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PORTUGUESE 


ARCHITECTURE 


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UIW.  Of  CALIF.  LIBRARY.  L9*  ANGflbtS 


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ALLIED  ARTS 

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L.  B.  Cat.   No.  1137 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


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PORTUGUESE 
ARCHITECTURE 


BY 

WALTER    CRUM    WATSON 


ILLUSTRATED 


LONDON 
ARCHIBALD  CONSTABLE  AND  COMPANY 

LIMITED 
1908 


Edinburch  :  T.  an<l  A.  Con*«table,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 


I^^Wt  ^     vx 


Urban  Planning 
m^Wtairtati  t  Library 

Uft)M  n«na«t 


AOS    MEUS    QUERIDOS    PARENTES    E    AMIGOS 
A    ILLMA    E    EXMA    SNRA 

M.    L.    DOS    PRADOS    LARGOS 

E    OS 
ILLMos    E    EXWS    SNRES 

BARONEZA    E    BARSO    DE    SOUTELLINHO 

COMO    RECONHECIMENTO    PELAS    AMABILIDADES    E    ATTEN^OES 

QUE    ME    DISPENSARAM    NOS    BELLOS    DIAS    QUE    PASSEI 

NA    SUA    COMPANHIA 

COMO    HOMENAGEM    RESPEITOSA 

O.D.C. 

O    AUCTOR 


PREFACE 

The  buildings  of  Portugal,  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  cannot 
be  said  to  excel  or  even  to  come  up  to  those  of  other 
countries.  To  a  large  extent  the  churches  are  without  the 
splendid  furniture  which  makes  those  of  Spain  the  most 
romantic  in  the  world,  nor  are  they  in  themselves  so  large  or 
so  beautiful.  Some  apology,  then,  may  seem  wanted  for 
imposing  on  the  public  a  book  whose  subject-matter  is  not  of 
first-class  importance. 

The  present  book  is  the  outcome  of  visits  to  Portugal  in 
April  or  May  of  three  successive  years  ;  and  during  these 
visits  the  writer  became  so  fond  of  the  country  and  of  its 
people,  so  deeply  interested  in  the  history  of  its  glorious 
achievements  in  the  past,  and  in  the  buildings  which  com- 
memorate these  great  deeds,  that  it  seemed  worth  while  to  try 
and  interest  others  in  them.  Another  reason  for  writing 
about  Portugal  instead  of  about  Spain  is  that  the  country  is 
so  much  smaller  that  it  is  no  very  difficult  task  to  visit  every 
part  and  see  the  various  buildings  with  one's  own  eyes  : 
besides,  in  no  language  does  there  exist  any  book  dealing  with 
the  architecture  of  the  country  as  a  whole.  There  are  some 
interesting  monographs  in  Portuguese  about  such  buildings  as 
the  palace  at  Cintra,  or  Batalha,  while  the  Renaissance  has 
been  fully  treated  by  Albrecht  Haupt,  but  no  one  deals  at  all 
adequately  with  what  came  before  the  time  of  Dom  Manoel. 

Most  of  the  plans  in  the  book  were  drawn  from  rough 
measurements  taken  on  the  spot  and  do  not  pretend  to  minute 
accuracy. 


VI 11 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


For  the  use  of  that  of  the  Palace  at  Cintra  the  thanks  of  the 
writer  are  due  to  Conde  dc  Sabugosa,  who  allowed  it  to  be 
copied  from  his  book,  while  the  plan  of  Mafra  was  found  in 
an  old  magazine. 

Thanks  are  also  due  to  Senhor  Joaquim  de  Vasconcellos 
for  much  valuable  information,  to  his  wife,  Senhora  Michaelis 
de  Vasconcellos,  for  her  paper  about  the  puzzling  inscriptions 
at  Batalha,  and  above  all  the  Baron  and  the  Baroneza  de 
Soutellinho,  for  their  repeated  welcome  to  Oporto  and  for  the 
trouble  they  have  taken  in  getting  books  and  photographs. 

That  the  book  may  be  more  complete  there  has  been 
added  a  short  account  of  some  of  the  church  plate  and 
paintings  which  still  survive,  as  well  as  of  the  tile  work  which 
is  so  universal  and  so  characteristic. 

As  for  the  buildings,  hardly  any  of  any  consequence  have 
escaped  notice. 


Edinburgh,   1907. 


CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

Portugal  separated  from  Spain  by  no  natural  division  geographical  or 
linguistic  ;  does  not  correspond  with  Roman  Lusitania,  nor  with  the 
later  Suevic  kingdom — Traces  of  early  Celtic  inhabitants;  Citania, 
Sabrosa — Roman  Occupation  ;  Temple  at  Evora — Barbarian  Inva- 
sions— Arab  Conquest — Beginnings  of  Christian  re-conquest — Ses- 
nando,  first  Count  of  Oporto — Christians  defeated  at  Zalaca — Count 
Henry  of  Burgundy  and  Dona  Theresa — Beginnings  of  Portuguese 
Independence — Affonso  Henriques,  King  of  Portugal — Growth  of 
Portugal — Victory  of  Aljubarrota — Prince  Henry  the  Navigator — 
The  Spanish  Usurpation — The  Great  Earthquake — The  Peninsular 
War — The  Miguelite  War — The  suppression  of  the  Monasteries — 
Differences  between  Portugal  and  Spain,  etc.  .  .  .       i-io 

Painting  in'  Portugal 

Not  very  many  examples  of  Portuguese  paintings  left — Early  con- 
nection with  Burgundy  ;  and  with  Antwerp — Great  influence  of 
Flemish  school — Tlie  myth  of  Grao  Vasco — Pictures  at  Evora,  at 
Thomar,  at  Setubal,  in  Santa  Cruz,  Coimbra — 'The  Fountain  of 
Mercy  '  at  Oporto — The  pictures  at  Vizeu  :  ♦  St.  Peter  ' — Antonio 
de  Hollanda        .......     10-17 

Church  Plate 

Much  plate  lost  during  the  Peninsular  War — Treasuries  of  Braga, 
Coimbra,  and  Evora,  and  of  Guimaraes — Early  chalices,  etc.,  at 
Braga,  Coimbra,  and  Guimar.tes — Crosses  at  Guimar-les  and  at 
Coimbra — Relics  of  St.  Isabel — Flemish  influence  seen  in  later 
work — Tomb  of  St.  Isabel,  and  coffins  of  sainted  abbesses  of 
Lorv-lo  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .1 7-20 


Tiles 

Due  to  Arab  influence — The  word  atulejo  and  its  origin — The  different 
stages  in  the  development  of  tile  making — I',arly  tiles  at  Cintra 
Moorish  in  pattern  and  in  technique — Tiles  at  Bacalhoa  Moorish  in 
technique  but  Renaissance  in  pattern — Later  tiles  without  Moorish 
technique,  e.g.  at  Santarem  and  elsewhere — Delia  Robbia  ware  at 
Bacalhoa — Pictures  in  blue  and  white  tiles  very  common     .  .     20-28 


X  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

C  H  A  1'  '1'  L  R    I 

THE    EARLY    BUILDINGS    IN    THE    NORTH 

PAGI! 

The  oldest  buildings  arc  in  the  North — Very  rude  and  simple — Three 
types — Villarinho — Sjo  Miguel,  Guimar.'ies — Cedo  Feita,  Oporto — 
Gandara,  Boeihe,  etc.,  arc  examples  of  the  simplest — Aguas  Santas, 
Rio  Mau,  etc.,  of  the  second  ;  and  of  the  third  Villar  de  Frades, 
etc. — Legend  of  Villar — Se,  Draga — Sc,  Oporto — Pa^o  dc  Souza 
— Method  of  roofing — Tomb  of  ligas  Moniz — Pombeiro — Castle 
.md  Church,  Guimar.les  ......     29-43 

CHAPTER    II 

THE    EARLY    BUILDINGS    IN    THE    SOUTH 

Growth  of  Christian  kingdom  under  Alfonso  Henriques — His  vow — Cap- 
ture of  Santarem,  of  Lisbon — Cathedral,  Lisbon,  related  to  Church 
of  S.  Sernin,  Toulouse — Ruined  by  Great  Earthquake,  and  badly 
restored — Se  Vciha,  Coimbra,  general  scheme  copied  from  Santiago 
and  so  from  S.  Sernin,  Toulouse — Other  churches  at  Coimbra — 
Evora,  its  capture — Cathedral  founded — Similar  in  scheme  to 
Lisbon,  but  with  pointed  arches  ;  central  lantern  ;  cloister — Thomar 
founded  by  Gualdim  Paes  ;  besieged  by  Moors — Templar  Church — 
Santarem,  Church  of  S.lo  Joao  de  Alpor.lo — Alcoba^a  ;  great  wealth 
of  Abbey — Designed  by  French  monks — Same  plan  as  Clairvaux — 
Has  but  little  influence  on  later  buildings  .  .  .    44-63 

CHAPTER    III 

THE  THIRTEENTH  AND  FOURTEENTH  CENTURIES  DOWN  TO 
THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA 

The  thirteenth  century  jjoor  in  buildings — The  Franciscans — S.iio 
Francisco  Guimaraes — Santarem — Santa  Maria  dos  Olivaes  at 
Thomar — Cf.  aisle  windows  at  Le^a  do  Balio — Inactivity  and 
deposition  of  Dom  Sancho  11.  by  Dom  Affonso  iii. — Conquest  of 
Algarve — Se,  Silves — Dom  Diniz  and  the  castles  at  Bcja  and  at 
Leiria — Cloisters,  Cellas,  Coimbra,  Alcoba9a,  Lisbon,  and  Oporto 
— St.  Isabel  and  Sta.  Clara  at  Coimbra — Lega  do  Balio — The  choir 
of  the  cathedral,  Lisbon,  with  tombs — Alcobaga,  royal  tombs — Dom 
Pedro  I.  and  Inez  de  Castro  ;  her  murder,  his  sorrow — Their  tombs    64-78 

CHAPTER    IV 

BATALHA    AND    THE    DELIVERANCE    OF    PORTUGAL 

Dom  Fernando  and  Dona  Leonor  Telles — Her  wickedness  and  unpopu- 
larity— Their  daughter.  Dona  Brites,  wife  of  Don  Juan  of  Castile,  re- 
jected—Dom  Joao  I.  elected  king— Battle  of  Aljubarrota— Dom  Joao's 
vow — Marriage  of  Dom  Jo.lo  and  Philippa  of  Lancaster — Bataiha 
founded  ;  its  plan  national,  not  foreign  ;  some  details  seem  English, 
some  French,  some  even  German— Huguet  the  builder  did  not  copy 
York  or  Canterbury — Tracery  very  curious — Inside  very  plain — 
Capella  do  Fundador,  with  the  royal  tombs — Capellas  Imperfeitas  .    79-92 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAPTER    V 

THE    EARLIER    FIFTEENTH    CENTURY 

PAGE 

Nossa  Senhora  da  Oliveira  Guimaraes  rebuilt  as  a  thankofFcring — Silver 
reredos  captured  at  Aljubarrota — The  cathedral,  Guarda — Its  like- 
ness to  Batalha — Nave  later — Nuno  Alvarez  Pereira,  the  Grand 
Constable,  and  the  Carmo,  Lisbon — .Iclo  Vicente  and  Villar  dc 
Frades — Alvito,  Matriz— Capture  of  Ccuta — Tombs  in  the  Graga, 
Santarem — Dom  Pedro  de  Menezes  and  his  '  Aleo ' — Tomb  of 
Dom  Duarte  de  Menezes  in  Sao  Joao  de  Alpor.'io — Tombs  at 
Abrantes  cloister- — Thomar  ....  .93-103 

CHAPTER    VI 

LATER    GOTHIC 

Graga,  Santarem — Parish  churches,  Thomar,  Villa  do  Conde,  Azurara 
and  Caminha,  all  similar  in  plan — Cathedrals  :  Funchal,  Lamcgo, 
and  Vizeu — Porch  and  chancel  of  cathedral,  Braga — Conceig.lo, 
Braga     .......  1 04-115 

CHAPTER    VII 

THE    INFLUENCE    OF    THE    MOORS 

Few  buildings  older  than  the  re-conquest — But  many  built  for  Christians 
by  Moors — The  Palace,  Cintra — Originally  country  house  of  the 
Walis — Rebuilt  by  Dom  Jo.lo  1. — Plan  and  details  Moorish — 
Entrance  court — Sala  dos  Cysnes,  why  so  called,  its  windows ; 
Sala  do  Conselho  ;  Sala  das  Pegas,  its  name,  chimney-piece ;  Sala 
das  Sereias ;  dining-room ;  Pateo,  baths ;  Sala  dos  Arabes ; 
Pateo  de  Diana  ;  chajiel  ;  kitchen — Castles  at  Guimaraes  and  at 
Barcellos — Villa  de  Fcira,  .  .  .  .  116-12S 

CHAPTER    VIII 

OTHER    MOORISH    BUILDINC.;S 

Commoner  in  Alemtejo — Castle,  Alvito — Not  Sansovino's  Palace — 
Evora,  Pagos  Reaes,  Cordovis,  Sempre  Nova,  S.io  Jo.ao  Evangelista, 
S.10  Francisco,  Sao  Braz,  ....  129-135 

CHAPTER    IX 

MOORISH     C  A  R  I'  E  N  T  R  -i' 

Examples  found  all  over  the  country — At  Aguas  Santas,  Azurara, 
Caminha  and  Funchal — Cintra,  Sala  dos  Cysnes,  Sala  dos  Escudos 
— Coimbra,  Misericordia,  hall  of  University — Ville  do  Conde  Santa 
Clara,  Avciro  convent,     .....  136-142 


xii  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

CHAPTER    X 

EARLY      MANOELINO 

PAGE 

Jolo  II.  continues  the  policy  of  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator — 
Bartholomcu  Diaz,  Vasco  da  Gania — Accession  of  Uom  Manoel — 
Discovery  of  route  to  India,  and  of  Brazil — Great  wealth  of  King 
—  Fails  to  unite  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  Peninsula — Characteristic 
features  of  Manoelino — House  of  Garcia  de  Rescnde,  livora — 
Caldas  da  Rainha — Setubal,  Jesus — Deja,  Conceiijao,  Castle,  etc. — 
Cintra,  Palace — Gollega,  Church — Elvas,  Cathedral — Santarem, 
Marvilla — Lisbon,  Madre  de  Deus — Coinibra,  University  Chapel 
—Setubal,  Sao  Juli.lo,     .....  i43-'5^ 


CHAPTER    XI 

THOMAR    AND    THE    CONQUEST    OF    INDIA 

Vasco  da  Gama's  successful  voyage  to  Calicut,  1497 — Other  expedi- 
tions lead  to  discovery  of  Brazil — Titles  conferred  on  Dom  Manoel 
by  Pope  Alexander  vi. — Orniuz  taken — Strange  forms  at  Thomar 
not  Indian — Templars  suppressed  and  Order  of  Christ  founded 
instead — Prince  Henry  Grand  Master — Spiritual  supremacy  of 
Thomar  over  all  conquests,  made  or  to  be  made — Templar  church 
added  to  by  Prince  Henry,  and  more  extensively  by  Dom  Manoel 
— .lojo  de  Castilho  builds  Coro — Stalls  burnt  by  French — South 
door,  chapter-house  and  its  windows — Much  of  the  detail  emble- 
matic of  the  discoveries,  etc.,  made  in  the  East  and  in  the  West      157- 1 70 

CHAPTER    XII 

THE    ADDITIONS    TO    BATALHA 

Dom  Duarte's  tomb-house  unfinished — Work  resumed  by  Dom 
Manoel — The  two  Matheus  Fernandes,  architects — The  Patco — 
The  great  entrance — Meaning  of  '  Tanyas  Erey  ' — Piers  in  Octagon 
— How  was  the  Octagon  to  be  roofed  ? — The  great  Cloister,  with 
its  tracery — Whence  derived         .  .  .  .  171-180 

CHAPTER    XIII 

BELEM 

Torre  de  S.lo  Viente  built  to  defend  Lisbon — Turrets  and  balconies 
not  Indian — Vasco  da  Gama  sails  from  Belem — The  great  monastery 
built  as  a  thankotFering  for  the  success  of  his  voyage — Begun  by 
Boutaca,  succeeded  by  Lourengo  Fernandes,  and  then  by  Jo.lo  de 
Castilho — Plan  due  to  Boutaca — Master  Nicolas,  the  F'rcnchman, 
the  first  renaissance  artist  in  Portugal — Plan  :  exterior  ;  interior 
superior  to  exterior  ;  stalls  ;  cloister,  lower  and  upper — Lisbon, 
Concei^ao  Velha,  also  by  Joao  de  Castilho  .  .  181-195 


CONTENTS  xiii 

CHAPTER    XIV 

THE    COMING    OF    THE    FOREIGN    ARTISTS 

TACt 
Coimbra,  Sta.  Cruz,  founded  by  Doni  Affonso  Henriques,  rebuilt  by 
Dom  Manoel,  first  architect  Marcos  Pires — Gregorio  Louren^o 
clerk  of  the  works — Diogo  de  Castilho  succeeds  Marcos  Pires — 
West  front,  Master  Nicolas — Cloister,  inferior  to  that  of  Belem — 
Royal  tombs — Other  French  carvers — Pulpit,  reredoses  in  cloister, 
stalls — Se  Velha  rcredos,  doors — Chapel  of  Sao  Pedro       .  196-210 

CHAPTER    XV 

THE    INFLUENCE    OF    THE    FOREIGNERS 

Tomb  at  Thomar  of  the  Bishop  of  Funchai — Tomb  in  Gra(;a,  Santarem 
— Sao  Marcos,  founded  by  Dona  Brites  de  Menezes — Tomb  ot 
Fernao  Telles — Rebuilt  by  Ayres  da  Silva,  her  grandson — Tombs 
in  chancel — Reredos,  by  Master  Nicolas — Rercdos  at  Cintra — Pena 
Chapel  by  same — Sao  Marcos,  Chapel  of  the  Reyes  Magos — 
Sansovino's  door,  Cintra — Evora,  Sao  Domingos — Portalegre, 
Tavira,  Lagos,  Goes,  Trofa,  Caminha,  Moncorvo  .  211-221 

