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Updated: June 7, 2025
The reliquary of S. Quirinus, another work of much the same period, has saints under a pointed trefoiled arcade on twisted and horizontally ringed columns, with foliage in the spandrils. In the centre at the back is a figure of our Lord; on the lid are an angel, Gethsemane, S. Peter sleeping, and the winged lion, between scrolls.
Above, a heavy circular cornice joins a dome-shaped roof, clothed with frescoes, through which the light descends through a central lantern. Painted figures of prophets stand erect within the four spandrils, and beneath, breaking the marble walls, four snow-white statues of the Evangelists fill lofty niches of gray-tinted stone.
Nine compositions, carrying down the sacred history from the creation of light to the beginning of sin in Noah's household, fill the central compartments of the roof. Beneath these, seated on the spandrils, are alternate prophets and sibyls, twelve in all, attesting to the future deliverance and judgment of the world by Christ.
Built of white marble from Estremoz and dating from about 1530, the panelled jambs have moulded caps on which rests the arch. Like the jambs, the arch has a splay which is divided into small panels. Above in the spandrils are ribboned circles enclosing well-carved heads. On either side are pilasters with Corinthian capitals of the earlier Italian kind.
Near the altar we can perhaps trace the style of Bartolommeo Suardi in an Annunciation painted on the spandrils that heroic style, large and noble, known to us by the chivalrous St. Martin and the glorified Madonna of the Brera frescos.
Now, the execution of the Virgin and of the small angels who bear her up may not be of the best, but the character of the whole design is quite Italian, and could only have been carved by some one who knew Italian work. On either side of this recess are round-headed niches containing saints, while boys sit in the spandrils above the arch.
Any one seeing this tomb will be at once struck with the Italian character of the design, especially perhaps with the boys who hold the tablet and with those who sit in the spandrils. Even without leaving their country, Portuguese designers would already have had no great difficulty in finding pieces of real Italian work.
The other side is fully decorated with victories in the spandrils, festoons and chariot-races on the frieze, and the attic develops three pedestals for statues, inscribed to members of the family of Salvia Postumia, who erected it in honour of her husband, Lucius Sergius, his father of the same name, and his uncle Cnæus Sergius. Lucius Sergius was tribune of the 29th Legion.
Here is a rude sketch of its use of the crocket in the spandrils of its external tracery, and here are the waves of the Greek sea round the son of Poseidon. Seventeen hundred years are between them, but the same mind is in both. I wonder how many times seventeen hundred years Mr.
Each had large windows of four lights below, with circular panels in the spandrils; each had a distinct story over these windows, lighted by smaller windows consisting of several detached lights, and each had considerable turrets, probably surmounted by pinnacles at the angles, and, in all probability, open parapets between them."
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