classic column between two
niches, and from the shaft there grow out two branches to support the
corbels on which the niche statues stand. All this is very like the
great south door of the Jeronymite monastery at Belem, the work of
Diogo's brother Joao de Castilho; both have a wide door below with a
narrower window above, surrounded by a mass of pinnacles and statues,
but here the lower door is far too wide, and the upper window too small,
and besides the wall is set back a foot or two immediately on each side
of the window so that the surface is more broken up. Again, instead of
the whole rising up with a great pinnacled niche to pierce the cornice
and to dominate parapet and cresting, the drip-mould of the window only
gives a few ugly twists, and leaves a blank space between the window
head and the straight line of the cornice and parapet; a line in no way
improved by the tall rustic cross or the four broken pinnacles which
rise above it. Straight crested parapets also crown the wall where it is
set back, but at the sides the two corners grow into eight-sided turrets
ending in low crocketed stone roofs. Of course the whole front has
suffered much from the raising of the street level, but it can never
have been beautiful, for the setting back of part of the wall looks
meaningless, and the turrets are too small for towers and yet far too
large for angle pinnacles. (Fig. 69.)

Although the soft stone is terribly perished, greater praise can be
given to the smaller details, especially to the figures, which show
traces of considerable vigour and skill.

If the church shows that Marcos Pires was not a great architect, the
cloister still more marks his inferiority to the Fernandes or to Joao de
Castilho, though with its central fountain and its garden it is
eminently picturesque. Part of it is now, and probably all once was, of
two stories. The buttresses are picturesque, polygonal below, a cluster
of rounded shafts above, and are carried up in front of the upper
cloister to end in a large cross. All the openings have segmental
pointed heads with rather poor mouldings. Each is subdivided into two
lights with segmental round heads, supporting a vesica-like opening. All
the shafts are round, with round moulded bases and round Manoelino caps.
The central shaft has a ring moulding half-way up, and all, including
the flat arches and the vesicae, are either covered with leaves, or are
twisted into ropes, but without any of that w