Strong arches with cable mouldings lead to the space under the gallery, which is supported by an elaborate vault, elliptical in the central and pointed in the side aisles.
In the gallery itself--only to be entered from the upper cloister--are the choir stalls, of Brazil wood, added in 1560, perhaps from the designs of Diogo da Carta.[134]
With the earlier stalls at Santa Cruz and at Funchal, and the later at Evora, these are almost the only ones left which have not been replaced by rococo extravagances.
The back is divided into large panels three stalls wide, each containing a painting of a saint, and separated by panelled and carved Corinthian pilasters. Below each painting is an oblong panel with, in the centre, a beautifully carved head looking out of a circle, and at the sides bold carvings of leaves, dragons, sirens, or animals, while beautiful figures of saints stand in round-headed niches under the pilasters. At the ends are larger pilasters, and a cornice carried on corbels serves as canopy. Each of the lower stalls has a carved panel under the upper book-board, but the small figures which stood between them on the arms are nearly all gone.
If 1560 be the real date, the carving is extraordinarily early in character; the execution too is excellent, though perhaps the heads under the paintings are on too large a scale for woodwork, still they are not at all coarse, and would be worthy of the best Spanish or French sculptors.
The cloister, nearly, but not quite square, has six bays on each side, of which the four central bays are of four lights each, while narrower ones at the ends have no tracery. In the traceried bays the arches are slightly elliptical, subdivided by two round-headed arches, which in turn enclose two smaller round arches enriched some with trefoil cusps, some with curious hanging pieces of tracery which are put, not in the middle, but a little to the side nearer the central shaft. The shafts are round, very like those at Batalha, and, like every inch of the arch and tracery mouldings, are covered with ornament; some are twisted, some diapered, some covered with renaissance detail. Broad bands too of carving run round the inside and the outside of the main arches, the inner being almost renaissance and the outer purely Manoelino. The vault of many ribs, varying in arrangement in the different walks, is entirely Gothic, while all the doors--except the double opening leading to the chapter-house, which has beautifully carved renaissance panels on the jambs--are Manoelino. The untraceried openings at the ends are fringed with very extraordinary lobed projections, and on the solid pieces of walling at the corners are carved very curious and interesting coats of arms crosses and emblems worked in with beautifully cut leaves and birds. (Figs. 66 and 67.)