216 ARCHITECTURE OF SCOTLAND. Part II. lliere is no detail or ornament in the Avhole building which may not be traced back to Burgos or Belem ; though there is a certain clumsi- ness both in the carving and construction that betrays the work- manship of persons not too familiar with the task that they were employed upon. The building, w liich ]ierhaps exhibits the greatest affin- ity of detail to the chapel is the church at Belem on the Ta- gus, opposite Lisbon (Woodcut No. 702). Nothing, in fact, can well be more similar than the two are. That at Roslyn is the oldest, having been commenced in 1446. Belem, begun in 1498, was finished 1*1' apparently in 1511,
at which date the
Scottish example j hardly appears to have been complete. Roslyn ChaJ)el is small, only 68 ft. by 35 ft. internally. The central aisle is but 15 ft. wide, and has the Southern pecu- liarity of a tunnel- vault Avith only transverse ribs, such as is found at Fonti- froide (Woodcut No. 319), and in almost all the old churches of the South of France. The orna- ments between these, which were painted in the earlier examples, are at Roslyn cared in relief. The vault, as in the South, is a true roof, the covering slabs being laid directly on the extrados or outside of it, without the intervention of ajny woodwork, a circumstance to which the chapel owes its preservation to the present day. Beyond the upper cliapel is a sub-chapel (Woodcut No. 650), displaying the same mode of 648. East Window, Melrose,