CHAPTER    XVI 

LATER    WORK    OF    JOAO    DE    CASTILHO    AND    EARLIER    CLASSIC 

.Tolio  III.  cared  more  for  the  Church  than  for  anything  else — Decay 
begins — Later  additions  to  Alcoba^a — Bataiha,  Sta.  Cruz — 
Thomar,  Order  of  Christ  reformed — Knights  become  regulars — 
Great  additions,  cloisters,  dormitory,  etc.,  by  .loao  de  Castilho — 
His  difficulties,  letters  to  the  King — His  addition  to  Bataiha— Builds 
Concei^.ao  at  Thomar  like  Milagre,  Santarem- — Marvilla,  iiiJ.  ; 
LIvas,  S.ao  Domingos — Cintra,  Penha  Longa  and  Penha  Verde — 
Vizcu,  Cloister — Lamego,  Cloister — Coimbra,  Sao  Thomaz — 
Carmo — Faro — Lorvao — Amarante — Santarem,  Santa  Clara,  and 
Guarda,  reredos  .....  222-239 

CHAPTER    XVII 

THE    LATER    RENAISSANCE    AND    THE    SPANISH    USURPATION 

Diogo  de  Torralva  and  Claustro  dos  Filippes,  Thomar — Miranda  de 
Douro — Reigns  of  Dom  Sebastiao  and  of  the  Cardinal  King 
Henry  not  noted  for  much  building — Evora,  Gra^a  and  University 
— Fatal  expedition  by  Dom  Sebastiao  to  Morocco — His  death  and 
defeat — Feeble  reign  of  his  grand-uncle — Election  of  Philip — 
Union  with  Spain  and  consequent  loss  of  trade — Lisbon,  Sao 
Roquc  ;  coming  of  Terzi — Lisbon,  S.ao  Vicente  de  Fora  ;  first  use 
of  very  long  Doric  pilasters — Santo  Antlio,  Santa  Maria  do 
Desterro,  and  Torreao  do  Pago — Se  Nova,  Coimbra,  like  Santo 
Ant.ao — Oporto,  Collegio  Novo — Coimbra,  Miscricordia,  Bishop's 
palace  ;  Sacristy  of  Sc  Veiha,  Sao  Domingos,  Carmo,  Graga,  8.10 
Bento  by  Alvares — Lisbon,  Sao  Bento — Oporto,  Sao  Bcnto  24O-253 


xiv         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

OTHER    BUILDINGS    OF    THE    LATER    RENAISSANCE,    TILL    THE 
EXPULSION    OF    THE    SPANIARDS 

PACE 

Vianna  do  Castcllo,  Misericordia — Beja,  Sjo  Thiago — AzeitSo,  Sao 
SimJo — livora,  Cartuxa — Bcja,  Misericordia — Oporto,  Nossa 
Scnhora  da  Scrra  do  Pilar — Sheltered  Wellington  before  he  crossed 
the  Douro — Besieged  by  Dom  Miguel — Very  original  plan — 
Coimbra,  Sacristy  of  Santa  Cruz — Lisbon,  Santa  Engracia  never 
finished — Doric  pilasters  too  tall — Coimbra,  Santa  Clara,  great 
abuse  of  Doric  pilasters   .....  254-260 


CHAPTER    XIX 

THE    RESTORATION    AND    THE    EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 

The  expulsion  of  the  Spaniards — Long  war  :  final  success  of  Portugal 
and  recovered  prosperity — Mafra  founded  by  Dom  .lo.'io  v. — Com- 
pared with  the  Escorial — Designed  by  a  German — Palace,  church, 
library,  etc. — Evora,  Capclla  Mor — Great  Earthquake — The 
Marques  de  Pombal  —  Lisbon,  Estrella  —  Oporto,  Torre  dos 
Clerigos — Oporto,  Quinta  do  Freixo  —  Queluz  —  Quinta  at 
Guimaraes — Oporto,  hospital  and  factory — Defeat  of  Dom 
Miguel  and  suppression  of  monasteries       .  .  .  261-271 


BOOKS  CONSULTED 272 

INDEX 273 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


I. 

z. 

3- 
4- 
S- 
5. 

7- 
8. 

9- 

10. 

1 1. 

I  2. 

'3- 
>4- 
'S- 
t6. 

17- 
ig. 

>9- 

20. 
21. 
22. 
23- 
24- 

25' 
i6. 

27- 

28. 
29. 

30. 

3>- 
32. 
33- 
34- 
35- 
36. 

37- 
38. 

39- 

40. 


Guimar3es,  House  from  Sabrosa 

Evora,  Temple  of  '  Diana ' 

Oporto,  Fountain  of  Mercy 

Vizeu,  St.  Peler,  in  Sacristy  of  Cathedra 

Coimbra,  Cross  in  Cathedral  Treasury 
„  Chalice  „  „ 

„         Monstrance    „  „ 

Cintra,  Palace,  Sala  dos  Arabes 
„  „       Dining-room    . 

Santarem,  Marvilla,  coloured  wall  tiles 


]frc 


ronttspiect. 

Vallarinho,  Parish  Church 
Villar  de  Fradcs,  West  Door    , 
Pa^o  de  Souza,  Interior  of  Church    . 

„         „         Tomb  ot  Egas  Moniz 
GuimarSes,  N.  S.  da  Oliveira,  Chapter-house  Entran 
Le9a  do  Balio,  Cloister    . 
Coimbra,  Se  Velha,  Interior 

„  „  West  Front 

Evora,  Cathedral,  Interior 

„  „  Central  Lantern 

Evora,  Cloister 
Thomar,  Templar  Church, 
Santarem,  SSo  JoSo  de  Alporlo 
Alcoba^a,  South  Transept 
Santarem,  Slo  Francisco,  West  Doo 
Silves,  Cathedral,  Interior 
Alcoba(;a  Cloister    . 
Lisbon,  Cathedral  Cloister 
Coimbra,  Sta.  Clara 
Alcoba(;a,  Chapel  with  Royal  Tombs 

„  Tomb  of  Dom  Pedro  1. 

Batalha,  West  Front 
Bataiha,  Interior 

„        Capclla  do  Fundador  . 
Batalha,  Capellas  Imperfeilas  . 
Guimarles,  Capclla  of  D.  Juan  i.  of  Castile 
Guarda,  North  Side  of  Cathedral 
Santarem,  Tomb  of  Dom  Pedro  de  Menezes 
,,  Tomb  <>f  Dom  Duarte  de  Menezes 


To  face  page 


14 
16 


24 


1. 

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40 

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J 

42 

I 

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50 

l 

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54 

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56 

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66 

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72 

74 

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78 

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• 

94 

XVI 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITFCTURE 


+'• 

43 
+4- 
45- 
46. 

47- 
48. 

49 
SO- 
S'- 
S»- 
53- 
54- 
55- 
$6. 

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58. 

S9- 
60. 
61. 
62. 
63. 
64. 

6S- 
66. 
67. 
68. 
69. 
70. 
7'- 
72- 
73- 
7+- 
75- 
76. 

77- 
78. 

79- 
80. 
81. 
82. 
83. 
8+. 

85- 
86. 
87. 
88. 
89. 
90. 


Villa  do  Conde,  West  Front  of  Parish  Cliurch 
Vizcii,  Interior  of  Cathedral 
Braga,  Cathedral  Porch    .... 
Cintm,  Palace,  Main  Front 

„         „         Window  in  '  Sala  das  Sereias ' 
Cintra,  Palace,  Ceiling  of  Chapel 

Alvito,  Castle 

Evora,  Slo  JoJo  Evangelista,  Door  to  Chapter-house 
Caminha,  Roofof  Matriz 
Cintra,  Palace,  Ceiling  of  Sala  dos  CyNnes 
Coimbra,  University,  Ceiling  of  Sala  dos  Capelli 
Cintra,  Palace,  additions  by  D.  Manoel    . 
Santarem,  Mar\'illa,  West  Door 
Coimbra,  University  Chapel  Door 
Thomar,  Convent  of  Christ,  South  Door  . 

„  „  „  Chapter-house  Window 

Batalha,  Entrance  to  Capcllas  Imperfeitas 
Bataiha,  Window  of  Pateo 

„  Upper  part  of  Capcllas  Imperfeitas 

Batalha,  Claustru  Real 
Batalha,  Lavatory  in  Claustro  Real  . 
Belem,  Torre  de  Sao  Vicente    . 
Belem,  Sacristy         .... 
Belem,  South  side  of  Nave 

„        Interior,  looking  west  . 
Belem,  Cloister        .... 

„        Interior  of  Lower  Cloister 
Lisbon,  Concei^Jo  Veiha  . 
Coimbra,  Sta.  Cruz,  West  Front 

„  „  Cloister 

Coimbra,  Sta.  Cruz,  Tomb  of  D.  Sancho  i 

„  „  Pulpit 

Coimbra,  Sta.  Cruz,  Rercdos  in  Cloister 

„  „  Choir  Stalls 

Coimbra,  Se  Velha,  Reredos 

„  „  Reredos  in  Chapel  of  SSo  Pedro 

Thomar,  Sta.  Maria  dos  Olivaes,  Tomb  of  the  Bishop  of 
Slo  Marcos,  Tomb  of  D.  JoSo  da  Silva 
Slo  Marcos,  Chancel 

„  Chapel  of  the  '  Reyes  Magos 

Cintra,  Palace,  Door  by  Sansovino    . 
Caminha,  West  Door  of  Church 
Alcoba^a,  Sacristy  Door  . 
Batalha,  Door  of  Sta.  Cruz 
Thomar,  Claustro  da  Hospedaria 

„  Chapel  in  Dormitory  Passage 

Thomar,  Stair  in  Claustro  dos  Fillppes 

„  Chapel  of  the  Concei^So     . 

Santarem,  Marvilla,  Interior     . 
Vizeu,  Cathedral  Cloister 


Punch 


To  face  fja^e 
108 

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•  120 
126 

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1+2 

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166 

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184 
190 

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200 

202 
206 
209 


!-  218 
220 

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228 


230 
236 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS  xvii 

To  face  page 

91.  Guarda,  Cathedral  Reredos     ........  ."l 

92.  Tliomar,  Claiistro  dos  Filippes         .......  ./ 

93.  Lisbon,  Sao  Vicente  de  Fora   ........  )         , 

9+-  ..  »  ..  Interior ) 

95.  Coimbra,  Se  Nova  .         .........         ."| 

96.  „  Misericordia    ........../■" 

97.  Vianna  do  Castello,  Misericordia    ........      254 

98.  Oporto,  N.  S.  da  Serra  do  Pilar,  Cloister  .         .         .  -1        0 

99.  Coimbra,  Sta.  Cruz,  Sacristy  ........./ 

100.  Mafra,  West  Front         .         .         .         .  .         .  X     f.r 

101.  „        Interior  of  Church       ......  ...J    ~ 


INTRODUCTION 

No  one  can  look  at  a  map  of  the  Iberian  Peninsula  without  being 
struck  by  the  curious  way  in  which  it  is  unequally  divided 
between  two  independent  countries.  Spain  occupies  by  far 
the  larger  part  of  the  Peninsula,  leaving  to  Portugal  only  a 
narrow  strip  on  the  western  seaboard  some  one  hundred 
miles  wide  and  three  hundred  and  forty  long.  Besides,  the 
two  countries  are  separated  the  one  from  the  other  by  merely 
artificial  boundaries.  The  two  largest  rivers  of  the  Peninsula, 
the  Douro  and  the  Tagus,  rise  in  Spain,  but  finish  their 
course  in  Portugal,  and  the  Guadiana  runs  for  some  eighty 
miles  through  Portuguese  territory  before  acting  for  a  second 
time  as  a  boundary  between  the  two  countries.  The  same,  to 
a  lesser  degree,  is  true  of  the  mountains.  The  Gerez  and  the 
Marao  are  only  offshoots  of  the  Cantabrian  mountains,  and 
the  Serra  da  Estrella  in  Beira  is  but  a  continuation  of  the  Sierra 
de  Gata  which  separates  Leon  from  Spanish  Estremadura. 
Indeed  the  only  natural  frontiers  are  formed  by  the  last  thirty 
miles  of  the  Minho  in  the  north,  by  about  eighty  miles  of  the 
Douro,  which  in  its  deep  and  narrow  gorge  really  separates 
Traz  OS  Montes  from  Leon  ;  by  a  few  miles  of  the  Tagus, 
and  by  the  Guadiana  both  before  and  after  it  runs  through 
a  part  of  Alemtejo. 

If  the  languages  of  the  two  countries  were  radically  unlike 
this  curious  division  would  be  more  easy  to  understand,  but 
in  reality  Castilian  differs  from  Portuguese  rather  in  pronuncia- 
tion than  in  anything  else  ;  indeed  differs  less  from  Portuguese 
than  it  does  from  Catalunan.^ 

During  the  Roman  dominion  none  of  the  divisions  of  the 
Peninsula   corresponded    exactly  with    Portugal.      Lusitania, 

'  The  most  noticeable  ditrcrcnce  in  uronuiuiation,  the  Castilian  giittviral  soft  G 
and  J,  anil  the  lisping  of  the  Z  or  sott  C  seems  to  be  of  comparatively  modern 
origin.  However  diHercnt  such  words  as  'chave'and  'Have,"  '  tilho  '  and  'hijo,' 
'  mSo '  and  '  mano '  may  seem  they  are  really  the  same  in  origin  and  derived  from 
f/avij,Jiliuj,  and  manus. 

A 


2  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

which  the  poets  of  the  Renaissance  took  to  be  the  Roman 
name  of  their  country,  only  reached  up  to  the  Douro,  and 
took  in  a  large  part  of  Leon  and  the  whole  of  Spanish 
Estremadura. 

In  the  time  of  the  Visigoths,  a  Suevic  kingdom  occupied 
most  of  Portugal  to  the  north  of  the  Tagus,  but  included 
also  all  Galicia  and  part  of  Leon  ;  and  during  the  Moorish 
occupation  there  was  nothing  which  at  all  corresponded  with 
the  modern  divisions. 

It  was,  indeed,  only  bv  the  gradual  Christian  re-conquest 
of  the  country  from  the  Moors  that  Portugal  came  into  exist- 
ence, and  only  owing  to  the  repeated  failure  of  the  attempt  to 
unite  the  two  crowns  of  Portugal  and  Castile  by  marriage 
that  they  have  remained  separated  to  the  present  day. 

Of  the  original  inhabitants  of  what  is  now  Portugal  little 
is  known,  but  that  they  were  more  Celtic  than  Iberian  seems 
probable  from  a  few  Celtic  words  which  have  survived,  such 
as  Mor  meaning  great  as  applied  to  the  Capella  Mor  of  a 
church  or  to  the  title  of  a  court  official.  The  name  too  of 
the  Douro  has  probably  nothing  to  do  with  gold  but  is  con- 
nected with  a  Celtic  word  for  water.  The  Tua  may  mean  the 
'  gushing  '  river,  and  the  Ave  recalls  the  many  Avons.  Ebora, 
now  Evora,  is  very  like  the  Roman  name  of  York,  Eboracum. 
Briga,  too,  the  common  termination  of  town  names  in  Roman 
times  as  in  Conimbriga — Condeixa  a  Velha — or  Cetobrlga, 
near  Setubal — in  Celtic  means  height  or  fortification.  All  over 
the  country  great  rude  stone  monuments  are  to  be  found, 
like  those  erected  by  primitive  peoples  in  almost  every  part 
of  Europe,  and  the  most  interesting,  the  curious  buildings 
found  at  various  places  near  GuimarSes,  seem  to  belong  to  a 
purely  Celtic  civilisation. 

The  best-known  of  these  places,  now  called  Citania — from 
a  name  of  a  native  town  mentioned  by  ancient  writers — 
occupies  the  summit  of  a  hill  about  nine  hundred  feet  above 
the  road  and  nearly  half-way  between  Guimaraes  and  Braga. 
The  top  of  this  hill  is  covered  with  a  number  of  structures, 
some  round  from  fifteen  to  twenty  feet  across,  and  some 
square,  carefully  built  of  well-cut  blocks  of  granite.  The 
only  opening  is  a  door  which  is  often  surrounded  by  an 
architrave  adorned  with  rough  carving  ;  the  roofs  seem  to 
have  been  of  wood  and  tiles. 

Some,  not  noticing  the  three  encircling  walls  and  the  well- 


INTRODUCTION  3 

cut  water-channels,  and  thinking  that  the  round  buildings  far 
exceeded  the  rectangular  in  number,  have  thought  that  they 
might  have  been  intended  for  granaries  where  corn  might  be 
stored  against  a  time  of  war.  But  it  seems  far  more  likely 
that  Citania  was  a  town  placed  on  this  high  hill  for  safety. 
Though  the  remains  show  no  other  trace  of  Roman  civilisa- 
tion, one  or  two  of  the  houses  are  inscribed  with  their  owner's 
names  in  Roman  character,  and  from  coins  found  there 
they  seem  to  have  been  inhabited  long  after  the  surrounding 
valleys  had  been  subdued  by  the  Roman  arms,  perhaps  even 
after  the  great  baths  had  been  built  not  far  off  at  the  hot 
springs  of  Taipas.  Uninfluenced  by  Rome,  Citania  was  also 
untouched  by  Christianity,  though  it  may  have  been  inhabited 
after  St.  James — if  indeed  he  ever  preached  in  Bracara  Augusta, 
now  Braga — and  his  disciple  Sao  Pedro  de  Rates  had  begun 
their  mission. 

