Read "Journey to Portugal" by José Saramago online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The layout of the Óbidos Museum was done by an expert hand. It cannot have been an easy task to design something on so many different levels. And as each room is small, there must have been a temptation to overfill it with items. Fortunately, this was avoided. Or perhaps there were not so many exhibits. The fact is that those on show are given enough space of their own so that one's eyes are not distracted by something else close by; the visitor can gaze for as long as he likes, and if he has the good fortune to be the only person there, as the traveller was, he will leave the museum in a state of perfect contentment that is not achieved every day.
Near the entrance is a magnificent fifteenth-century St John the Baptist, with flowing hair and a blond beard. The traveller could not distinguish what its original colours had been, so it is quite possible that this blond colour was the base on which the final one was later painted. The impression given by this statue is of St John as an elderly man, which seems at odds with the biblical version, which makes him younger than Christ. Besides which, if the traveller be allowed for a moment to peer into the recesses of someone else's soul, this venerable old man would never rouse the kind of dangerous passion in the dancer Salomé that would make her remove her seven veils, stir incestuous feelings in Herod, and ask for the head of this man who had rejected her. But here, St John still has his head on his shoulders. This statue of him is one of the most beautiful the traveller has seen, due to the gentle air of the saint, and the sculptor's harmonious conception.