Chancel
The chancel’s two-tier mannerist altarpiece was built between 1625 and 1628.
It has four niches flanked by pairs of columns that house the sculptured images of the main saints of the Society of Jesus: St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Aloysius Gonzaga and St. Francis Borgia. The central niche is occupied by a sculpture in the round of Our Lady with the Child Jesus, dating from the late seventeenth century; and above this is another niche used for the exhibition of the Holy Sacrament (the characteristic Portuguese “throne”), which is normally covered with a seventeenth-century painting belonging to a set of seven canvases that are displayed on a rotational basis in accordance with the Catholic liturgical calendar.