But  if  Citania  knew  nothing  of  Christianity  there  still 
remains  one  remarkable  monument  of  the  native  religion. 
Among  the  ruins  there  long  lay  a  huge  thin  slab  of  granite, 
now  in  the  museum  of  Guimaraes,  which  certainly  has  the 
appearance  of  having  been  a  sacrificial  stone.  It  is  a  rough 
pentagon  with  each  side  measuring  about  five  feet.  On  one 
side,  in  the  middle,  a  semicircular  hollow  has  been  cut  out  as 
if  to  leave  room  for  the  sacrificing  priest,  while  on  the  surface 
of  the  stone  a  series  of  grooves  has  been  cut,  all  draining  to  a 
hole  near  this  hollow  and  arranged  as  if  for  a  human  body 
with  outstretched  legs  and  arms.  The  rest  of  the  surface 
is  covered  with  an  intricate  pattern  like  what  may  often  be 
found  on  Celtic  stones  in  Scotland.  Besides  this  so-called 
Citania  similar  buildings  have  been  found  elsewhere,  as  at 
Sabrosa,  also  near  Guimaraes,  but  there  the  Roman  influence 
seems  usually  to  have  been  greater.     (Fig.  i.) 

The  Romans  began  to  occupy  the  Peninsula  after  the 
second  Punic  war,  but  the  conquest  of  the  west  and  north  was 
not  completed  till  the  reign  of  Augustus  more  than  two 
hundred  years  later.  The  Roman  dominion  over  what  is  now 
Portugal  lasted  for  over  four  hundred  years,  and  the  chief 
monument  of  their  occupation  is  found  in  the  language. 
More  material  memorials  are  the  milestones  which  still  stand 
in  the  Gerez,  some  tombstones,  and  some  pavements  and 
other  remains  at  Condeixa  a  Velha,  once  Conimbriga,  near 
Coimbra    and   at   the    place    now   called    Troya,    perhaps  the 


4  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

original  Cctobriga,  on  a   sandbank    opposite  Setubal,    a    town 
whose  founders  were  probably  Phoenicians. 

But  more  important  than  any  of  these  is  the  temple  at 
Evora,  now  without  any  reason  called  the  temple  of  Diana. 
During  the  middle  ages,  crowned  with  battlements,  with  the 
spaces  between  the  columns  built  up,  it  was  later  degraded  by- 
being  turned  into  a  slaughter-house,  and  was  only  cleared  of 
such  additions  a  few  years  since.  Situated  near  the  cathedral, 
almost  on  the  highest  part  of  the  town,  it  stands  on  a  terrace 
whose  great  retaining  wall  still  shows  the  massiveness  of 
Roman  work. 

Of  the  temple  itself  there  remains  about  half  of  the 
podium,  some  eleven  feet  high,  fourteen  granite  columns, 
twelve  of  which  still  retain  their  beautiful  Corinthian  capitals, 
and  the  architrave  and  part  of  the  frieze  resting  on  these 
twelve  capitals.  Everything  is  of  granite  except  the  capitals 
and  bases  which  are  of  white  marble  ;  but  instead  of  the 
orthodox  twenty-four  flutes  each  column  has  only  twelve, 
with  a  distinctly  unpleasing  result.  The  temple  seems  to 
have  been  hexastyle  peripteral,  but  all  trace  of  the  cella  has 
disappeared.  Nothing  is  known  of  the  temple  or  who  it  was 
that  built  it,  but  in  Roman  times  Evora  was  one  of  the  chief 
cities  of  Lusitania  ;  nothing  else  is  left  but  the  temple,  for 
the  aqueduct  has  been  rebuilt  and  the  so-called  Tower  of 
Sertorius  was  mediaeval.  Yet,  although  it  may  have  less  to 
show  than  Merida,  once  Augusta  Emerita  and  the  capital 
of  the  province,  this  temple  is  the  best-preserved  in  the  whole 
peninsula.     (Fig.  2.) 

Before  the  Roman  dominion  came  to  an  end,  in  the  first 
quarter  of  the  fifth  century,  Christianity  had  been  for  some 
time  firmly  established.  Religious  intolerance  also,  which 
nearly  a  thousand  years  later  made  Spain  the  first  home 
of  the  Inquisition,  had  already  made  itself  manifest  in  the 
burning  ot  the  heretical  Priscillianists  by  Idacius,  whose  see 
was  at  or  near  Lamego. 

Soon,  however,  the  orthodox  were  themselves  to  suffer, 
for  the  Vandals,  the  Goths,  and  the  Suevi,  who  swept  across 
the  country  from  417  a.d.,  were  Arians,  and  it  was  only  after 
many  years  had  passed  that  the  ruling  Goths  and  Suevi  were 
converted  to  the  Catholic  faith. 

The  Vandals  soon  passed  on  to  Africa,  leaving  their  name 
in  Andalucia  and  the  whole  land  to  the  Goths  and  Suevi,  the 


House  from  Saurosa. 

Now    IX    MUSKl'JI,    Gl'lMARAKS. 


EVORA. 

Temple  of  "  Dian.\." 


INTRODUCTION  5 

Suevi  at  first  occupying  the  whole  of  Portugal  north  of  the 
Tagus  as  well  as  Galicia  and  part  of  Leon.  Later  they  were 
expelled  from  the  southern  part  of  their  dominion,  but  they 
as  well  as  the  Goths  have  left  practically  no  mark  on  the 
country,  for  the  church  built  at  Oporto  by  the  Suevic  king, 
Theodomir,  on  his  conversion  to  orthodoxy  in  559,  has  been 
rebuilt  in  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  century. 

These  Germanic  rulers  seem  never  to  have  been  popular 
with  those  they  governed,  so  that  when  the  great  Moslem 
invasion  crossed  from  Morocco  in  711  and,  defeating  King 
Roderick  at  Guadalete  near  Cadiz,  swept  in  an  incredibly  short 
time  right  up  to  the  northern  mountains,  the  whole  country 
submitted  with  scarcely  a  struggle. 

A  few  only  of  the  Gothic  nobles  took  refuge  on  the  sea- 
ward slopes  of  the  Cantabrian  mountains  in  the  Asturias  and 
there  made  a  successful  stand,  electing  Don  Pelayo  as  their 
king. 

As  time  went  on,  Pelayo's  descendants  crossed  the 
mountains,  and  taking  Leon  gradually  extended  their  small 
kingdom  southwards. 

Meanwhile  other  independent  counties  or  principalities 
further  east  were  gradually  spreading  downwards.  The  nearest 
was  Castile,  so  called  from  its  border  castles,  then  Navarre, 
then  Aragon,  and  lastly  the  county  of  Barcelona  or  Cataluna. 

Galicia,  in  the  north-west  corner,  never  having  been 
thoroughly  conquered  by  the  invaders,  was  soon  united  with 
the  Asturias  and  then  with  Leon.  So  all  these  Christian 
realms,  Leon — including  Galicia  and  Asturias — Castile,  and 
Aragon,  which  was  soon  united  to  Cataluna,  spread  southwards, 
faster  when  the  Moslems  were  weakened  by  division,  slower 
when  they  had  been  united  and  strengthened  by  a  fresh  wave 
of  fanaticism  from  Africa.  Navarre  alone  was  unable  to 
grow,  for  the  lower  Ebro  valley  was  won  by  the  kings  of 
Aragon,  while  Castile  as  she  grew  barred  the  way  to  the 
south-west. 

At  last  in  1037  Fernando  i.  united  Castile  and  Leon  into 
one  kingdom,  extending  from  the  sea  in  the  north  to  the 
lower  course  of  the  Douro  and  to  the  mountains  dividing 
the  upper  Douro  from  the  Tagus  valley  in  the  south.  Before 
Fernando  died  in  1065  he  had  extended  his  frontier  on  the 
west  as  far  south  as  the  Mondego,  making  Sesnando,  a  con- 
verted  Moslem,  count  of  this   important  marchland.      Then 


6  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

followed  a  new  division,  for  Castile  went  to  King  Sancho, 
Leon  to  Alfonso  vi.,  and  Galicia,  including  the  two  counties 
of  Porto  and  of  Coimbra,  to  Garcia. 

Before  long,  however,  Alfonso  turned  out  his  brotliers  and 
also  extended  his  borders  even  to  the  Tagus  by  taking  Toledo 
in  1085.  But  his  successes  roused  the  Moslem  powers  to 
fresh  fanaticism.  A  new  and  stricter  dynasty,  the  Almora- 
vides,'  arose  in  Africa  and  crossing  the  straits  inflicted  a 
crushing  defeat  on  the  Christians  at  Zalaca.  In  despair  at 
this  disaster  and  at  the  loss  of  Santarem  and  of  Lisbon, 
Alfonso  appealed  to  Christendom  for  help.  Among  those 
who  came  were  Count  Raymond  of  Toulouse,  who  was  rewarded 
with  the  kingdom  of  Galicia  and  the  hand  of  his  daughter  and 
heiress  Urraca,  and  Count  Henry  of  Burgundy,  who  was 
granted  the  counties  of  Porto  and  of  Coimbra  and  who  married 
another  daughter  of  Alfonso's,  Theresa. 

This  was  really  the  first  beginning  of  Portugal  as  an 
independent  state ;  for  Portugal,  derived  from  two  towns 
Portus  and  Cales,  which  lie  opposite  each  other  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Douro,  was  the  name  given  to  Henry's  county. 
Henry  did  but  little  to  make  himself  independent  as  he  was 
usually  away  fighting  elsewhere,  but  his  widow  Theresa 
refused  to  acknowledge  her  sister  Urraca,  now  queen  of 
Castile,  Leon  and  Galicia,  as  her  superior,  called  herself 
Intanta  and  behaved  as  if  she  was  no  one's  vassal.  Fortu- 
nately for  her  and  her  aims,  Urraca  was  far  too  busy  fighting 
with  her  second  husband,  the  king  of  Aragon,  to  pay  much 
attention  to  what  was  happening  in  the  west,  so  that  she  had 
time  to  consolidate  her  power  and  to  accustom  her  people  to 
think  of  themselves  as  being  not  Galicians  but  Portuguese. 

The  breach  with  Galicia  was  increased  by  the  favour  which 
Theresa,  after  a  time,  began  to  show  to  her  lover,  Don 
Fernando  Peres  de  Trava,  a  Galician  noble,  and  by  the  grants 
of  lands  and  of  honours  she  made  to  him.  This  made  her 
so  unpopular  that  when  Alfonso  Raimundes,  Urraca's  son, 
attacked  Theresa  in  11 27,  made  her  acknowledge  him  as 
suzerain,  and  give  up  Tuy  and  Orense,  Galician  towns  she 
had  taken,  the  people  rose  against  her  and  declared  her  son 
Affonso  Henriques  old  enough  to  reign. 

'  From  the  name  of  this  dynasty  Moabitiii,  which  means  fanatic,  is  derived  the 
word  Maravedi  or  Morabitino,  long  given  in  tlie  Peninsula  to  a  coin  which  was  first 
struck  in  Morocco. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

Then  took  place  the  famous  submission  of  Egas  Moniz, 
AfFonso's  governor,  who  induced  the  king  to  retire  from  the 
siege  of  Guimaraes  by  promising  that  his  pupil  would  agree 
to  the  terms  forced  on  his  mother.  This,  though  but 
seventeen,  Affonso  refused  to  do,  and  next  year  raising  an 
army  he  expelled  his  mother  and  Don  Fernando,  and  after 
four  wars  with  his  cousin  of  Castile  finally  succeeded  in  main- 
taining his  independence,  and  even  in  assuming  the  title  of 
King. 

These  wars  with  Castile  taught  him  at  last  that  the  true 
way  to  increase  his  realm  was  to  leave  Christian  territory  alone 
and  to  direct  his  energies  southwards,  gaining  land  only  at  the 
expense  of  the  Moors. 

So  did  the  kingdom  of  Portugal  come  into  existence, 
almost  accidentally  and  without  there  being  any  division  of 
race  or  of  language  between  its  inhabitants  and  those  of  Galicia. 

The  youngest  of  all  the  Peninsular  kingdoms,  it  is  the 
only  one  which  still  remains  separate  from  the  rest  of  the 
Spains,  for  when  in  1580  union  was  forced  on  her  by 
Philip  II.,  Portugal  had  had  too  glorious  a  past,  and  had 
become  too  different  in  language  and  in  custom  easily  to 
submit  to  so  undesired  a  union,  while  Spain,  already  suffering 
from  coming  weakness  and  decay,  was  not  able  long  to  hold 
her  in  such  hated  bondage. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  tell  the  story  of  each  of  Affonso 
Henriques'  descendants.  He  himself  permanently  extended 
the  borders  of  his  kingdom  as  far  as  the  Tagus,  and  even  raided 
the  Moslem  lands  of  the  south  as  far  as  Ourique,  beyond 
Beja.  His  son,  Sancho  i.,  finding  the  Moors  too  strong  to 
make  any  permanent  conquests  beyond  the  Tagus,  devoted 
himself  chiefly — when  not  fighting  with  the  king  of  Castile 
and  Leon — to  rebuilding  and  restoring  the  towns  in  Beira, 
and  it  was  not  till  the  reign  of  his  grandson,  Affonso  in.,  that 
the  southern  sea  was  reached  by  the  taking  of  the  Algarve  in 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century. 

Dom  Diniz,  Affonso  iii.'s  son,  carried  on  the  work  of 
settling  the  country,  building  castles  and  planting  pine-trees 
to  stay  the  blowing  sands  along  the  west  coast. 

From  that  time  on  Portugal  was  able  to  hold  her  own, 
and  was  strong  enough  in  1387  to  defeat  the  king  of  Castile 
at  Aljubarrota  when  he  tried  to  seize  the  throne  in  right  of 
his  wife,  only  child  of  the  late  Portugese  king,  Fernando. 


8  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Under  the  House  of  Aviz,  whose  first  king,  Jo5o  i.,  had 
been  elected  to  repel  this  invasion,  Portugal  rose  to  the 
greatest  heights  of  power  and  of  wealth  to  which  the  country 
was  ever  to  attain.  The  ceaseless  efforts  of  Dom  Henrique, 
the  Navigator,  the  third  son  of  Dom  Jo5o,  were  crowned  with 
success  when  Vasco  da  Gama  landed  at  Calicut  in  May  1498, 
and  when  Pedro  Alvares  Cabral  first  saw  the  coasts  of  Brazil 
in  I  500. 

To-day  one  is  too  ready  to  forget  that  Portugal  was  the 
pioneer  in  geographical  discovery,  that  the  Portuguese  were 
the  first  Westerns  to  reach  Japan,  and  that,  had  Joao  11.  listened 
to  Columbus,  it  would  have  been  to  Portugal  and  not  to 
Spain  that  he  would  have  given  a  new  world. 

It  was,  too,  under  the  House  of  Aviz  that  the  greatest 
development  in  architecture  took  place,  and  that  the  only 
original  and  distinctive  style  of  architecture  was  formed. 
That  was  also  the  time  when  the  few  good  pictures  which  the 
country  possesses  were  painted,  and  when  much  of  the  splendid 
church  plate  which  still  exists  was  wrought. 

The  sixty  years  of  the  Spanish  captivity,  as  it  was  called, 
from  1580  to  1640,  were  naturally  comparatively  barren  of  all 
good  work.  After  the  restoration  of  peace  and  a  revival  of 
the  Brazilian  trade  had  brought  back  some  ot  the  wealth  which 
the  country  had  lost,  the  art  of  building  had  fallen  so  low  that 
of  the  many  churches  rebuilt  or  altered  during  the  eighteenth 
century  there  is  scarcely  one  possessed  of  the  slightest  merit. 

The  most  important  events  of  the  eighteenth  century  were 
the  great  earthquakes  of  1755  and  the  ministry  of  the 
Marques  de  Pombal. 

Soon  after  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  came 
the  invasion  led  by  Junot,  1807,  the  flight  of  the  royal  family 
to  Brazil,  and  the  Peninsular  War.  Terrible  damage  was 
done  by  the  invaders,  cart-loads  of  church  plate  were  carried 
off,  and  many  a  monastery  was  sacked  and  burned.  Peace 
had  not  long  been  restored  when  the  struggle  broke  out 
between  the  constitutional  party  under  Pedro  of  Brazil,  who 
had  resigned  the  throne  of  Portugal  in  favour  of  his  daughter, 
Maria  da  Gloria,  and  the  absolutists  under  Dom  Miguel,  his 
brother. 

The  civil  war  lasted  for  several  years,  from  May  1828, 
when  Dom  Miguel,  then  regent  for  his  niece,  summoned  the 
Cortes  and  caused  himself  to  be  elected  king,  till  May  1834, 


INTRODUCTION  9 

when  he  was  finally  defeated  at  Evora  Monte  and  forced  to 
leave  the  country.  The  chief  events  of  his  usurpation  were 
the  siege  of  Oporto  and  the  defeat  of  his  fleet  off  Cape 
St.  Vincent  in  1833  by  Captain  Charles  Napier,  who  fought 
for  Dona  Maria  under  the  name  of  Carlos  de  Ponza. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  constitutional  Cortes  was  to 
suppress  all  the  monasteries  in  the  kingdom  in  1834.  At  the 
same  time  the  nunneries  were  forbidden  to  receive  any  new 
nuns,  with  the  result  that  in  many  places  the  buildings  have 
gradually  fallen  into  decay,  till  the  last  surviving  sister  has 
died,  solitary  and  old,  and  so  at  length  set  free  her  home  to 
be  turned  to  some  public  use.^ 

Since  then  the  history  of  Portugal  has  been  quiet  and 
uneventful.  Good  roads  have  been  made — but  not  always 
well  kept  up — railways  have  been  built,  and  Lisbon,  once 
known  as  the  dirtiest  of  towns,  has  become  one  of  the  cleanest, 
with  fine  streets,  electric  lighting,  a  splendidly  managed  system 
of  electric  tramways,  and  with  funiculars  and  lifts  to  connect 
the  higher  parts  of  the  town  with  its  busy  centre. 

