either by Netherland masters, painted at
home and imported, or painted in Portugal by artists who had been
attracted there by the fame of Dom Manoel's wealth and generosity, or
else by Portuguese pupils sent to study in Flanders.

During the seventeenth century all memory of these painters had
vanished. Looking at their work, the writers of that date were struck by
what seemed to them, in their natural ignorance of Flemish art, a
strange and peculiar style, and so attributed them all to a certain
half-mythical painter of Vizeu called Vasco, or Grao Vasco, who is first
mentioned in 1630.

Raczynski,[6] in his letters to the Berlin Academy, says that he had
found Grao Vasco's birth in a register of Vizeu; but Vasco is not an
uncommon name, and besides this child, Vasco Fernandes, was born in
1552--far too late to have painted any of the so-called Grao Vasco's
pictures.

It is of course possible that some of the pictures now at Vizeu were the
work of a man called Vasco, and one of those at Coimbra, in the sacristy
of Santa Cruz, is signed Velascus--which is only the Spanish form of
Vasco--so that the legendary personage may have been evolved from either
or both of these, for it is scarcely possible that they can have been
the same.

Turning now to some of the pictures themselves, there are thirteen
representing scenes from the life of the Virgin in the archbishop's
palace at Evora, which are said by Justi, a German critic, to be by
Gerhard David. Twelve of these are in a very bad state of preservation,
but one is still worthy of some admiration. In the centre sits the
Virgin with the Child on her knee: four angels are in the air above her
holding a wreath. On her right three angels are singing, and on her left
one plays an organ while another behind blows the bellows. Below there
are six other angels, three on each side with a lily between them,
playing, those on the right on a violin, a flute, and a zither, those on
the left on a harp, a triangle, and a guitar. Once part of the cathedral
reredos, it was taken down when the new Capella Mor was built in the
eighteenth century.

Another Netherlander who painted at Evora was Frey Carlos, who came to
Espinheiro close by in 1507. Several of his works are in the Museum at
Lisbon.[7]

When Dom Manoel was enriching the old Templar church at Thomar with
gilding and with statues of saints, he also caused large paintings to be
placed round the outer wall. Several still remai