SÃO ROQUE AND ITS MUSEUM

The execution of this jewel (the Chapel of St. John the Baptist) is of a rare perfection. In France we have not, nor will probably ever have, anything to compare with it in its kind. – OLIVIER MERSON.

The Church of São Roque, built towards the end of the sixteenth century, and rebuilt after the earthquake in 1755, has no great interest as an architectural unit. Even inside it is no more than a single-nave temple without any striking decorative elements. Yet there is something to say for the decoration of its marbles, of its Florentine mosaics and of its golden woodwork. The wooden ceiling, painted towards the end of the sixteenth century, is a fine sample of the work of the period.

It is the Chapel of St. John the Baptist that confers on the Church of São Roque the title of a national monument.

This chapel was made up altogether in Rome, in 1742, by the order of King John the Fifth, the most opulent of all the kings of Portugal in his tastes and inclinations. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a priceless jewel of sacred art. From the general design (by Salvi and Vanitelli) to the minutest elements of decoration and to the most trivial objects of the cult, everything there shows the hallmark of art and munificence. The whole cost over 225,000 pounds and was the work of the best Roman masters of the time – sculptors and workers in mosaics, metals, gold, ebony, etc., such as Rotolini, Arrighi, Giovannini, Francesco Guerrini, Palmini, Enrico Emuo, Mattia Moretti, Massuççi, etc. The materials with which it was built – amethyst, lapis lazuli, porphyry, alabaster, and the like – form the richest and the completest collection of marbles which it is possible to gather into a small compass. And, apart from this, there is the bronze on the festoons, the capitals, and other ornaments similarly worked in metal. The whole comes together in a masterly harmony of tones and proportions and the general impression is that of a wonderful thing.

The furniture, attires and the like liturgical objects pertaining to the Chapel, sumptuous all of them, are brought together and intelligently exhibited in two big rooms, connected by a gallery, in the upper story of the building, and that is one of the finest museums of sacred art all the world over. Bertaux says it is without parallel for the study of baroque gold work. And, indeed, we will find there the most famous specimens of Italian gold work in the middle of the eighteenth century – candlesticks, torch sticks, thuribles, censer-boxes, reliquaries, hostiaries, etc., both in gilt silver and in bronze, wrought by the best Roman masters – Arrighi, Muglies, Gagliardi, Spinazzi, Gigli, Vendetti, and others.

Apart from these things, in themselves precious, the Museum has an extensive and very rich collection of attire – vestments, capes, chasubles, dalmatics, stoles, wristlets, etc., and they are made of the choicest fabrics and embroidered by masters like Saturni, Bovi, Abondio, Mariani and the Salvanti.

The books, missals, gospels and epistolaries are morocco-bound by Gerardi.

No foreigner visiting Lisbon ought to miss a visit to São Roque, where, better than in Italy itself, he will find witness to the marvelous work of the goldsmiths of that country in one of their greatest periods.