It  is  not  uninteresting  to  notice  in  how  many  small 
matters  Portugal  now  differs  from  Spain.  Portugal  drinks 
tea,  Spain  chocolate  or  coffee  ;  it  lunches  and  dines  early, 
Spain  very  late  ;  its  beds  and  pillows  are  very  hard,  in  Spain 
they  are  much  softer.  Travelling  too  in  Portugal  is  much 
pleasanter  ;  as  the  country  is  so  much  smaller,  trains  leave  at 
much  more  reasonable  hours,  run  more  frequently,  and  go 
more  quickly.  The  inns  also,  even  in  small  places,  are,  if  not 
luxurious,  usually  quite  clean  with  good  food,  and  the  landlord 
treats  his  guests  with  something  more  pleasing  than  that  lofty 
condescension  which  is  so  noticeable  in  Spain. 

Of  the  more  distant  countries  of  Europe,  Portugal  is  now 
one  of  the  easiest  to  reach.  Forty-eight  hours  from  South- 
ampton in  a  boat  bound  for  South  America  lands  the  traveller 
at  Vigo,  or  three  days  at  Lisbon,  where  the  brilliant  sun  and 
blue  sky,  the  judas-trees  in  the  Avenida,  the  roses,  the  palms, 
and  the  sheets  of  bougainvillia,  are  such  an  unimaginable  change 
from  the  cold  March  winds  and  pinched  buds  of  England. 

There  is  perhaps  no  country  in  Europe  which  has  so 
interesting  a  flora,  especially  in  spring.  In  March  in  the 
granite    north    the   ground   under   the    pine-trees   is   covered 

'  Tlic  last  mm  in  a  convent  at  Evora  only  illeil  in  J  903,  whicli  must  have  been 
at  least  seventy  years  alter  she  had  taken  the  veil. 


lo  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

with  the  exquisite  flowers  of  the  narcissus  triandrus,'  while 
the  wet  water  meadows  are  yellow  with  petticoat  daffodils. 
Other  daffodils  too  abound,  but  these  are  the  commonest. 

Later  the  granite  rocks  are  hidden  by  great  trees  of  white 
broom,  while  from  north  to  south  every  wild  piece  of  land  is 
starred  with  the  brilliant  blue  flowers  of  the  lithospermum. 
There  are  also  endless  varieties  of  cistus,  from  the  small  yellow 
annual  with  rich  brown  heart  to  the  large  gum  cistus  that 
covers  so  much  of  the  poor  soil  in  the  Alemtejo.  These 
plains  of  the  Alemtejo  are  supposed  to  be  the  least  beautiful 
part  of  the  country,  but  no  one  can  cross  them  in  April 
without  being  almost  overcome  with  the  beauty  of  the  flowers, 
cistus,  white,  yellow,  or  red,  tall  white  heaths,  red  heaths, 
blue  lithospermum,  yellow  whin,  and  most  brilliant  of  all 
the  large  pimpernel,  whose  blue  flowers  almost  surpass  the 
gentian.  A  little  further  on  where  there  is  less  heath  and 
cistus,  tall  yellow  and  blue  Spanish  irises  stand  up  out  of  the 
L'rass,  or  there  may  be  great  heads  of  blue  scilla  peruviana  or 
sheets  of  small  iris  of  the  brightest  blue. 

Indeed,  sheets  of  brilliant  colour  are  everywhere  most 
wonderful.  There  may  be  acres  of  rich  purple  where  the 
bugloss  hides  the  grass,  or  of  brilliant  yellow  where  the  large 
golden  daisies  grow  thickly  together,  or  of  sky-blue  where 
the  convolvulus  has  smothered  a  field  of  oats. 

Painting  in  Portugal.- 

From  various  causes  Portugal  is  far  less  rich  in  buildings 
of  interest  than  is  Spain.  The  earthquake  has  destroyed 
many,  but  more  have  perished  through  tasteless  rebuilding 
during  the  eighteenth  century  when  the  country  again  re- 
gained a  small  part  of  the  trade  and  wealth  lost  during  the 
Spanish  usurpation. 

But  if  this  is  true  of  architecture,  it  is  far  more  true  of 
painting.  During  the  most  flourishing  period  of  Spanish 
painting,  the  age  of  Velasquez  and  of  Murillo,  Portugal  was, 
before  1640,  a  despised  part  of  the  kingdom,  treated  as  a 
conquered  province,  while  after  the  rebellion  the  long  struggle, 
which  lasted  for  twenty-eight  years,  was  enough  to  prevent 

'  A  narcissus  triandnis  with  a  white  perianth  and  yellow  cup  is  found  near 
Lamego  and  st  Louz.1,  not  far  from  Coimbra. 

'  See  article  by  C.  Justi, '  Die  Portugesische  Malerei  des  xvi.  Jahrhunderts,'  in 
vol.  ix.  otthe  "Jahrbuch  der  K.  Preussischen  KumtsammUin^en. 


INTRODUCTION  ii 

any  of  the  arts  from  flourishing.  Besides,  many  good  pictures 
which  once  adorned  the  royal  palaces  of  Portugal  were  carried 
oflPto  Madrid  by  Philip  or  his  successors. 

And  yet  there  are  scattered  about  the  country  not  a  few 
paintings  of  considerable  merit.  Most  of  them  have  been 
terribly  neglected,  are  very  dirty,  or  hang  where  they  can 
scarcely  be  seen,  while  little  is  really  known  about  their 
painters. 

From  the  time  of  Dom  Joao  i.,  whose  daughter,  Isabel, 
married  Duke  Philip  early  in  the  fifteenth  century,  the  two 
courts  of  Portugal  and  of  Burgundy  had  been  closely  united. 
Isabel  sent  an  alabaster  monument  for  the  tomb  of  her  father's 
great  friend  and  companion,  the  Holy  Constable,  and  one  of 
bronze  for  that  of  her  eldest  brother;  while  as  a  member  of 
the  embassy  which  came  to  demand  her  hand,  was  J.  van 
Eyck  himself.  However,  if  he  painted  anything  in  Portugal, 
it  has  now  vanished. 

There  was  also  a  great  deal  of  trade  with  Antwerp  where 
the  Portuguese  merchants  had  a  loaja  or  exchange  as  early  as 
1386,  and  where  a  factory  was  established  in  1503.  With 
the  heads  of  this  factory,  Francisco  Brandfio  and  Rodrigo 
Ruy  de  Almada,  Albert  Diirer  was  on  friendly  terms,  sending 
them  etchings  and  paintings  in  return  for  wine  and  southern 
rarities.  He  also  drew  the  portrait  of  Damiao  de  Goes,  Dom 
Manoel's  friend  and  chronicler. 

It  is  natural  enough,  therefore,  that  Flanders  should  have 
had  a  great  influence  on  Portuguese  painting,  and  indeed 
practically  all  the  pictures  in  the  country  are  either  by  Nether- 
land  masters,  painted  at  home  and  imported,  or  painted  in 
Portugal  by  artists  who  had  been  attracted  there  by  the  fame 
ot  Dom  Manoel's  wealth  and  generosity,  or  else  by  Portuguese 
pupils  sent  to  study  in  Flanders. 

During  the  seventeenth  century  all  memory  of  these 
painters  had  vanished.  Looking  at  their  work,  the  writers 
of  that  date  were  struck  by  what  seemed  to  them,  in  their 
natural  ignorance  of  Flemish  art,  a  strange  and  peculiar  style, 
and  so  attributed  them  all  to  a  certain  half-mythical  painter  of 
Vizeu  called  Vasco,  or  Grao  Vasco,  who  is  first  mentioned  in 
1630. 

Raczynski,*  in  his  letters  to  the  Berlin  Academy,  says  that 
he  had  found  Grao  Vasco's  birth  in  a  register  of  Vizeu  ;  but 

'  Raczyiivki,  l.fi  Arts  en  Portugal. 


12  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Vasco  is  not  ati  uncommon  name,  and  besides  this  child,  Vasco 
Fernandes,  was  born  in  1552 — far  too  late  to  have  painted 
any  of  the  so-called  GrSo  Vasco's  pictures. 

It  is  of  course  possible  that  some  of  the  pictures  now  at 
Vizeu  were  the  work  of  a  man  called  Vasco,  and  one  of  those 
at  Coimbra,  in  the  sacristy  of  Santa  Cruz,  is  signed  Velascus — 
which  is  only  the  Spanish  form  of  Vasco — so  that  the  legend- 
ary personage  may  have  been  evolved  from  either  or  both  of 
these,  for  it  is  scarcely  possible  that  they  can  have  been  the 
same. 

Turning  now  to  some  of  the  pictures  themselves,  there 
are  thirteen  representing  scenes  from  the  life  of  the  Virgin  in 
the  archbishop's  palace  at  Evora,  which  are  said  by  Justi,  a 
German  critic,  to  be  by  Gerhard  David.  Twelve  of  these  are 
in  a  very  bad  state  of  preservation,  but  one  is  still  worthy 
of  some  admiration.  In  the  centre  sits  the  Virgin  with  the 
Child  on  her  knee  :  four  angels  arc  in  the  air  above  her 
holding  a  wreath.  On  her  right  three  angels  are  singing,  and 
on  her  left  one  plays  an  organ  while  another  behind  blows  the 
bellows.  Below  there  are  six  other  angels,  three  on  each  side 
with  a  lily  between  them,  playing,  those  on  the  right  on  a 
violin,  a  flute,  and  a  zither,  those  on  the  left  on  a  harp,  a 
triangle,  and  a  guitar.  Once  part  of  the  cathedral  reredos, 
it  was  taken  down  when  the  new  Capella  Mor  was  built  in  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Another  Netherlander  who  painted  at  Evora  was  Frey 
Carlos,  who  came  to  Espinheiro  close  by  in  1507.  Several 
of  his  works  are  in  the  Museum  at  Lisbon.' 

When  Dom  Manoel  was  enriching  the  old  Templar  church 
at  Thomar  with  gilding  and  with  statues  of  saints,  he  also 
caused  large  paintings  to  be  placed  round  the  outer  wall. 
Several  still  remain,  but  most  have  perished,  either  during  the 
French  invasion  or  during  the  eleven  years  after  the  expulsion 
of  the  monks  in  1834  when  the  church  stood  open  for  any  one 
to  go  in  and  do  what  harm  he  liked.  Some  also,  including  the 
'Raising  of  Lazarus,'  the 'Entry  into  Jerusalem,'  the  'Resurrec- 
tion,' and  the  '  Centurion,'  are  now  in  Lisbon.  Four — the 
'Nativity,'  the  'Visit  of  the  Magi,'  the  'Annunciation,'  and  a 
'Virgin  and  Child' — are  known  to  have  been  given  by  Dom 

'  These  are  the  '  Annunciation,'  the  '  Risen  Lord  appearing  to  His  Mother,'  the 
'Ascension,'  the  '  Assumption,'  the  '  Good  Shepherd,'  and  perhaps  a  '  Pentecost '  and  a 
'  Nativity.' 


INTRODUCTION  13 

Manoel  ;  twenty  others,  including  the  four  now  at  Lisbon,  are 
spoken  of  by  Raczynski  in  1843/  ^"^  some  at  least  of  these, 
as  well  as  the  angels  holding  the  emblems  of  the  Passion,  who 
stand  above  the  small  arches  of  the  inner  octagon,  may  have 
been  painted  by  Johannes  Dralia  of  Bruges,  who  died  and 
was  buried  at  Thomar  in  1504.^ 

Also  at  Thomar,  but  in  the  parish  church  of  Sao  Joao 
Baptista,  are  some  pictures  ascribed  by  Justi  to  a  pupil  of 
Qiientin  Matsys.  Now  it  is  known  that  a  Portuguese  called 
EJuard  became  a  pupil  of  IVIatsys  in  1 504,  and  four  years 
later  a  Vrejmeester  of  the  guild.  So  perhaps  they  may  be  by 
this  Eduard  or  by  some  fellow-pupil. 

The  Jesus  Church  at  Setubal,  built  by  Justa  Rodrigues, 
Dom  Manoel's  nurse,  has  fifteen  paintings  in  incongruous  gilt 
frames  and  hung  high  up  on  the  north  wall  of  the  church, 
which  also  have  something  of  the  same  style.^ 

More  interesting  than  these  are  two  pictures  in  the  sacristy 
of  Santa  Cruz  at  Coimbra,  an  '  Ecce  Homo '  and  the  '  Day  of 
Pentecost.'  It  is  the  '  Pentecost '  which  is  signed  Velascus,  and 
in  it  the  Apostles  in  an  inner  room  are  seen  through  an 
arcade  of  three  arches  like  a  chapter-house  entrance.  Perhaps 
once  part  of  the  great  reredos,  tiiis  picture  has  suffered  terribly 
from  neglect ;  but  it  must  once  have  been  a  fine  work,  and 
the  way  in  which  the  Apostles  in  the  inner  room  are  separ- 
ated by  the  arcade  from  the  two  spectators  is  particularly 
successful. 

in  Oporto  there  exists  at  least  one  good  picture,  '  The 
Fountain  of  Mercy,'  now  in  the  board-room  of  the  Miseri- 
cordia,*  but  painted  to  be  the  reredos  of  the  chapel  of  Sao 
Thiago  in  the  Se  where  the  brotherhood  was  founded  by 
Dom  Manoel  in  1499.     (Fig-  3-) 

In  the  centre  above,  between  St.  John  and  the  Virgin, 
stands  a  crucifix  from  which  blood  flows  down  to  fill  a  white 
marble  well. 

Below,  on  one  side  there   kneels  Dom  Manoel  with   his 

'  V.  Giiimarles,  A  UrJem  de  Qhristo,  p.  155. 

-  A.  Hapt,  Die  Baukunst,  etc.,  in  Portugal,  vol.  ii.  p.  36 

^  These  may  perhaps  be  hy  the  so-called  Master  of  S3o  Bento,  to  whom  are 
attributed  a  '  Visitation' — in  which  Chastity,  Poverty,  and  Humility  follow  the  Virgin 
— and  a  '  Presentation,'  both  now  in  Lisbon.  Some  paintings  in  SSo  Francisco  Evora 
seem  to  be  by  the  same  hand. 

*  Misericordia  =  the  corporation  that  owns  and  manages  all  the  hospitals,  asylums, 
and  other  charitable  institutions  in  the  town.  There  is  one  in  almost  every  town  in 
the  country. 


14  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

six  sons — Joao,  afterwards  king ;  Luis,  duke  of  Beja ;  Fernando, 
duke  of  Guarda  ;  Affonso,  afterwards  archbishop  of  Lisbon, 
with  his  cardinal's  hat  ;  Henrique,  later  cardinal  archbishop 
of  Evora,  and  then  king  ;  and  Duarte,  duke  of  Guimaraes 
and  ancestor  of  the  present  ruling  house  of  Braganza. 

On  the  other  side  are  Queen  Dona  Leonor,'  granddaughter 
of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  Dom  Manoel's  third  wife-  and  her 
two  stepdaughters.  Dona  Isabel,  the  wife  of  Charles  v.  and 
mother  of  Philip  ii.,  who  through  her  claimed  and  won  the 
throne  of  Portugal  when  his  uncle,  the  cardinal  king,  died 
in  1580,  and  Dona  Beatriz,  who  married  Charles  iii.  of 
Savoy. 

The  date  of  the  picture  is  fixed  as  between  15 18  when 
Dom  Affonso,  then  aged  nine,  received  his  cardinal's  hat,  and 
1 52 1  when  Dom  IVIanoel  died.* 

Unfortunately  the  picture  has  been  somewhat  spoiled  by 
restoration,  but  it  is  undoubtedly  a  very  fine  piece  of  work — 
especially  the  portraits  below — and  would  be  worthy  of 
admiration  anywhere,  even  in  a  country  much  richer  in  works 
of  art. 

It  has  of  course  been  attributed  to  Grao  Vasco,  but  it  is 
quite  different  from  either  the  Velascus  pictures  at  Coimbra 
or  the  paintings  at  Vizeu ;  besides,  some  of  the  beautifully 
painted  flowers,  such  as  the  columbines,  which  enrich  the  grass 
on  which  the  royal  persons  kneel,  are  not  Portuguese  flowers, 
so  that  it  is  much  more  likely  to  have  been  the  work  of  some 
one  from  Flanders. 

Equally  Flemish  are  the  pictures  at  Vizeu,  whether  any  of 
them  be  by  the  Grao  Vasco  or  not.  Tradition  has  it  that  he 
was  born  at  a  mill  not  far  off,  still  called  Moinho  do  Pintor,  the 
Painter  s  Mill,  and  that  Dom  Manoel  sent  him  to  study  in 
Italy.     Now,  wherever  the  painter  of  the  Vizeu  pictures  had 

'  she  seems  almost  too  old  to  be  Dona  Leonor  and  may  be  Dona  Maria. 

'  His  first  wife  was  Dona  Isabel,  eldest  daughter  and  heiress  to  the  Catholic  Kings. 
She  died  in  1498  leaving  an  infant  son  Dom  Miguel,  heir  to  Castile  and  Aragon  as 
well  as  to  Portugal.  He  died  two  years  later  when  Dom  Manoel  married  his  first 
wife's  sister,  Dona  Maria,  by  whom  he  had  six  sons  and  two  daughters.  She  died  In 
1517,  and  next  ye.ir  he  married  her  niece  Dona  Leonor,  sister  of  Charles  v.  and 
daughter  of  Mad  Juana.  She  had  at  first  been  betrothed  to  his  eldest  son  Dom 
Jolo.  All  these  marriages  were  made  in  the  hope  of  succeeding  to  the  Spanish 
throne. 

'  Some  authorities  doubt  the  identification  of  the  king  and  queen.  But  there  Is 
a  distinct  likeness  between  the  figures  of  Dom  Manoel  and  his  queen  which  adorn  the 
west  door  of  the  church  at  Belem,  and  the  portrait  of  the  king  and  queen  in  this 
picture. 


The  Fountain  of  Mercy. 

MlSERlCORDIA,    Ol'ORTO. 
FroJtl  a  fhctfij^ra/h  t*y  t:.  Hitt  &•  Co.,  0/orlo. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

studied  it  can  scarcely  have  been  in  Italy,  as  they  are  all  surely 
much  nearer  to  the  Flemish  than  to  any  Italian  school. 

