Joaquim Pinto Leites chapel

It was Emídio Carlos Amatucci who built, in the Lapa Cemetery, the first tomb chapel entirely in marble stone- having been the first in the north of the country in this material, which then came from quarries located in Mafra and Oeiras and was called "lioz stone ". We are talking about the chapel belonging to the fabric dealer and banker Joaquim Pinto Leite (number 36 on the east side section). The notebook in which the expenses for this tomb were recorded, it is not called "family tomb", but rather "an extravagance". This says a lot about the amounts that Joaquim Pinto Leite spent on the construction, which even had a purposely modelled gate, based on a design by the engineer Manuel José do Couto Guimarães. Executed at Fundição do Bolhão, this gate was perhaps the first entirely made of cast iron in the Lapa Cemetery (and in the whole of the north of Portugal). It would be imitated for several decades in many dozens of tombs spread across the north of the country. Joaquim Pinto Leite's chapel presents abundant symbolism alluding to death, within the romantic spirit, not only on the gate but on the stone facade. By way of example, let us mention the bat, the owl, and the ivy- all elements that allude to the gloom and, therefore, metaphorically symbolize death. In the romantic period it was common replace the cold and pragmatic "here lies the corpse of...", with "here lie the ashes of...". It is important to refer that this more romantic way of indicating the existence of certain mortal remains constituted once again a metaphor, as cremation was not yet practised in Portugal. Despite this, on the entablature of Joaquim Pinto Leite's chapel there is a cinerary urn in the centre. Now, cremation was commonly used during Classical Antiquity- with the cremation urn being a type of tomb at that time, in which neoclassicism took hold. On the other hand, the cinerary urn evoked the dead without suggesting the idea of decomposition and, therefore, it was a symbol more in line with the romantic spirit than sculpting a coffin, since, in Romanticism, the smell of death was abhorred, and this was one of the reasons that also led to the attempt to end burials inside churches. It is also interesting to see that Joaquim Pinto Leite's chapel does not have visible drawers, but only two large sarcophagi, alluding to the idea of a couple, with a type of altar at the head that arises from a smaller sarcophagus, where, according to family oral tradition, it must have been where a six-year-old girl was buried- which was the first reason for the construction of this chapel. Joaquim Pinto Leite's chapel, like the others in the west and east side section, has a crypt- which in Porto was called "ram" because it was the place where meat was decomposed.