et among green
leaves and stalks.

But these thirty or more patterns do not exhaust the interest of the
Quinta. There are also some very fine tile pictures, especially one of
'Susanna and the Elders,' and a fragment of the 'Quarrel of the Lapithae
and Centaurs' in the pavilion overlooking the tank. 'Susanna and the
Elders' is particularly good, and is interesting in that on a small
temple in the background is the date 1565.[27] Rather later seem the
five river gods in the garden loggia of the house, for their strapwork
frames of blue and yellow can hardly be as early as 1565; besides, a
fragment with similar details has on it the letters TOS, no doubt the
end of the signature 'Francisco Mattos,' who also signed some beautiful
tiles in the church of Sao Roque at Lisbon in 1584.

It is known that the entrance to the convent of the Madre de Deus at
Lisbon was ornamented by Dom Manoel with some della Robbia reliefs, two
of which are now in the Museum.

On the west side of the tank at Bacalhoa is a wall nearly a hundred feet
long, and framed with tiles. In the centre the water flows into the tank
from a dolphin above which is an empty niche. There are two other empty
niches, one inscribed _Tempora labuntur more fluentis aquae_, and the
other _Vivite victuri moneo mors omnibus instat_. These niches stand
between four medallions of della Robbia ware, some eighteen inches
across. Two are heads of men and two of women, only one of each being
glazed. The glazed woman's head is white, with yellow hair, a sky-blue
veil, and a loose reddish garment all on a blue ground. All are
beautifully modelled and are surrounded by glazed wreaths of fruit and
leaves. These four must certainly have come from the della Robbia
factory in Florence, for they, and especially the surrounding wreaths,
are exactly like what may be seen so often in North Italy.

Much less good are six smaller medallions, four of which are much
destroyed, on the wall leading north from the tank to a pavilion named
the _Casa da India_, so called from the beautiful Indian hangings with
which its walls were covered by Albuquerque. In them the modelling is
less good and the wreaths are more conventional.

Lastly, between the tank and the house are twelve others, one under each
of the globes, which, flanked by obelisks, crown the wall. They are all
of the same size, but in some the head and the blue backing are not in
one place. The wreaths also are inferior even to those