There  are  still  in  the  precincts  of  the  cathedral  some 
thirty-one  pictures  of  very  varied  merit,  and  not  all  by 
the  same  hand.  Of  these  there  are  fourteen  in  the  chapter- 
house, a  room  opening  off"  the  upper  cloister.  They  are  all 
scenes  from  the  life  of  Our  Lord  from  the  Annunciation  to 
the  day  of  Pentecost.  Larger  than  any  of  these  is  a  damaged 
'Crucifixion'  in  the  Jesus  Chapel  under  the  chapter-house.  The 
painting  is  full,  perhaps  too  full,  of  movement  and  of  figures. 
Besides  the  scenes  usually  portrayed  in  a  picture  of  the 
Crucifixion,  others  are  shown  in  the  background,  Judas  hang- 
ing himself  on  one  side,  and  Joseph  of  Arimathea  and 
Nicodemus  on  the  other,  coming  out  from  Jerusalem  with 
their  spices.  Lastly,  in  the  sacristy  there  are  twelve  small 
paintings  of  the  Apostles  and  other  saints  of  no  great  merit, 
and  four  large  pictures,  'St.  Sebastian,'  the  '  Day  of  Pentecost,' 
where  the  room  is  divided  by  three  arches,  with  the  Virgin 
and  another  saint  in  the  centre,  and  six  of  the  Apostles  on 
each  side  ;  the  '  Baptism  of  Our  Lord,'  and  lastly  '  St.  Peter.' 
The  first  three  are  not  very  remarkable,  but  the  '  St.  Peter '  is 
certainly  one  of  the  finest  pictures  in  the  country,  and  is 
indeed  worthy  of  ranking  among  the  great  pictures  of  the 
world.^     (F'g-  4-) 

As  in  the  '  Day  of  Pentecost '  there  is  a  triple  division  ; 
St.  Peter's  throne  being  In  the  middle  with  an  arch  on  each 
side  open  to  show  distant  scenes.  The  throne  seems  to  be  of 
stone,  with  small  boys  and  griffins  holding  shields  charged 
with  the  Cross  Keys  on  the  arms.  On  the  canopy  two  other 
shields  supporting  triple  crowns  flank  an  arch  whose  classic 
ornaments  and  large  shell  are  more  Italian  than  is  any  other 
part  of  the  painting.  On  the  throne  sits  St.  Peter  pontifically 
robed,  and  with  the  triple  crown  on  his  head.  His  right  hand 
is  raised  in  blessing,  and  in  his  left  he  holds  one  very  long  key 
while  he  keeps  a  book  open  upon  his  knee. 

The  cope  Is  of  splendid  gold  brocade  of  a  fine  Gothic 
pattern,  with  orfreys  or  borders  richly  embroidered  with 
figures  of  saints,  and  is  fastened  In  front  by  a  great  square 
gold  and  jewelled  morse.  All  the  draperies  are  very  finely 
modelled  and  richly  coloured,  but  finest  of  all  Is  St.   Peter's 

'  It  lias  been  reproduced  by  the  Anin<lel  Society,  but  the  copyist  has  entirely 
missed  the  splendid  solemnity  ot  St.  Peter's  tace. 


1 6  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

face,  solemn  and  stern  and  yet  kindly,  without  any  of  that 
pride  and  arrogance  which  would  seem  but  natural  to  the 
wearer  of  such  vestments  ;  it  is,  with  its  grey  hair  and  short 
grey  beard,  rather  the  face  of  the  fisherman  of  Galilee  than 
that  of  a  Pope. 

Through  the  arches  to  the  right  and  left  above  a  low  wall 
are  seen  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  his  ministry.  On  the 
one  side  he  is  leaving  his  boat  and  his  nets  to  become  a  fisher 
of  men,  and  on  the  other  he  kneels  before  the  vision  of  Our 
Lord,  when  fleeing  from  Rome  he  met  Him  at  the  place  now 
called  '  Quo  Vadis '  on  the  Appian  way,  and  so  was  turned 
back  to  meet  his  martyrdom. 

Fortunately  this  painting  has  suffered  from  no  restoration, 
and  is  still  wonderfully  clean,  but  the  wood  on  which  it  is 
painted  has  split  rather  badly  in  places,  one  large  crack  running 
from  top  to  bottom  just  beyond  the  throne  on  St.  Peter's 
right. 

This  '  St.  Peter,'  then,  is  entirely  Flemish  in  the  painting 
of  the  drapery  and  of  the  scenes  behind  ;  especially  of  the 
turreted  Gothic  walls  of  Rome.  The  details  of  the  throne 
may  be  classic,  but  French  renaissance  forms  were  first  intro- 
duced into  the  country  at  Belem  in  1517,  just  the  time  when 
the  cathedral  here  was  being  built  by  Bishop  Dom  Diogo 
Ortiz  de  Vilhegas.  This,  and  the  other  pictures  in  the 
sacristy,  were  doubtless  once  parts  of  the  great  reredos,  which 
would  not  be  put  up  till  the  church  was  quite  finished,  and  so 
may  not  have  been  painted  till  some  time  after  1520,  or  even 
later.  Already  in  1522  much  renaissance  work  was  being 
done  at  Coimbra,  not  far  off,  so  it  is  possible  that  the  painter 
of  these  pictures  may  have  adopted  his  classic  detail  from 
what  he  may  have  seen  there. 

It  is  worth  noting,  too,  that  preserved  in  the  sacristy  at 
Vizeu  there  is,  or  was,^  a  cope  so  like  that  worn  by  St.  Peter, 
that  the  painting  must  almost  certainly  have  been  copied 
from  it. 

We  may  therefore  conclude  that  these  pictures  are  the 
work  of  some  one  who  had  indeed  studied  abroad,  probably  at 
Antwerp,  but  who  worked  at  home. 

Not  only  to  paint  religious  pictures  and  portraits  did 
Flemish  artists  come  to  Portugal.     One  at  least,  Antonio  de 

'  See '  Portuguese  School  of  Painting,'  by  J.  C.  Robinson,  in  the  Fine  Arts  i^arterly 
of  1866. 


St.  rirniF. 

In   nil-.  C.viiiEDRAi.  Sacristy. 

Viziu'. 


INTRODUCTION  17 

Hollanda,  was  famous  for  his  illuminations.  He  lived  and 
worked  at  Evora,  and  is  said  by  his  son  Francisco  to  have 
been  the  first  in  Portugal  '  to  make  known  a  pleasing  manner 
of  painting  in  black  and  white,  superior  to  all  processes  known 
in  other  countries.'  ^ 

When  the  convent  of  Thomar  was  being  finished  by  Dom 
Joao  III.,  some  large  books  were  in  November  1533  sent  on 
a  mule  to  Antonio  at  Evora  to  be  illuminated.  Two  of  these 
books  were  finished  and  paid  for  in  February  1535,  when  he 
received  63^795  or  about  _;^i5.  The  books  were  bound  at 
Evora  for  4§ooo  or  sixteen  shillings. 

By  the  end  of  the  next  year  a  Psalter  was  finished  which 
cost  54$6o5  or  £12,  at  the  rate  of  6$ooo,  ^i,  6s.  8d.  for 
each  of  four  large  headings,  forty  illuminated  letters  with 
vignettes  at  2s.  2d.  each,  a  hundred  and  fifteen  without  vignettes 
at  fivepence-halfpenny,  two  hundred  and  three  in  red,  gold, 
and  blue  at  fourpence-farthing,  eighty-four  drawn  in  black  at 
twopence,  and  2846  small  letters  at  the  beginning  of  each 
verse  at  less  than  one  farthing.  Next  March  this  Psalter 
was  brought  back  to  Thomar  on  a  mule  whose  hire  was  two 
sliillings  and  twopence — a  sum  small  enough  for  a  journey  of 
well  over  a  hundred  miles,*  but  which  may  help  us  the  better 
to  estimate  the  value  of  the  money  paid  to  Antonio.* 

Church  Plate. 

A  very  great  part  of  the  church  plate  of  Portugal  has 
long  since  disappeared,  for  few  chapters  had  the  foresight  to 
hide  all  that  was  most  valuable  when  Soult  began  his  devastat- 
ing march  from  the  north,  and  so  he  and  his  men  were  able 
to  encumber  their  retreat  with  cartloads  of  the  most  beautiful 
gold  and  silver  ornaments. 

Yet  a  good  deal  has  survived,  either  because  it  was  hidden 
away  as  at  Guimaraes  or  at  Coimbra — where  it  is  said  to  have 
been  only  found  lately — or  because,  as  at  Evora,  it  lay  apart 
from  the  course  of  this  famous  plunderer. 

The   richest   treasuries   at    the    present   day   are    those    of 

'  Vieira  GuimarSes,  A  Ordem  dt  Chritto,  p.  1 50. 

>  Ibid.,  p.  157-.. 

'  Carriage  hire  is  still  cheap  in  Portugal,  for  in  1904  only  6S000  was  paid  for  a 
carriage  from  Thomar  to  Leiria,  a  distance  of  over  thirty-five  miles,  though  the  driver 
anil  horses  had  to  stay  at  Leiria  all  night  and  return  next  day.  6§ooo  v»as  then 
barely  over  twenty  shillings. 

B 


i8  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Nossa  Senhora  da  Oliveira  at  Guimaraes,  and  of  the  Ses  at 
Braga,  at  Coimbra,  and  at  Evora. 

A  silver-gilt  chalice  and  a  pastoral  staff  of  the  twelfth 
century  in  the  sacristy  at  Braga  are  among  the  oldest  pieces 
of  plate  in  the  country.  The  chalice  is  about  five  inches  high. 
The  cup,  ornamented  with  animals  and  leaves,  stands  on  a 
plain  base  inscribed,  '  In  nme  Dini  Menendus  Gundisaluis  de 
Tuda  domna  sum.'  It  is  called  the  chalice  of  Sao  Giraldo, 
and  is  supposed  to  have  belonged  to  that  saint,  who  as  arch- 
bishop of  Braga  baptized  Affonso  Henriques. 

The  staff  of  copper-gilt  is  in  the  form  of  a  snake  with  a 
cross  in  its  mouth,  and  though  almost  certainly  of  the  twelfth 
century  is  said  to  have  been  found  in  the  tomb  of  Santo 
Ovidio,  the  third  archbishop  of  the  see. 

Another  very  fine  chalice  of  the  same  date  is  in  the 
treasury  at  Coimbra.  Here  the  round  cup  is  enriched  by  an 
arcade,  under  each  arch  of  which  stands  a  saint,  while  on  the 
base  are  leaves  and  medallions  with  angels.  It  is  inscribed, 
'  Geda  Menendis  me  fecit  in  onore  sci.  Michaelis  e.  mclxxxx.', 
that  is  A.D.  1 152. 

It  was  no  doubt  given  by  Dom  Miguel,  who  ruled  the  see 
from  1 162  to  1176  and  who  spent  so  much  on  the  old  catliedral 
and  on  its  furniture.  For  him  Master  Ptolomeu  made  silver 
altar  fronts,  and  the  goldsmith  Felix  a  jug  and  basin  for  the 
service  of  the  altar.  He  also  had  a  gold  chalice  made 
weighing  4  marks,  probably  the  one  made  by  Geda 
Menendis,  and  a  gold  cross  to  enclose  some  pieces  of  the 
Holy  Sepulchre  and  two  pieces  of  the  True  Cross. 

At  Guimaraes  the  chalice  of  Sao  Torquato  is  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  The  cup  is  quite  plain  and  small,  but  on 
the  wide-spreading  base  are  eight  enamels  of  Our  Lady  and  of 
seven  of  the  Apostles. 

The  finest  of  all  the  objects  in  the  Guimaraes  treasury  is 
the  reredos,  taken  by  Dom  Joao  i.  from  the  Spanish  king's 
tent  after  the  victory  of  Aljubarrota,  and  one  of  the  angels 
which  once  went  with  it. 

The  same  king  also  gave  to  the  small  church  of  Sao 
Miguel  a  silver  processional  cross,  all  embossed  with  oak 
leaves,  and  ending  in  fleurs-de-lys,  which  rises  from  two 
superimposed  octagons,  covered  with  Gothic  ornament. 

Another  beautiful  cross  now  at  Coimbra  has  a  '  Virgin  and 
Child  '  in  the  centre  under  a  rich  canopy,  and  enamels  of  the 


INTRODUCTION  19 

four  Evangelists  on  the  arms,  while  the  rest  of  the  surface 
including  the  foliated  ends  is  covered  with  exquisitely  pierced 
flowing  tracery.     (Fig.  5.) 

Earlier  are  the  treasures  which  once  belonged  the  Queen 
St.  Isabel  who  died  in  1327,  and  which  are  still  preserved  at 
Coimbra.  These  include  a  beautiful  and  simple  cross  of  agate 
and  silver,  a  curious  reliquary  made  of  a  branch  of  coral 
with  silver  mountings,  her  staff  as  abbess  of  St.  Clara,  shaped 
like  the  cross  of  an  Eastern  bishop,  and  with  heads  of  animals 
at  the  ends  of  the  arms,  and  a  small  ark-shaped  reliquary  of 
silver  and  coral  now  set  on  a  high  renaissance  base. 

But  nearly  all  the  surviving  church  plate  dates  from  the 
time  of  Dom  Manoel  or  his  son. 

To  Braga  Archbishop  Diogo  de  Souza  gave  a  splendid 
silver-gilt  chalice  in  1509.  Here  the  cup  is  adorned  above 
by  six  angels  holding  emblems  of  the  Passion,  and  below  by 
six  others  holding  bells.  Above  them  runs  an  inscription. 
Hie  est  calix  sanguinis  mei  novi  et  eter.  The  stem  is  entirely 
covered  with  most  elaborate  canopy  work,  with  six  Apostles 
in  niches,  while  on  the  base  are  five  other  Apostles  in  relief, 
the  archbishop's  arms,  and  six  pieces  of  enamel. 

Very  similar  is  a  splendid  chalice  in  the  Misericordia  at 
Oporto,  probably  of  about  the  same  date,  and  two  at  Coimbra. 
In  both  of  these  the  cup  is  embossed  with  angels  and  leafage 
— in  one  the  angels  hold  bells — and  the  stem  is  covered 
with  tabernacle  work.  On  the  base  of  the  one  is  a  peta 
with  mourning  angels  and  other  emblems  of  the  Passion 
in  relief,  while  that  of  the  other  is  enriched  with  filigree 
work.    (Fig.  6.) 

Another  at  Guimariies  given  by  Fernando  Alvares  is  less 
well  proportioned  and  less  beautiful. 

So  far  the  architectural  details  of  the  chalices  mentioned 
have  been  entirely  national,  but  there  is  a  custodia  at  Evora, 
whose  interlacing  canopy  work  seems  to  betray  the  influence 
of  the  Netherlands.  The  base  of  this  custodia^  or  monstrance, 
in  the  shape  of  a  chalice  seems  later  than  the  upper  part, 
which  is  surmounted  by  a  rounded  canopy  whose  hanging 
cusps  and  traceried  panels  strongly  recall  the  Flemish  work 
of  the  great  rercdos  in  the  old  cathedral  at  Coimbra. 

Even  more  Flemish  are  a  pastoral  staff  made  for  Cardinal 

•  It   was   the   gift   of  Bishop   AflFonso   of   Portugal    who    held   the    see    from 

I48J  to   I5Z2. 


20  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Henrique,  son  of  Dom  Manoel  and  afterwards  king,  a  mon- 
strance or  reliquary  at  Coimbra,'  and  another  at  Guimaraes.^ 

Much  splendid  plate  was  also  given  to  Santa  Cruz  at 
Coimbra  by  Dom  Manoel,  but  all — candlesticks,  lamps,  crosses 
and  a  monstrance — have  since  vanished,  sent  to  Gou  in  India 
when  the  canons  in  the  eighteenth  century  wanted  something 
more  fashionable. 

Belem  also  possessed  splendid  treasures,  among  them  a 
cross  of  silver  filigree  and  jewels  which  is  still  preserved. 

Much  filigree  work  is  still  done  in  the  north,  where  the 
young  women  invest  their  savings  in  great  golden  hearts  or  in 
beautiful  earrings,  though  now  bunches  of  coloured  flowers 
on  huge  lockets  of  coppery  gold  are  much  more  sought 
after. 

Curiously,  many  of  the  most  famous  goldsmiths  of  the 
sixteenth  century  were  Jews.  Among  them  was  the  Vicente 
family,  a  member  of  which  made  a  fine  monstrance  for  Belem 
in  1 505,  and  which,  like  other  families,  was  expelled  from 
Coimbra  to  Guimaraes  between  the  years  1532  and  1537,  and 
doubtless  wrought  some  of  the  beautiful  plate  for  which  the 
treasury  of  Nossa  Senhora  is  famous. 

The  seventeenth  century,  besides  smaller  works,  has  left 
the  great  silver  tomb  of  the  Holy  Queen  St.  Isabel  in  the 
new  church  of  Santa  Clara.  Made  by  order  of  Bishop  Dom 
Affonso  de  Castello  Branco  in  16 14,  it  weighs  over  170  lbs., 
has  at  the  sides  and  ends  Corinthian  columns,  leaving  panels 
between  them  with  beautifully  chased  framing,  and  a  sloping 
top. 

Later  and  less  worthy  of  notice  are  the  coffins  of  the  two 
first  sainted  abbesses  of  the  convent  of  Lorvao,  near  Coimbra, 
in  which  elaborate  acanthus  scrolls  in  silver  are  laid  over  red 
velvet. 

Tile  Work  or  Azulejos. 

The  Moors  occupied  most  of  what  is  now  Portugal  for  a 
considerable  length  of  time.  The  extreme  north  they  held 
for  rather  less  than  two  hundred  years,  the  extreme  south  for 
more  than  five  hundred.  This  occupation  by  a  governing 
class,  so  different  in  religion,    in   race,  and  in   customs  from 

'  This  monstrance  was  given  by  Bishop  Dom  Jorge  d'Almeida  who  died  in  15+3, 
having  governed  the  see  for  sixty-two  years.     (Fig.  7.) 
'  Presented  by  Canon  Gon^alo  Anncs  in  153+. 


