FIG. 66.

BELEM.

CLOISTER.]

[Illustration: FIG. 67.

BELEM.

LOWER CLOISTER.]

and the whole vault as wanting in simplicity, yet there is no such
impressive interior in Portugal and not many elsewhere.

The very over-elaboration which spoils the cloister is only one of the
results of all the wealth which flowed in from the East, and so, like
the whole monastery, is a worthy memorial of all that had been done to
further exploration from the time of Prince Henry, till his efforts were
crowned with success by Vasco da Gama.

[Sidenote: Conceicao, Velha.]

There can be little doubt that the transept front of the church of the
Conceicao Velha was also designed by Joao de Castilho. The church was
built after 1520 on the site of a synagogue, and was almost entirely
destroyed by the earthquake of 1755. Only the transept front has
survived, robbed of its cornice and cresting, and now framed in plain
pilasters and crowned by a pediment. The two windows, very like those at
Belem, have beautiful renaissance details and saints in niches on the
jambs.

The large door has a round arch with uprights at the sides rising to a
horizontal crested moulding. Below, these uprights have a band of
renaissance carving on the outer side, and in front a canopied niche
with a well-modelled figure. Above they become semicircular and end in
sphere-bearing spirelets. The great round arch is filled with two orders
of mouldings, one a broad strip of arabesque, the other a series of
kneeling angels below and of arabesque above. The actual openings are
formed of two round-headed arches whose outer mouldings cross each other
on the central jamb. Above them are two reversed semicircles, and then a
great tympanum carved with a figure of Our Lady sheltering popes,
bishops, and saints under her robe: a carving which seems to have lately
taken the place of a large window. (Fig. 68.)

As it now stands the front is not pleasing. It is too wide, and the
great spreading pediment is very ugly. Of course it ought not to be
judged by its present appearance, and yet it must be admitted that the
windows are too large and come too near the ground, and that much of the
detail is coarse. Still it is of interest if only because it is the only
surviving building closely related to the church of Belem. Built perhaps
to commemorate the expulsion of the Jews, it shared the fate of the
Jesuits who instigated the expulsion, and was destroyed only a few years
bef