B.

Lisbon

Behind the scenes

After Venice I went to Lisbon - the first time I'd visited Portugal. It was a special treat staying right next door to Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, the home of Portugese historical art.

One exhibition, titled 'The Prodigious Commission', celebrated the survival intact of the Royal Chapel of St John the Baptist after the major earthquake in Lisbon on 1 November 1755.

The chapel had been commissioned in 1742 and was installed in 1751, only four years before this earthquake which was said to have killed 55,000 people at the time.
Here's a photograph through glass of a model of the chapel:

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And here - from the beginning of the exhibition - is an image of a grisaille watercolour on paper from 1756 of the wider destruction of the Patriarchal Palace.

Although from another century and another place, this one seemed strangely familiar.

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