'      '< 


^  d 


INTRODUCTION  21 

those  they  ruled,  has  naturally  had  a  strong  influence,  not  only 
on  the  language  of  Portugal,  but  also  on  the  art.  Though 
there  survive  no  important  Moorish  buildings  dating  from 
before  the  reconquest — for  the  so-called  mosque  at  Cintra  is 
certainly  a  small  Christian  church — many  were  built  after  it 
for  Christians  by  Moorish  workmen. 

These,  as  well  as  the  Arab  ceilings,  or  those  derived  there- 
from, will  be  described  later,  but  here  must  be  mentioned  the 
tilework,  the  most  universally  distributed  legacy  of  the 
Eastern  people  who  once  held  the  land.  There  is  scarcely  a 
church,  certainly  scarcely  one  of  any  size  or  importance  which 
even  in  the  far  north  has  not  some  lining  or  dado  of  tiles, 
while  others  are  entirely  covered  with  them  from  floor  to 
ceiling  or  vault. 

The  word  azulejo  applied  to  these  tiles  is  derived  from 
the  Arabic  azzallaja  or  azulaich,  meaning  smooth,  or  else 
through  the  Arabic  from  a  Low  Latin  word  azuroticus  used  by 
a  Gaulish  writer  of  the  fifth  century  to  describe  mosaic  ^  and 
not  from  the  word  azul  or  blue.  At  first  each  diff'erent  piece 
or  colour  in  a  geometric  pattern  was  cut  before  firing  to  the 
shape  required,  and  the  many  different  pieces  when  coloured 
and  fired  were  put  together  so  as  to  form  a  regular  mosaic. 
This  method  of  making  tiles,  though  soon  given  up  in  most 
places  as  being  too  troublesome,  is  still  employed  at  Tetuan 
in  Morocco,  where  in  caves  near  the  town  the  whole  process 
may  still  be  seen ;  for  there  the  mixing  of  the  clay,  the 
cutting  out  of  the  small  pieces,  the  colouring  and  the  firing 
are  still  carried  on  in  the  old  primitive  and  traditional 
manner.^ 

Elsewhere,  though  similar  designs  long  continued  to  be 
used  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  and  are  still  used  in  Morocco, 
the  tiles  were  all  made  square,  each  tile  usually  forming  one 
quarter  of  the  pattern.  In  them  the  pattern  was  formed  by 
lines  slightly  raised  above  the  surface  of  the  tile  so  that  there 
was  no  danger  during  the  firing  of  the  colour  running  beyond 
the  place  it  was  intended  to  occupy. 

For  a  long  time,  indeed  right  up  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  scarcely  anything  but  Moorish  geometric  patterns 
seem   to   have   been    used.     Then   with  the   renaissance  their 

'  D.   Francisco   Siiiionet,   professor  of  Arabic  at   GraiiaJa.     Note  in   Pafo  Je 
Cintra,  p.  206. 

'  See  Miss  I.  Savory,  In  the  tail  of  the  Peacock. 


22  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

place  was  taken  by  other  patterns  of  infinite  variety  ;  some 
have  octagons  with  classic  mouldings  represented  in  colour, 
surrounding  radiating  green  and  blue  leaves ; '  some  more 
strictly  classical  are  not  unlike  Italian  patterns  ;  some  again 
are  more  naturalistic,  while  in  others  the  pattern,  though  not 
of  the  old  geometric  form,  is  still  Moorish  in  design. 

Together  with  the  older  tiles  of  Moorish  pattern  plain 
tiles  were  often  made  in  which  each  separate  tile,  usually 
square,  but  at  times  rhomboidal  or  oblong,  was  of  one  colour, 
and  such  tiles  were  often  used  from  quite  early  times  down  at 
least  to  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

More  restricted  in  use  were  the  beautiful  embossed  tiles 
found  in  the  palace  at  Cintra,  in  which  each  has  on  it  a  raised 
green  vine-leaf  and  tendril,  or  more  rarely  a  dark  bunch  of 
grapes. 

Towards  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  Moorish 
technique  of  tilemaking,  with  its  patterns  marked  off  by 
raised  edges,  began  to  go  out  of  fashion,  and  instead  the 
patterns  were  outlined  in  dark  blue  and  painted  on  to  flat 
tiles.  About  the  same  time  large  pictures  painted  on  tiles 
came  into  use,  at  first,  as  in  the  work  of  Francisco  de  Mattos, 
with  scenes  more  or  less  in  their  natural  colours,  and  later  in 
the  second  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eighteenth  in  blue  on  a  white  ground. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  blue  seems  to 
have  usurped  the  place  of  all  other  colours,  and  from  that 
time,  especially  in  or  near  Oporto,  tiles  were  used  to  mask  all 
the  exterior  rubble  walls  of  houses  and  churches,  even  spires 
or  bulbous  domes  being  sometimes  so  covered. 

Now  in  Oporto  nearly  all  the  houses  are  so  covered, 
usually  with  blue-and-white  tiles,  though  on  the  more  modern 
they  may  be  embossed  and  pale  green  or  yellow,  sometimes 
even  brown.  But  all  the  tiles  from  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  to  the  present  day  are  marked  by  the 
poverty  of  the  colour  and  of  the  pattern,  and  still  more  by 
the  hard  shiny  glaze,  which  may  be  technically  more  perfect, 
but  is  infinitely  inferior  in  beauty  to  the  duller  and  softer 
glaze  of  the  previous  centuries. 

When  square  tiles  were  used  they  were  throughout  singu- 

'  A  common  pattern  found  at  Bacalhoa,  near  Setubal,  in  the  Museum  at  Oporto, 
and  in  the  Corporation  Galleries  of  Glasgow,  where  it  is  said  to  have  come  from 
Valencia  in  Spain. 


INTRODUCTION 


23 


larly  uniform  in  size,  being  a  little  below  or  a  little  above  five 
inches  square.  The  ground  is  always  white  with  a  slightly 
blueish  tinge.  In  the  earlier  tiles  of  Arab  pattern  the  colours 
are  blue,  green,  and  brown  ;  very  rarely,  and  that  in  some  of 
the  oldest  tiles,  the  pattern  may  be  in  black  ;  yellow  is  scarcely 
ever  seen.  In  those  of  Moorish  technique  but  Western 
pattern,  the  most  usual  colours  are  blue,  green,  yellow  and, 
more  rarely,  brown. 

Later  still  in  the  flat  tiles  scarcely  anything  but  blue  and 
yellow  are  used,  though  the  blue  and  the  yellow  may  be  of 
two  shades,  light  and  dark,  golden  and  orange.  Brown  and 
green  have  almost  disappeared,  and,  as  was  said  above,  so  did 
yellow  at  last,  leaving  nothing  but  blue  and  white. 

Although  there  are  few  buildings  which  do  not  possess 
some  tiles,  the  oldest,  those  of  Moorish  design,  are  rare,  and, 
the  best  collection  is  to  be  found  in  the  old  palace  at  Cintra, 
of  which  the  greater  part  was  built  by  Dom  Joao  i.  towards 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth 
century. 

Formerly  all  the  piers  of  the  old  cathedral  of  Coimbra 
were  covered  with  such  tiles,  but  they  have  lately  been  swept 
away,  and  only  those  left  which  line  the  aisle  walls. 

At  Cintra  there  are  a  few  which  it  is  supposed  may  have 
belonged  to  the  palace  of  the  Walls,  or  perhaps  it  would  be 
safer  to  say  to  the  palace  before  it  was  rebuilt  by  Dom  Joao. 
These  are  found  round  a  door  leading  out  of  a  small  room, 
called  from  the  mermaids  on  the  ceiling  the  Sa!a  das  Sereias. 
The  pointed  door  is  enclosed  in  a  square  frame  by  a  band 
of  narrow  dark  and  light  tiles  with  white  squares  between, 
arranged  in  checks,  while  in  the  spandrels  is  a  very  beautiful 
arabesque  pattern  in  black  on  a  white  ground. 

Of  slightly  later  date  are  the  azulejos  of  the  so-called 
Sala  dos  Arabes,  where  the  walls  to  a  height  of  about  six  feet 
are  lined  with  blue,  green,  and  white  tiles,  the  green  being 
square  and  the  other  rhomboidal.  Over  the  doors,  which 
are  pointed,  a  square  framing  is  carried  up,  with  tiles  of 
various  patterns  in  the  spandrels,  and  above  these  frames,  as 
round  the  whole  walls,  runs  a  very  beautiful  cresting  two  tiles 
high.  On  the  lower  row  are  interlacing  semicircles  in  high 
relief  forming  foliated  cusps  and  painted  blue.  In  the  span- 
drels formed  by  the  interlacing  of  the  semicircles  are  three 
green  leaves  growing  out  from  a  brown  flower  ;  in  short  the 


24         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

design  is  exactly  like  a  Gothic  corbel  table  such  as  was  used  on 
Dom  Joio's  church  at  Batalha  turned  upside  down,  and  so 
probably  dates  from  his  time.  On  the  second  row  of  tiles  there 
are  alternately  a  tall  blue  fleur-de-lys  with  a  yellosv  centre,  and 
a  lower  bunch  of  leaves,  three  blue  at  the  top  and  one  yellow 
on  each  side  ;  the  ground  throughout  is  white.     (Fig.  8.) 

Also  of  Dom  Joao's  time  are  the  tiles  in  the  Sala  das 
Pegas,  where  they  are  of  the  regular  Moorish  pattern — blue, 
green  and  brown  on  a  white  ground,  and  where  four  go  to 
make  up  the  pattern.  The  cresting  of  green  scrolls  and  vases 
is  much  later. 

Judging  from  the  cresting  in  the  dining-room  or  Sala  de 
Jantar,  where,  except  that  the  ground  is  brown  relieved  by 
large  white  stars,  and  that  the  cusps  are  green  and  not  blue, 
the  design  is  exactly  the  same  as  in  the  Sala  dos  Arabes^  the 
tiles  there  must  be  at  least  as  old  as  these  crestings  ;  for 
though  older  tiles  might  be  given  a  more  modern  cresting, 
the  reverse  is  hardly  likely  to  occur,  and  if  as  old  as  the 
crestings  they  may  possibly  belong  to  Dom  Joao's  time,  or  at 
least  to  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century.     (Fig.  9.) 

These  dining-room  tiles,  and  also  those  in  the  neighbour- 
ing Sala  das  Sereias,  are  among  the  most  beautiful  in  the 
palace.  The  ground  is  as  usual  white,  and  on  each  is  em- 
bossed a  beautiful  green  vine-leaf  with  branches  and  tendril. 
Tiles  similar,  but  with  a  bunch  of  grapes  added,  line  part  of 
the  stair  in  the  picturesque  little  Pateo  de  Diana  near  at  hand, 
and  form  the  top  of  the  back  of  the  tiled  bench  and  throne  in 
the  Sala  do  Conselho,  once  an  open  veranda.  Most  of  this 
bench  is  covered  with  tiles  of  Moorish  design,  but  on  the 
front  each  is  stamped  with  an  armillary  sphere  in  which  the 
axis  is  yellow,  the  lines  of  the  equatjr  and  tropics  green,  and 
the  rest  blue.  These  one  would  certainly  take  to  be  of 
Dom  Manoel's  time,  for  the  armillary  sphere  was  his  emblem, 
but  they  are  said  to  be  older. 

Most  of  the  floor  tiles  are  of  unglazed  red,  except  some  in 
the  chapel,  which  are  supposed  to  have  formed  the  paving  of 
the  original  mosque,  and  some  in  an  upper  room,  worn 
smooth  by  the  feet  of  Dom  Afl^onso  vi.,  who  was  imprisoned 
there  for  many  a  year  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

When  Dom  Manoel  was  making  his  great  addition  to  the 
palace  in  the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  he  lined  the 
walls  of  the  Sala  dos  Cysnes  with  tiles  forming  a  check  of  green 


FIG.  8. 

Sai.a  DOS  Arabes. 
Palack,  Cintra. 

From  a  fihotffgrti^h  by  I..  Oratn,  Cintra. 


FIC.  9. 

Dining-room,  Old  1'ai.ack. 
Cintra. 

Fri^ttl  tj  fflCtO£fVfh   l^y   I      I'-.t'it     t'intr.w 


INTRODUCTION  25 

and  white.  These  are  carried  up  over  the  doors  and  windows, 
and  in  places  have  a  curious  cresting  of  green  cones  like 
Moorish  battlements,  and  of  castles. 

Much  older  are  the  tiles  in  the  central  Pateo,  also  green 
and  white,  but  forming  a  very  curious  pattern. 

Of  later  tiles  the  palace  also  has  some  good  examples,  such 
as  the  hunting  scenes  with  which  the  walls  of  the  Sala  Jos 
Brazdes  were  covered  probably  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  during  the  reign  of  Dom  Pedro  11. 

The  palace  at  Cintra  may  possess  the  finest  collection  of 
tiles,  Moorish  both  in  technique  and  in  pattern,  but  it  has  few 
or  none  of  the  second  class  where  the  technique  remains 
Moorish  but  the  design  is  Western.  To  see  such  tiles  in  their 
greatest  quantity  and  variety  one  must  cross  the  Tagus  and 
visit  the  Quinta  de  Bacalhoa  not  far  from  Setubal. 

There  a  country  house  had  been  built  in  the  last  quarter  of 
the  fifteenth  century  by  Dona  Brites,  the  mother  of  Dom 
Manoel.'  The  house,  with  melon-roofed  corner  turrets, 
simple  square  windows  and  two  loggias,  has  an  almost  classic 
appearance,  and  if  built  in  its  present  shape  in  the  time  of 
Dona  Brites,  must  be  one  of  the  earliest  examples  of  the 
renaissance  in  the  country.  It  has  therefore  been  thought 
that  Bacalhoa  may  be  the  mysterious  palace  built  for  Dom 
Joao  II.  by  Andrea  da  Sansovino,  which  is  mentioned  by 
V'asari,  but  of  which  all  trace  has  been  lost.  However,  it 
seems  more  likely  that  it  owes  its  classic  windows  to  the  younger 
Affonso  de  Albuquerque,  son  of  the  great  Indian  Viceroy, 
who  bought  the  property  in  1528.  The  house  occupies  one 
corner  of  a  square  garden  enclosure,  while  opposite  it  is  a 
large  square  tank  with  a  long  pavilion  at  its  southern  side.  A 
path  runs  along  the  southern  wall  of  the  garden  leading  from 
the  house  to  the  tank,  and  all  the  way  along  this  wall  are  tiled 
seats  and  tubs  for  orange-trees.  It  is  on  these  tubs  and  seats 
th.it  the  greatest  variety  of  tiles  are  found. 

It  would  be  quite  impossible  to  give  any  detailed  descrip- 
tion of  these  tiles,  the  patterns  are  so  numerous  and  so  varied. 
In  some  the  pattern  is  quite  classical,  in  others  it  still  shows 
traces  of  Moorish  influence,  while  in  some  again  the  design  is 
entirely  naturalistic.  This  is  especially  the  case  in  a  pattern 
used  in  the  lake  pavilion,  where  eight  large  green  leaves  are 
arranged  pointing  to  one  centre,  and  four  smaller  brown  ones 

'  Joaquim  Rasteiro,  Patacio  e  S^uiiita  de  Bacalhoa  em  Azcililo.     Libbon,  1895. 


26  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

to  another,  and  in  a  still  more  beautiful  pattern  used  on  an 
orange  tub  in  the  garden,  where  yellow  and  dark  flowers, 
green  and  blue  leaves  are  arranged  in  a  circle  round  eight 
beautiful  fruits  shaped  like  golden  pomegranates  with  blue 
seeds  set  among  green  leaves  and  stalks. 

But  these  thirty  or  more  patterns  do  not  exhaust  the  interest 
of  the  Quinta.  There  are  also  some  very  fine  tile  pictures, 
especially  one  of  '  Susanna  and  the  Elders,'  and  a  fragment  of 
the  'Quarrel  of  the  Lapithas  and  Centaurs'  in  the  pavilion  over- 
looking the  tank.  'Susanna  and  the  Elders '  is  particularly 
good,  and  is  interesting  in  that  on  a  small  temple  in  the  back- 
ground is  the  date  1565.'  Rather  later  seem  the  five  river 
gods  in  the  garden  loggia  of  the  house,  for  their  strapwork 
frames  of  blue  and  yellow  can  hardly  be  as  early  as  1565  ; 
besides,  a  fragment  with  similar  details  has  on  it  the  letters 
TOS,  no  doubt  the  end  of  the  signature  '  Francisco  Mattos,' 
who  also  signed  some  beautiful  tiles  in  the  church  of  Sao 
Roque  at  Lisbon  in  1584. 

It  is  known  that  the  entrance  to  the  convent  of  the  Madre 
tie  Deus  at  Lisbon  was  ornamented  by  Dom  Manoel  with  some 
della  Robbia  reliefs,  two  of  which  are  now  in  the  Museum. 

On  the  west  side  of  the  tank  at  Bacalhoa  is  a  wall  nearly  a 
hundred  feet  long,  and  framed  with  tiles.  In  the  centre  the 
water  flows  into  the  tank  from  a  dolphin  above  which  is  an 
empty  niche.  There  are  two  other  empty  niches,  one  in- 
scribed Tempora  lahuntur  more  fluenth  aquae,  and  the  other 
i'ivite  victuri  moneo  mors  omnibus  instat.  These  niches  stand 
between  four  medallions  of  della  Robbia  ware,  some  eighteen 
inches  across.  Two  are  heads  of  men  and  two  of  women, 
only  one  of  each  being  glazed.  The  glazed  woman's 
head  is  white,  with  yellow  hair,  a  sky-blue  veil,  and  a  loose 
reddish  garment  all  on  a  blue  ground.  All  are  beautifully 
modelled  and  are  surrounded  by  glazed  wreaths  of  fruit  and 
leaves.  These  four  must  certainly  have  come  from  the  della 
Robbia  factory  in  Florence,  for  they,  and  especially  the 
surrounding  wreaths,  are  exactly  like  what  may  be  seen  so 
often  in  North  Italy. 

