Jerónimos Monastery, 1501, Lisbon
When I set eyes on this crowded house, it made sense of all those empty pedestals at the Rosslyn Chapel and other ruins of worship in Scotland. Nothing left to the imagination here at Lisbon's Jeronimos Monastery! Someone is home in every niche. Rosslyn was built to show gratitude for Scotland's Sinclair family fortune. Similarly, Jeronimos went up as a gesture of thanks for Portugal's successful voyages to the New World. Unlike Rosslyn, no waves of reformation shattered Lisbon's idolatrous statues. Even the calamitous 1755 earthquake/fire/tsunami failed to unseat these stone occupants. To bookend an earlier post, I gratefully submit these sun-warmed, populous facades in Lisbon.
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