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I do not consider this addition as forming another family of cornices, because the leading and effective part of the curve is in these, as in the others, the single ogee; and the added bend is merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below: still this group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of ornamentation that we must have it sufficiently represented.
On the south wall are the recessed tombs of four of their younger sons. The eldest, Dom Duarte, intended to be buried in the great unfinished chapel at the east, but still lies with his wife before the high altar. Each recess has a pointed arch richly moulded, and with broad bands of very unusual leaves, while above it rises a tall ogee canopy, crocketed and ending in a large finial.
The east window has lost most of its tracery, and has the appearance of a great archway; its date, together with the whole of the chancel, is late Decorated, but the exquisite little chapterhouse is later still, and may be better described as early Perpendicular. It is octagonal in plan, and has in each side a window with an ogee arch above. The stones employed are remarkably large.
Beyond the strip of carving there grows up on either side a round tree, with roots and bark all shown; at the top there are some leaves for capitals, and then each tree grows up to meet in the centre and so form a great ogee, from which grow out many cut-off branches, all sprouting into great curly leaves.
How the Greek Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine, and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediæval ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the first type of the concave cornice a in Plate XV. LXIII., which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a bar of shadow.
This I believe to have been the simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee cornices; but they are farther complicated by the curves given to the leafage which flows over them. In the ordinary Greek cornices, and in a and d of Plate XVI., the decoration is incised from the outside profile, without any suggestion of an interior surface of a different contour.
Soon Gideon brought me into a sumptuous apartment hung with violet-coloured velvet, relieved with gold. A bronze lamp stood in a corner, its brightness toned down by a globe of ground crystal; thick carpets, soft as the turf on the hills, made our steps noiseless. It seemed a fit abode for silence and meditation. On entering Sperver lifted the heavy draperies which fell around an ogee window.
Though the chancel is square inside, the corners outside are cut off by a very broad chamfer, and a very curious ogee curve unites the two. The cloisters to the north are more usual. The arches are round or slightly pointed, and like the short round columns with their moulded eight-sided caps and sides, are of Arrabida marble.
The cathedral has a fine west doorway with twisted and knotted colonnettes and a pointed arch with tracery in the tympanum, and a modern figure of a bishop in front of it. Enormous brackets supporting couchant lions rest upon the knotted columns, with curious figures of Adam and Eve on their lower faces. A circular hood mould, with ogee finial, springs from them.
At either end of each of these sides a buttress rises to the base of the parapet in three stages, the second of which has on the front a panel with an ogee crocketed hood and is crowned by a gable with a grotesque at each corner, while the third is narrower, but is also panelled. Various gargoyles project from the uppermost string, which on the east side is not broken by the central pilaster.
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