Much  less  good  are  six  smaller  medallions,  four  of  which 
are  much  destroyed,  on  the  wall  leading  north  from  the  tank 
to  a  pavilion   named   the   Casa  da  India.,  so  called  from  the 

'  Columns  with  corbel  capitals  support  a  house  on  the  right.     Such  capitals  were 
'■ommon  in  Spain,  so  it  is  just  possible  that  these  tiles  may  have  been  made  in  Spain. 


INTRODUCTION  27 

beautiful  Indian  hangings  with  which  its  walls  were  covered  by 
Albuquerque.  In  them  the  modelling  is  less  good  and  the 
wreaths  are  more  conventional. 

Lastly,  between  the  tank  and  the  house  are  twelve  others, 
one  under  each  of  the  globes,  which,  flanked  by  obelisks, 
crown  the  wall.  They  are  all  of  the  same  size,  but  in  some 
the  head  and  the  blue  backing  are  not  in  one  place.  The 
wreaths  also  are  inferior  even  to  those  of  the  last  six,  though 
the  actual  heads  are  rather  better.  They  all  represent  famous 
men  of  old,  from  Alexander  the  Great  to  Nero.  Two  are 
broken  ;  that  of  Augustus  is  signed  with  what  may  perhaps  be 
read  Doiius  Vilhelmus,  '  Master  William,'  who  unfortunately 
is  otherwise  unknown. 

It  seems  impossible  now  to  tell  where  these  were  made, 
but  they  were  certainly  inspired  by  the  four  genuine  Florentine 
medallions  on  the  tank  wall,  and  if  by  a  native  artist  are  of 
great  interest  as  showing  how  men  so  skilled  in  making 
beautiful  tiles  could  also  copy  the  work  of  a  great  Italian 
school  with  considerable  success. 

Of  the  third  class  of  tiles,  those  where  the  patterns  are 
merely  painted  and  not  raised,  there  are  few  examples  at 
Bacalhoa — except  when  some  restoration  has  been  done — for 
this  manner  of  tile-painting  did  not  become  common  till  the 
next  century,  but  there  are  a  few  with  very  good  patterns  in 
the  house  itself,  and  close  by,  the  walls  of  the  church  of  Sao 
Simao  are  covered  with  excellent  examples.  These  were  put 
up  by  the  heads  of  a  brotherhood  in  1648,  and  are  almost 
exactly  the  same  as  those  in  the  church  of  Alvito  ;  even  the 
small  saintly  figures  over  the  arches  occur  in  both.  The 
pattern  of  Alvito  is  one  of  the  finest,  and  is  found  again  at 
S.intarem  in  the  church  of  the  Marvilla,  where  the  lower  tiles 
are  all  of  singular  beauty  and  splendid  colouring,  blue  and 
yellow  on  a  white  ground.  Other  beautiful  tiled  interiors  are 
those  of  the  Matriz  at  Caldas  da  Rainha,  and  at  Caminha  on 
the  Minho.  Without  seeing  these  tiled  churches  it  is  im- 
possible to  realise  how  beautiful  they  really  are,  and  how 
different  are  these  tiles  from  all  modern  ones,  whose  hard 
smooth  glaze  and  mechanical  perfection  make  them  cold  and 
anything  but  pleasing.    (Figs.  10  and  11,  frontispiece.) 

Besides  the  picture-tiles  at  Bacalhoa  there  are  some  very 
good  examples  of  similar  work  in  the  semicircular  porch 
which  surrounds  the  small  round   chapel  of  Sant'  Amroa  at 


28         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Alcantara  close  to  Lisbon.  The  chapel  was  built  in  1549, 
and  the  tiles  added  about  thirty  years  later.  Here,  as  in  the 
Dominican  nunnery  at  Elvas,  and  in  some  exquisite  framings 
and  steps  at  Bacalhoa,  the  pattern  and  architectural  details  are 
spread  all  over  the  tiles,  often  making  a  rich  framing  to  a 
bishop  or  saint.  Some  are  not  at  all  unlike  Francisco  Mattos' 
work  in  Silo  Roque,  which  is  also  well  worthy  of  notice. 

Of  the  latest  pictorial  tiles,  the  finest  are  perhaps  those  in 
the  church  of  S;lo  Jo^o  Evangelista  at  Evora,  which  tell  of 
the  life  of  San  Lorenzo  Giustiniani,  Venetian  Patriarch,  and 
which  are  signed  and  dated  'Antoninus  ab  Oliva  fecit  171 1.'* 
But  these  blue  picture-tiles  are  almost  the  commonest  of  all, 
and  were  made  and  used  up  to  the  end  of  the  century.^ 

Now  although  some  of  the  patterns  used  are  found  also 
in  Spain,  as  at  Seville  or  at  Valencia,  and  although  tiles  from 
Seville  were  u?ed  at  Thomar  by  Joao  de  Castilho,  still  it  is 
certain  that  many  were  of  home  manufacture. 

As  might  be  expected  from  the  patterns  and  technique  of 
the  oldest  tiles,  the  first  mentioned  tilers  are  Moors.'  Later 
there  were  as  many  as  thirteen  tilemakers  in  Lisbon,  and 
many  were  made  in  the  twenty-eight  ovens  of  loufa  de  Veneza, 
'  Venetian  faience.'  The  tiles  used  by  Dom  Manoel  at  Cintra 
came  from  Belem,  while  as  for  the  picture  tiles  the  novices 
of  the  order  of  Sao  Thiago  at  Palmella  formed  a  school  famous 
for  such  work. 

Indeed  it  may  be  said  that  tilework  is  the  most  charac- 
teristic feature  of  Portuguese  buildings,  and  that  to  it  many  a 
church,  otherwise  poor  and  even  mean,  owes  whatever  interest 
or  beauty  it  possesses.  Without  tiles,  rooms  like  the  Sala 
das  Sereias  or  the  Sala  dos  Arabes  would  be  plain  whitewashed 
featureless  apartments,  with  them  they  have  a  charm  and  a 
romance  not  easy  to  find  anywhere  but  in  the  East. 

'  Antonio  ab  0!iva  =  Antonio  de  Oliveira  Bemardes,  who  also  painted  the  tiles  in 
Sao  Pedro  de  Rates. 

-  E.^.  in  the  church  of  the  Misericordia  Vianna  do  Castello,  the  cloister  at  Oporto, 
the  Gra^a  Saiitarcm,  Sta.  Cruz  Coimbra,  the  Sc,  Lisbon,  and  in  many  other  places. 

'  Pa^o  de  Cintra,  Cond.  de  Sahugosa.     Lisbon,  1903. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH    29 


CHAPTER    I 

THE    EARLY     BUILDINGS    IN    THE    NORTH 

Portugal,  like  all  the  other  Christian  kingdoms  of  the 
Peninsula,  having  begun  in  the  north,  first  as  a  county  or 
march  land  subject  to  the  king  of  Galicia  or  of  Leon,  and 
later,  since  1139,  as  an  independent  kingdom,  it  is  but  natural 
to  find  nearly  all  the  oldest  buildings  in  those  parts  of  the 
country  which,  earliest  freed  from  the  Moslem  dominion, 
formed  the  original  county.  The  province  of  Entre  Minho- 
e-Douro  has  always  been  held  by  the  Portuguese  to  be  the 
most  beautiful  part  of  their  country,  and  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  anywhere  valleys  more  beautiful  than  those  of  the 
Lima,  the  Cavado,  or  the  Ave.  Except  the  mountain  range  of 
the  MarSo  which  divides  this  province  from  the  wilder  and 
drier  Tras-os-Montes,  or  the  Gerez  which  separates  the  upper 
waters  of  the  Cavado  and  of  the  Lima,  and  at  the  same  time 
forms  part  of  the  northern  frontier  of  Portugal,  the  hills  are 
nowhere  of  great  height.  They  are  all  well  covered  with 
woods,  mostly  of  pine,  and  wherever  a  piece  of  tolerably  level 
ground  can  be  found  they  are  cultivated  with  the  care  of  a 
garden.  All  along  the  valleys,  and  even  high  up  the  hill- 
sides among  the  huge  granite  boulders,  there  is  a  continuous 
succession  of  small  villages.  Many  of  these,  lying  far  from 
railway  or  highroad,  can  only  be  reached  by  narrow  and 
uneven  paths,  along  which  no  carriage  can  pass  except  the 
heavy  creaking  carts  drawn  by  the  beautiful  large  long-horned 
oxen  whose  broad  and  splendidly  carved  yokes  are  so  remark- 
able a  feature  of  the  country  lying  between  the  Vouga  and  the 
Cavado.^     In  many  of  these  villages  may  still  be  seen  churches 

'  These  yokes  are  about  4  or  5  feet  long  by  18  inches  or  2  feet  broad,  are  made  of 
walnut,  and  covered  with  the  most  intricate  pierced  patterns.  Each  parish  or  district, 
though  no  two  are  ever  exactly  alike,  has  its  own  design.  The  most  elaborate, 
which  are  also  often  painted  bright  red,  green,  anil  yellow  are  found  south  of  the 
Douro  near  Espinho.     Further  north  at  Villa  do  Conde  ihcy  are  much  less  elaborate, 


30         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

built  soon  after  the  expulsion  of  the  Moors,  and  long  before 
the  establishment  of  the  Monarchy,  Many  of  them  originally 
belonged  to  some  monastic  body.  Of  these  the  larger  part 
have  been  altered  and  spoiled  during  the  seventeenth  or 
eighteenth  centuries,  when,  after  the  expulsion  of  the  Spaniards, 
the  country  began  again  to  grow  rich  from  trade  with  the 
recovered  colony  of  Brazil.  Still  enough  remains  to  show 
that  these  old  romanesque  churches  differed  in  no  very 
striking  way  from  the  general  romanesque  introduced  into 
Northern  Spain  from  France,  except  that  as  a  rule  they  were 
smaller  and  ruder,  and  were  but  seldom  vaulted. 

That  these  early  churches  should  be  rude  is  not  surprising. 
They  are  built  of  hard  grey  granite.  When  they  were  built 
the  land  was  still  liable  to  incursions,  and  raids  from  the  south, 
such  as  the  famous  foray  of  Almansor,  who  harried  and  burned 
the  whole  land  not  sparing  even  the  shrine  of  Santiago  far 
north  in  Galicia.  Their  builders  were  still  little  more  than  a 
race  of  hardy  soldiers  with  no  great  skill  in  the  working  of 
stone.  Only  towards  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  long 
after  the  border  had  been  advanced  beyond  the  Mondego  and 
after  Coimbra  had  become  the  capital  of  a  new  county,  did  the 
greater  security  as  well  as  the  very  fine  limestone  of  the  lower 
Mondego  valley  make  it  possible  for  churches  to  be  built  at 
Coimbra  which  show  a  marked  advance  in  construction  as 
well  as  in  elaboration  of  detail.  Between  the  Mondego  and 
the  Tagus  there  are  only  four  or  five  churches  which  can  be 
called  romanesque,  and  south  of  the  Tagus  only  the 
cathedral  of  Evora,  begun  about  1186  and  consecrated  some 
eighteen  years  later,  is  romanesque,  constructively  at  least, 
though  all  its  arches  have  become  pointed. 

But  to  return  north  to  Entre  Minho-e-Douro,  where  the 

oldest   and   most   numerous    romanesque   churches   exist  and 

where  three  types  may  be  seen.     Of  these  the  simplest  and 

probably  the  oldest  is   that  of  an  aisleless  nave  with  simple 

square  chancel.      In  the  second  the  nave  has  one  or  two  aisles, 

and  at  the  end  of  these  aisles  a  semicircular  apse,  but  with  the 

chancel  still  square  :   while  in  the  third  and  latest  the  plan  has 

been  further  developed  and  enlarged,  though  even  here  the 

main  chancel  generally  still  remains  square. 

the  piercings  being  fewer  and  larger.  Nor  do  they  extend  far  up  the  Doiiro  as 
in  the  wine  country  in  Trasos-Montes  the  oxen,  darker  and  with  shorter  horns, 
pull  not  from  the  shoulder  but  from  the  forehead,  to  which  are  fastened  large  black 
leather  cushions  trimmed  with  red  wool. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH    31 

There  yet  exist,  not  far  from  Oporto,  a  considerable  number  vilkrinho. 
of  examples  of  the  first  type,  though  several  by  their  pointed 
doorways  show  that  they  actually  belong,  in  part  at  least,  to 
the  period  of  the  Transition.  One  of  the  best-preserved  is 
the  small  church  of  Villarinho,  not  far  from  Vizella  in  the 
valley  of  the  Ave.  Originally  the  church  of  a  small  monastery, 
it  has  long  been  the  parish  church  of  a  mountain  hamlet,  and 
till  it  was  lately  whitewashed  inside  had  scarcely  been  touched 
since  the  day  it  was  finished  some  time  before  the  end  of  the 
twelfth  century.  It  consists  of  a  rather  high  and  narrow  nave, 
a  square-ended  chancel,  and  to  the  west  a  lower  narthex 
nearly  as  large  as  the  chancel.  The  church  is  lit  by  very  small 
windows  which  are  indeed  mere  slits,  and  by  a  small  round 
opening  in  the  gable  above  the  narthex.'  The  narthex  is 
entered  by  a  perfectly  plain  round-headed  door  with  strong 
impost  and  drip-mould,  while  above  the  corbels  which  once 
carried  the  roof  of  a  lean-to  porch,  a  small  circle  enclosing  a 
rude  unglazed  quatrefoil  serves  as  the  only  window.  The 
door  leading  from  the  narthex  to  the  nave  is  much  more 
elaborate ;  of  four  orders  of  mouldings,  the  two  inner  are 
plain,  the  two  outer  have  a  big  roll  at  the  angle,  and  all  are 
slightly  pointed.  Except  the  outermost,  which  springs  from 
square  jambs,  they  all  stand  on  the  good  romanesque  capitals 
of  six  shafts,  four  round  and  two  octagonal.     (Fig.  12.) 

Exactly  similar  in  plan  but  without  a  narthex  is  the  sso  Miguel, 
church  of  Sao  Miguel  at  Guimaraes,  famous  as  being  the  Gmmaraes. 
church  in  which  Affonso  Henriques,  the  first  king  of  Portugal, 
was  baptized  in  iiii.  It  claims  to  have  been  the  Primaz 
or  chief  church  of  the  whole  archdiocese  of  Braga.  It  is,  like 
Villarinho,  a  small  and  very  plain  church  built  of  great  blocks 
of  granite,  with  a  nave  and  square  chancel  lit  by  narrow 
window  slits.  On  the  north  side  there  are  a  plain  square- 
headed  doorway  and  two  bold  round  arches  let  into  the  outer 
wall  over  the  graves  of  some  great  men  of  these  distant  times. 
The  drip-mould  of  one  of  these  arches  is  carved  with  a  shallow 
zigzag  ornament  which  is  repeated  on  the  western  door,  a 
door  whose  slightly  pointed  arch  may  mean  a  rather  later  date 
than  the  rest  of  the  church.  The  wooden  roof,  as  at  Villarinho, 
has  a  very  gentle  slope  with  eaves  of  considerable  projection 

'  Originally  there  was  a  bell-gal)le  above  the  narthex  door,  sinie  replaced  by  a 
low  square  tower  resting  on  the  north-west  corner  of  the  narthex  and  capped  by  a 
plastered  spire. 


32         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

resting  on  very  large  plain  corbels,  while  other  corbels  lower 
down  the  wall  seem  to  show  that  at  one  time  a  veranda  or 
cloister  ran  round  three  sides  of  the  building.  The  whole  is 
even  ruder  and  simpler  than  Viilarinho,  but  has  a  certain 
amount  of  dignity  due  to  the  great  size  of  the  stones  of  which 
it  is  built  and  to  the  severe  plainness  of  the  walling. 
Cedo  Feit.i,  Only  one  other  church  of  this  type  need  be  described,  and 
Oporto.  jj^^j  because  it  is  the  only  one  which  is  vaulted  throughout. 
This  is  the  small  church  of  Sao  Martim  dc  Cedo  Feita  or 
'Early  made'  at  Oporto  itself.  It  is  so  called  because  it 
claims,  wrongly  indeed,  to  be  the  very  church  which  Theodomir, 
king  of  the  Suevi,  who  then  occupied  the  north-west  of  the 
Peninsula,  hurriedly  built  in  559  a.d.  This  he  did  in  order  that, 
having  been  converted  from  the  Arian  beliefs  he  shared  with 
all  the  Germanic  invaders  of  the  Empire,  he  might  there  be 
baptized  into  the  Catholic  faith,  and  also  that  he  might  provide 
a  suitable  resting-place  for  some  relic  of  St.  Martin  of  Tours 
which  had  been  sent  to  him  as  a  mark  of  Orthodox  approval. 
This  story  ^  is  set  forth  in  a  long  inscription  on  the  tympanum 
of  the  west  door  stating  that  it  was  put  there  in  1767,  a  copy 
taken  in  1557  from  an  old  stone  having  then  been  found  in 
the  archives  of  the  church.  As  a  matter  of  fact  no  part  of 
the  church  can  be  older  than  the  twelfth  century,  and  it  has 
been  much  altered,  probably  at  the  date  when  the  inscription 
was  cut.  It  is  a  small  building,  a  barrel-vaulted  nave  and 
chancel,  with  a  door  on  the  north  side  and  a  larger  one  to 
the  west  now  covered  by  a  large  porch.  The  six  capitals 
of  this  door  are  very  like  those  at  Viilarinho,  but  the  moulded 
arches  are  round  and  not  as  there  pointed. 

