The beautiful little cloisters of the cathedral are of a later date than the church—grave and simple Gothic of the late fourteenth century, with three small pointed lancet arches in each span, and a plain round light in the tympanum above. But even here the eighteenth century has done some damage by building out highly ornamental buttresses between the main spans. All around on the inner wall of the cloister is a decoration which abounds in nearly every Portuguese church that has lived through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—namely, large pictorial representations in blue and white tiles, like those commonly connected with the town of Delft. In the churches these tile pictures usually represent scenes from Scripture history, with a large admixture of heathen mythology or ordinary emblematic fancies, as here in Oporto, and the effect is quaint and not unpleasing. One of the things indeed which most strongly strike a stranger in Portugal, in the north especially, is the almost universal employment of glazed tiles, _azulejos_, both inside and outside buildings of all kinds, the majority of the better sort of dwelling-houses being entirely covered outside by tile designs in colours, sometimes very elaborate and beautiful. The custom exists to some extent in Spain, but is not so common there as in Portugal. In each case, however, the taste and original manufacture, like the name of these tiles, are clearly Moorish, and in some of the older edifices, to be mentioned later, the tiles themselves date from a period when Moors or Mudejares produced them.
In the sacristy of Oporto Cathedral they will show you a painting on terra-cotta of the Virgin and Child, backed by St. Joseph and angels bearing a cross, which is asserted to be a Raphael. The composition and drawing are clearly the work of a disciple of his school, but the colouring is dull and grey, such as the great one of Urbino would never have produced. Not this so-called Raphael, but another picture of the highest interest and beauty, is the principal artistic treasure of the city. In the board-room of Oporto’s most cherished and beneficent institution, the vast charitable organisation called the Misericordia, there hangs a painting that has few, if any, equals in Portugal. It is claimed for Jan Van Eyck, who is known to have been in Portugal for two years at about the period (1520) represented by the work, though personally I could see but slight traces of the peculiar quality of either of the brothers Van Eyck. Certainly it is broader in style than anything I have seen from the brush of the younger brother Jan, and may well be the work of Hubert Van der Goes or Hans Memling. But, whoever may be the painter, the picture is a magnificent one. Against a background representing a typical Flemish landscape and walled town, such as Memling loved to paint, there is a highly ornamented font filled with a pool of blood replenished from the stream that issues from the Saviour’s side, as He hangs upon the cross rising from the centre of the pool. Upon the edge of the font, on each side of the cross, in attitudes of prayer, stand two lovely life-size figures of the Virgin and St. John, whilst in the foreground there kneel, in regal robes of crimson, ermine, and gold brocade, the figures of the founder of the Misericordia in 1499, King Manuel the Fortunate and his wife. Kneeling behind them in decreasing size are members of their family, and on the farther side beyond the font are groups of ecclesiastics and laymen, all evidently life-like portraits of prominent courtiers, or benefactors of the institution. The colouring of the picture is glowing and gorgeous in the extreme, and the loving care expended upon the details is such as only the early Flemings had patience to exercise, accompanied by a breadth and boldness unusual in most of them. Fons Vitæ, as the painting is called, from an inscription on the edge of the font, is emblematical of the foundation of the home of mercy it adorns. Nor is it the only art treasure the Misericordia possesses, apart from the hundreds of awful daubs representing dead and gone benefactors that crowd every inch of wall-space. There is to be seen a beautiful Gothic gold chalice of fifteenth-century Portuguese work, some fifteen inches high, a specimen of the famous handicraft of the city, of great interest, the work being of the most intricate and elaborate description, and the condition of the jewel perfect.