of Mestre Nicolas,
the Nicolas Chantranez who worked first at Belem and then on the Portal
da Magestade at Santa Cruz, and who carved an altar-piece in the Pena
chapel at Cintra. Though much larger in general design, it is not
altogether unlike the altar-piece in the Se Velha. It is divided into
two stories. In the lower are four divisions, with a small tabernacle in
the middle, and in each division, which has either a curly broken
pediment, or a shell at its head, are sculptured scenes from the life of
St. Jerome.

The upper part contains only three divisions, one broad under an arch in
the centre, and one narrower and lower on each side. As in the
cathedral, slim candelabrum shafts stand between each division and at
the ends, but the entablatures are less refined, and the sharp pediments
at the two sides are unpleasing, as is the small round one and the vases
at the top. The large central arch is filled with a very spirited
carving of the 'Deposition.' In front of the three crosses which rise
behind with the thieves still hanging to the two at the sides, is a
group of people--officials on horseback on the left, and weeping women
on the right. In the division to the left kneels Ayres himself presented
by St. Jerome, and in the other on the right Dona Guiomar de Castro, his
wife, presented by St. Luke. Throughout all the figure sculpture is
excellent, as good as anything at Coimbra, but compared with the reredos
in the Se Velha, the architecture is poor in the extreme: the central
division is too large, and the different levels of the cornice, rendered
necessary of course by the shape of the vault, is most unpleasing. No
one, however, can now judge of the true effect, as it has all been
carefully and hideously painted with the brightest of colours. (Fig.
79.)

Being architecturally so inferior to the Se Velha reredos, it is
scarcely possible that they should be by the same hand, and therefore it
seems likely that both the work in St. Peter's chapel and the pulpit in
Santa Cruz may have been executed by the same man, namely by Joao de
Ruao.[146]

[Sidenote: Pena Chapel, Cintra.]

Leaving Sao Marcos for a minute to finish with the works of Nicolas
Chantranez, we turn to the small chapel of Nossa Senhora da Pena,
founded by Dom Manoel in 1503 as a cell of the Jeronymite monastery at
Belem. Here in 1532 his son Joao III. dedicated a reredos of alabaster
and black marble as a thankoffering for the birth of a son.[147]