].)
Here, as in the royal tombs at Coimbra, Manoelino and renaissance forms have been used together, but here the renaissance largely predominates, for even the cusping is not Gothic, although, as is but natural, the general design still is after the older style. Though very elaborate, these tombs cannot be called quite satisfactory. The figure sculpture is poor, and it is only the arabesques which show skill in execution. Probably then it was the work not of one of the well-known Frenchmen, but of one of their pupils.[143]
Raczynski[144] thought that here in São Marcos he had found some works of Sansovino: a battlepiece in relief, a statue of St. Mark, and the reredos. The first two are gone, but if they were as unlike Italian work as is the reredos, one may be sure that they were not by him. A recently found document[145] confirms what its appearance suggests, namely, that it is French. It was in fact the work of Mestre Nicolas, the Nicolas Chantranez who worked first at Belem and then on the Portal da Magestade at Santa Cruz, and who carved an altar-piece in the Pena chapel at Cintra. Though much larger in general design, it is not altogether unlike the altar-piece in the Sé Velha. It is divided into two stories. In the lower are four divisions, with a small tabernacle in the middle, and in each division, which has either a curly broken pediment, or a shell at its head, are sculptured scenes from the life of St. Jerome.
The upper part contains only three divisions, one broad under an arch in the centre, and one narrower and lower on each side. As in the cathedral, slim candelabrum shafts stand between each division and at the ends, but the entablatures are less refined, and the sharp pediments at the two sides are unpleasing, as is the small round one and the vases at the top. The large central arch is filled with a very spirited carving of the 'Deposition.' In front of the three crosses which rise behind with the thieves still hanging to the two at the sides, is a group of people—officials on horseback on the left, and weeping women on the right. In the division to the left kneels Ayres himself presented by St. Jerome, and in the other on the right Dona Guiomar de Castro, his wife, presented by St. Luke. Throughout all the figure sculpture is excellent, as good as anything at Coimbra, but compared with the reredos in the Sé Velha, the architecture is poor in the extreme: the central division is too large, and the different levels of the cornice, rendered necessary of course by the shape of the vault, is most unpleasing. No one, however, can now judge of the true effect, as it has all been carefully and hideously painted with the brightest of colours. ([Fig. 79].)
Being architecturally so inferior to the Sé Velha reredos, it is scarcely possible that they should be by the same hand, and therefore it seems likely that both the work in St. Peter's chapel and the pulpit in Santa Cruz may have been executed by the same man, namely by João de Ruão.[146]
Pena Chapel, Cintra.
Leaving São Marcos for a minute to finish with the works of Nicolas Chantranez, we turn to the small chapel of Nossa Senhora da Pena, founded by Dom Manoel in 1503 as a cell of the Jeronymite monastery at Belem. Here in 1532 his son João iii. dedicated a reredos of alabaster and black marble as a thankoffering for the birth of a son.[147]
Like Nicolas' work at São Marcos the altar piece is full of exquisite carving, more beautiful than in his older work. In the large central niche, with its fringe of cusps, is the 'Entombment,' where Our Lord is being laid by angels in a beautiful sarcophagus. Above this niche sit the Virgin and Child, on the left are the Annunciation above and the Birth at Bethlehem below, and on the right the Visit of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt. Nothing can exceed the delicacy of these alabaster carvings or of the beautiful little reliefs that form the pradella. Many of the little columns too are beautifully wrought, with good capitals and exquisitely worked drums, and yet, though the separate details may be and are fine, the whole is even more unsatisfactory than is his altar-piece at São Marcos, and one has to look closely and carefully to see its beauties. As the one at São Marcos is spoiled by paint, this one is spoiled by the use of different-coloured marble; besides, the different parts are even worse put together. There is no repose anywhere, for the little columns are all different, and the bad effect is increased by the way the different entablatures are broken out over the many projections.
São Marcos.