Pax

This pax from Espinheiro is the most important of all those articles that have survived from the Portuguese gold and silverware of the 16th century. Originating from the Mosteiro do Espinheiro, a monastery of Hieronymite monks in Évora, its central reserve has the appearance of a three-dimensional painting in the round, with a representation of the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus crowned by angels, sitting on a lunar crescent that is itself supported by the trunk and the top of the thorn tree, in what is a clear allusion to the miraculous appearance of Our Lady at the site where the monastery was later founded.
This whole Renaissance scene is framed by a complex microarchitecture of exuberant late Gothic tracery, a coexistence of styles that formally marked the end of the mediaeval period.