Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/48

Rh showing a memorial inscription to English Gilbert on a background of the same blue and white tiles.

We pass out into the cloisters and observe an ancient painting representing the death of Elijah. There are two others in the side aisles, one of the "Ascension," and the other "The Saviour of the World" by Pedro Alexandrino, an artist whose name is honoured by the Portuguese. In a moment we pause reflectively before a small chapel, for within is seen a life-size image of the Christ with natural hair falling over the shoulders. It is called Senhor Jesus da Boa Sentenca, and is said to possess the virtue of performing miracles. Other chapels open out upon the cloisters, but the chaos within them was painful to look upon. With the restoration in process debris and evidence of workmen's litter were unavoidable, but there seemed a disregard for what was fitting in the way the ancient tiles, remnants of old mosaics and broken capitals were strewing the arcades, and the little courtyard enclosed was a wilderness, only redeemed by glint of gay foliage and flowers blooming at random among the rank herbage.

A Portuguese art critic writes very strongly on the way in which the restoration is being carried on:

"I fear the Sé is being rebuilt without any idea of doing so in the primitive Romanesque design, which may never have been completely carried out, as the work would have been done in pieces, at long intervals, after the fashion of nearly all the religious edifices of the land. Of the part in restoration all is so poor that little would be lost in leaving it as it was. The Capella of Bartholomew Joannes apse and cloisters, are miserable fragments which any college of a Galician town exceeds in structural elegance and graceful architecture."

The chapel he speaks of is near the west door and, from 26