Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/103

Rh is represented by a semi-draped feminine figure, behind which rises the statue of the man, the folds of his academic robe merging into the plastic drapery which he is represented in the act of raising over the nude feminine bust. It is a piece of sculpture concerning which opinions differ very freely, but the criticism which seems best to understand the sympathetic intuition of the sculptor is made by a Portuguese:

"Teixeira Lopes showed a clear intuition of plastic interpretation when he brought to being out of the same block—as though from Mother Earth herself—the bust of Eça de Queiroz and the figure of the woman in whom is represented the naked strength of Truth; because no creator and his work interpenetrated each other more intimately, were such living counterparts; in a word no writer has more ably externalized his visions of beauty with so intense a love of form. The same vital ichor appears to circulate from the work to the life, from the life again to the work. That is to say, being a creation, it is a prolongment of the creator. In each realization he makes our feelings vibrate with his own. It is not the least title to his glorious memory of romanticist, this secret of making us feel the thrill of a life, nervously human, through his limpidly divine form." This is exactly what the sculptor appears to have tried to express. Whether he has succeeded or not is for the individual to judge.

The National Museum of the Fine Arts is at present in the street of the Green Windows (Janellas Verdes) in an old palace that once belonged to the Marquis de Pombal and was later the residence of the ex-Emperor and Empress of Brazil. Modern sculptures are displayed in the vestibule showing specimens of the work of the Duchess of Palmella, Thomaz Costa, Simões d'Almeida, and of Teixeira Lopes, the producer of the statue of Eça de 75