Other  churches  of  this  type  are  Gandara  and  Boelhe  near 
Penafiel,  and  Eja  not  far  off — a  building  of  rather  later  date 
with  a  fine  pointed  chancel  arch  elaborately  carved  with  foliage — 
Sao  Thiago  d'Antas,  near  Familicao,  a  slightly  larger  church 
with  good  capitals  to  the  chancel  arch,  a  good  south  door  and 
another  later  west  door  with  traceried  round  window  above ; 

'  Theodomir  rex  gloriosus 

V.  erex.  &  contnix.  hoc.  monast.  can.  B.  Aug. 
ad.  Gl.  D.  et  V.M.G.D.  &  B.  Martini  et  fecit  ita  so: 
lemnit:  sacrari  ab  Lucrec.  ep.  Brae,  et  alliis  sub. 
J.  III.  P.  M.  Prid.  Idus.  Nov.  an.  D.  dlix.  Post  id.  rex 
in  hac  eccl.  ab.  eod.  ep.  palam  bapt.  et  fil.  Ariamir 
cum  magnat.  suis.  omnes  conversi  ad  tid.  ob.  v.  reg.  & 
mirab.  in  til.  ex  sacr.  reliq.  B.M.  a  Galiis  eo.  reg.  postul 
translatis  &  hie   asservatis  Kal.     Jan.  An.  D.  dlx. 


8 


<  ^ 


u 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH    33 

and  Sao  Torquato,  near  Guimaraes,  rather  larger,  having  once 
had  transepts  of  which  one  survives,  with  square  chancel  and 
square  chapels  to  the  east ;  one  of  the  simplest  of  all  having 
no  ornament  beyond  the  corbel  table  and  the  small  slitlike 
windows. 

South  of  the  Douro,  but  still  built  of  granite,  are  a  group 
of  three  or  four  small  churches  at  Trancoso.  Another  close 
to  Guarda  has  a  much  richer  corbel  table  with  a  large  ball 
ornament  on  the  cornice  and  a  round  window  filled  with 
curiously  built-up  tracery  above  the  plain,  round-arched  west 
door,  while  further  south  on  the  castle  hill  at  Leiria  are  the 
ruins  of  the  small  church  of  Sao  Pedro  built  of  fine  limestone 
with  a  good  west  door. 

Of  the  second  and  rather  larger  type  there  are  fewer  Aguas  Santas, 
examples  still  remaining,  and  of  these  perhaps  the  best  is  the 
church  of  Aguas  Santas  some  seven  miles  north-east  of  Oporto. 
Originally  the  church  consisted  of  a  nave  with  rectangular 
chancel  and  a  north  aisle  with  an  eastern  apse  roofed  with 
a  semi-dome.  Later  a  tower  with  battlemented  top  and  low 
square  spire  was  built  at  the  west  end  of  the  aisle,  and  some 
thirty  years  ago  another  aisle  was  added  on  the  south  side. 
As  in  most  of  the  smaller  churches  the  chancel  is  lower  than 
the  nave,  leaving  room  above  its  roof  for  a  large  round 
window,  now  filled  up  except  for  a  small  traceried  circle  in 
the  centre.  The  most  highly  decorated  part  is  the  chancel, 
which  like  all  the  rest  of  the  church  has  a  good  corbel  table, 
and  about  two-thirds  of  the  way  up  a  string  course  richly 
covered  with  billet  moulding.  Interrupting  this  on  the  south 
side  are  two  round-headed  windows,  still  small  but  much 
larger  than  the  slits  found  in  the  older  churches.  In  each  case, 
in  a  round-headed  opening  there  stand  two  small  shafts  with 
bases  and  elaborately  carved  capitals  but  without  any  abaci, 
supporting  a  large  roll  moulding,  and  these  are  all  repeated 
inside  at  the  inner  face  of  a  deep  splay.  In  one  of  these 
windows  not  only  are  the  capitals  covered  with  intertwined 
ribbon-work,  but  each  shaft  is  covered  with  interknotted 
circles  enclosing  flowers,  and  there  is  a  band  of  interlacing 
work  round  the  head  of  the  actual  window  opening.  Inside 
the  church  has  been  more  altered.  Formerly  the  aisle  was 
separated  from  the  nave  by  two  arches,  but  when  the  south 
aisle  was  built  the  central  pier  was  taken  out  and  the  two 
arches    thrown    into    one    large    and    elliptical    arch,   but    the 

c 


34         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

capitals  of  the  chancel  arch  and  the  few  others  that  remain  are 
all  well  wrought  and  well  designed.  The  west  door  is  a  good 
simple  example  of  the  first  pointed  period,  with  plain  moulded 
arches  and  shafts  which  bear  simple  French-looking  capitals. 
Other  churches  of  the  same  class  are  those  of  Sao  Christovao 
do  Rio  Mau  not  far  from  Villo  do  Conde,  and  Suo  Pedro  de 
Rates,  a  little  further  up  the  Ave  at  the  birthplace  of  the  first 
bishop  of  Braga  and  earliest  martyr  of  Portugal.  Sao  Pedro 
is  a  little  later,  as  the  aisle  arches  are  all  pointed,  and  is  a 
small  basilica  of  nave  and  aisles  with  short  transepts,  chancel 
and  eastern  chapels, 
villarde  The  two  earliest  examples  of  the  third  and  most  highly 

Frades.  developed  type,  the  church  of  Villar  de  Frades  and  the 
cathedral  of  Braga,  have  unfortunately  both  suffered  so  terribly, 
the  one  from  destruction  and  the  other  from  rebuilding,  that 
not  much  has  been  left  to  show  what  they  were  originally  like 
— barely  enough  to  make  it  clear  that  they  were  much  more 
elaborately  decorated,  and  that  their  carved  work  was  much 
better  wrought  than  in  any  of  the  smaller  churches  already 
mentioned.  A  short  distance  to  the  south  of  the  river  Cavado 
and  about  half-way  between  Braga  and  Barcellos,  in  a  well- 
watered  and  well-wooded  region,  there  existed  from  very  early 
Christian  times  a  monastery  called  Villar,  and  later  Villar  de 
Frades.  During  the  troubles  and  disorders  which  followed 
the  Moslem  invasion,  this  Benedictine  monastery  had  fallen 
into  complete  decay  and  so  remained  till  it  was  restored  in 
1070  by  Godinho  Viegas.  Although  again  deserted  some 
centuries  later  and  refounded  in  1425  as  the  mother  house  of 
a  new  order — the  Loyos — the  fifteenth-century  church  was  so 
built  as  to  leave  at  least  a  part  of  the  front  of  the  old  ruined 
church  standing  between  itself  and  the  monastic  building,  as 
well  as  the  ruins  of  an  apse  behind.  Probably  this  old  west 
front  was  the  last  part  of  Godinho's  church  to  be  built,  but  it 
is  certainly  more  or  less  contemporary  with  some  portions  of 
the  cathedral  of  Braga. 

At  some  period,  which  the  legend  leaves  quite  uncertain,  one 
of  the  monks  of  this  monastery  was  one  day  in  the  choir  at 
matins,  when  they  came  to  that  Psalm  where  it  is  said  that  'a 
thousand  years  in  the  sight  of  God  are  but  as  yesterday  when 
it  is  gone,'  and  the  old  monk  wondered  greatly  and  began  to 
think  what  that  could  mean.  When  matins  were  over  he 
remained  praying  as  was  his  wont,  and  begged  Our  Lord  to 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH     35 

give  him  some  understanding  of  that  verse.  Then  there 
appeared  to  him  a  little  bird  which,  singing  most  sweetly,  flew 
this  way  and  that,  and  so  little  by  little  drew  him  towards  a 
wood  which  grew  near  the  monastery,  and  there  rested  on  a 
tree  while  the  servant  of  God  stood  below  to  listen.  After 
what  seemed  to  the  monk  a  short  time  it  took  flight,  to  the 
great  sorrow  of  God's  servant,  who  said,  '  Bird  ot  my  Soul, 
where  art  thou  gone  so  soon  ? '  He  waited,  and  when  he  saw 
that  it  did  not  return  he  went  back  to  the  monastery  thinking 
it  still  that  same  morning  on  which  he  had  come  out  after 
matins.  When  he  arrived  he  found  the  door,  through  which 
he  had  come,  built  up  and  a  new  one  opened  in  another  place. 
The  porter  asked  who  he  was  and  what  he  wanted,  and  he 
answered,  '  I  am  the  sacristan  who  a  few  hours  ago  went  out, 
and  now  returning  find  all  changed.'  He  gave  too  the  names 
of  the  Abbot  and  of  the  Prior,  and  wondered  much  that  the 
porter  still  would  not  let  him  in,  and  seemed  not  to  remember 
these  names.  At  last  he  was  led  to  the  Abbot,  but  they  did 
not  know  one  another,  so  that  the  good  monk  was  all  confused 
and  amazed  at  so  strange  an  event.  Then  the  Abbot, 
enlightened  of  God,  sent  for  the  annals  and  histories  of  the 
order,  found  there  the  names  the  old  man  had  given,  so  making 
it  clear  that  more  than  three  hundred  years  had  passed  since  he 
had  gone  out.  He  told  them  all  that  had  happened  to  him, 
was  received  as  a  brother  ;  and  after  praising  God  for  the 
great  marvel  which  had  befallen  him,  asked  for  the  sacraments 
and  soon  passed  from  this  life  in  great  peace. ^ 

Whether  the  ruined  west  front  of  the  older  church  be  that 
which  existed  when  the  bird  flew  out  through  the  door  or  not, 
it  is  or  has  been  of  very  considerable  beauty.  Built,  like  every- 
thing else  in  the  north,  of  granite,  all  that  is  now  left  is  a  high 
wall  of  carefully  wrought  stone.  Below  is  a  fine  round  arched 
door  of  considerable  size,  now  roughly  blocked  up.  It  has 
three  square  orders  covered  with  carving  and  a  plain  inner  one. 
First  is  a  wide  drip-mould  carved  on  the  outer  side  with  a 
zigzag  threefold  ribbon,  and  on  the  inner  with  three  rows  of 
what  looks  like  a  rude  attempt  to  copy  the  classic  bead-mould- 
ing ;  then  the  first  order,  of  thirteen  voussoirs,  each  with  the 

'  From  M.  Bcmardes,  Tratados  Farios,  vol.  ii.  p.  4.  The  same  story  is  told  of 
the  monastery  of  San  Salvador  de  Leyre  in  Navarre,  whose  abbot,  Virila,  wondering 
how  it  could  be  possible  to  listen  to  the  heavenly  choirs  for  ever  without  weariness, 
sat  down  to  rest  by  a  spring  which  may  still  be  seen,  and  there  listened,  enchanted, 
to  the  singing  of  a  bird  for  three  hundred  years. 


36         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

curious  figure  of  a  strangely  dressed  man  or  with  a  distorted 
monster.  This  with  the  drip-mould  springs  from  a  billet- 
moulded  abacus  resting  on  broad  square  piers.  Of  the  two 
inner  carved  orders,  the  outer  is  covered  on  both  faces  with 
innumerable  animals  and  birds,  and  the  other  with  a  delicate 
pattern  of  interlacing  bands.  These  two  spring  from  strange 
square  abaci  resting  on  the  carved  capitals  of  round  shafts,  two 
on  each  side.  A  few  feet  above  the  door  runs  a  billet-moulded 
string  course,  and  two  or  three  feet  higher  another  and  slighter 
course.  On  this  stands  a  large  window  of  two  orders.  Of 
these  the  outer  covered  with  animals  springs  from  shafts  and 
capitals  very  like  those  of  the  doorway,  and  the  inner  has  a 
billet-moulded  edge  and  an  almost  Celtic  ornament  on  the  face. 
Now  whether  Villar  be  older  than  the  smaller  buildings  in  the 
neighbourhood  or  not,  it  is  undoubtedly  quite  different  not 
onlv  in  style  but  in  execution.  It  is  not  only  much  larger  and 
higher,  but  it  is  better  built  and  the  carving  is  finer  and  more 
carefully  wrought.     (Fig.  13.) 

It  is  known  that  the  great  cathedral  of  Santiago  in  Galicia 
was  begun  in  1078,  just  about  the  time  Villar  must  have  been 
building,  and  Santiago  is  an  almost  exact  copy  in  granite 
of  what  the  great  abbey  church  of  S.  Sernin  at  Toulouse  was 
intended  to  be,  so  that  it  may  be  assumed  that  Bernardo  who 
built  the  cathedral  was,  if  not  a  native  of  Toulouse,  at  any 
rate  very  well  acquainted  with  what  was  being  done  there.  If, 
then,  a  native  of  Languedoc  was  called  in  to  plan  so  important 
a  church  in  Galicia,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  other  foreigners  were 
also  employed  in  the  county  of  Portugal — at  that  time  still  a 
part  of  Galicia  ;  and  in  fact  many  churches  in  the  south-west 
of  what  is  now  France  have  doorways  and  windows  whose 
general  design  is  very  like  that  at  Villar  de  Frades,  if  allow- 
ance be  made  for  the  difference  of  material,  granite  here,  fine 
limestone  there,  and  for  a  comparative  want  of  skill  in  the 
workmen.^ 
Sc,  Braga.  Probably  these  foreigners  were  not  invited  to  Portugal  for 
the  sake  of  the  church  of  a  remote  abbey  like  Villar,  but  to 
work  at  the  metropolitan  cathedral  of  Braga.  The  see  of 
Braga  is  said  to  have  been  founded  by  Sao  Pedro  de  Rates,  a 
disciple  of  St.  James  himself,  and  in  consequence  of  so  dis- 
tinguished an  origin  its  archbishops  claim  the  primacy  not  only 

■  E.g.  the  west  door  of  Ste.  Croix,  Bordeaux,  though  it  is  of  course  very  much  more 
elaborate. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH     37 

of  all  Portugal,  but  even  of  ail  the  Spains,  a  claim  which  is 
of  course  disputed  by  the  patriarch  of  Lisbon,  not  to  speak 
of  the  archbishops  of  Toledo  and  of  Tarragona.  However 
that  may  be,  the  cathedral  of  Braga  is  not  now,  and  can  never 
have  been,  quite  worthy  of  such  high  pretensions.  It  is  now  a 
church  with  a  nave  and  aisles  of  six  bays,  a  transept  with  four 
square  chapels  to  the  east,  a  chancel  projecting  beyond  the 
chapels,  and  at  the  west  two  towers  with  the  main  door 
between  and  a  fine  porch  beyond. 

Count  Henry  of  Burgundy  married  Dona  Theresa  and 
received  the  earldom  of  Portugal  from  his  father-in-law, 
Alfonso  VI.  of  Castile  and  Leon,  in  1095,  ^^'^  ^^  ^"'^  ^'^  ^'^^ 
rebuilt  the  cathedral — where  they  now  lie  buried — before  the 
end  of  the  century.  By  that  time  it  may  well  have  become  usual, 
if  the  churches  were  important,  to  call  in  a  foreigner  to  oversee 
its  erection.  Of  the  original  building  little  now  remains  but  the 
plan  and  two  doorways,  the  chancel  having  been  rebuilt  and  the 
porch  added  in  the  sixteenth,  and  the  whole  interior  beplastered 
and  bcpainted  in  the  worst  possible  style  in  the  seventeenth, 
century.  Of  the  two  doors  the  western  has  been  very  like  that 
at  Villar.  It  has  only  two  orders  left,  of  which  the  outer,  though 
under  a  deep  arch,  has  a  billet-moulded  drip-mould,  and  its 
voussoirs  each  carved  with  a  figure  on  the  outer  and  delicate 
flutings  on  the  under  side,  while  the  inner  has  on  both  faces 
animals  and  monsters  which,  better  wrought  than  those  at  Villar, 
are  even  more  like  so  many  in  the  south-west  of  France.  The 
other  doorway,  on  the  south  side  next  the  south-west  tower,  is 
far  better  preserved.  It  has  three  shafts  011  each  side,  all  with 
good  capitals  and  abaci,  from  which  spring  two  carved  and  one 
plain  arch.  The  outer  has  a  rich  drip-mould  covered  with  a 
curious  triple  arrangement  of  circles,  has  flutings  on  the  one 
face  and  a  twisting  ribbon  on  the  other,  while  the  next  has  leaf 
flutings  on  both  faces,  and  both  a  roll-moulding  on  the  angle. 
The  inner  order  is  quite  plain,  but  the  tympanum  has  in  the 
centre  a  circle  enclosing  a  cross  with  expanding  arms,  the 
spaces  between  the  arms  and  the  circle  being  pierced  and  the 
whole  surrounded  with  intertwining  ribbons. 

Another  foundation  of  Count  Henry's  was  the  cathedral  Se,  Oporto, 
of  Oporto,  which,  judging  from  its  plan,  must  have  been  very 
like  that  of  Braga,  but  it  has  been  so   horribly  transformed 
during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  that  nothing 
no  wremains  of  the  original  building  but  part  of  the  walls  ; 


38  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

for  the  fine  western  rose  window  must  have  been  inserted 
about  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
Pno cle Soma.  Except  the  tragedy  of  Inez  de  Castro,  there  is  no  story  in 
Portuguese  history  more  popular  or  more  often  represented 
in  the  engravings  which  adorn  a  country  inn  dining-room 
than  that  of  the  surrender  of  Egas  Moniz  to  Alfonso  vii.  of 
Castile  and  Leon,  when  his  pupil  Affonso  Henriques,  begin- 
ning to  govern  for  himself,  refused  to  fulfil  the  agreement  ^ 
whereby  Egas  had  induced  Alfonso  to  raise  the  siege  of  the 
castle  of  Guimaraes.  And  it  is  the  fact  that  the  church  of 
Sao  Salvador  at  Pa^o  de  Souza  contains  his  tomb,  which  adds 
not  a  little  to  the  interest  of  the  best-preserved  of  the  churches 
of  the  third  type.  Egas  Moniz  died  in  1 144,  and  at  least  the 
eastern  part  of  the  church  may  have  existed  before  then. 
The  chancel,  where  the  tomb  first  stood,  is  rather  long  and 
has  as  usual  a  square  east  end  while  the  two  flanking  chapels 
are  apsidal.  The  rest  of  the  church,  which  may  be  a  little 
later,  as  all  the  larger  arches  are  pointed,  consists  of  a  nave 
and  aisles  of  three  bays,  a  transept,  and  a  later  tower  standing 
on  the  westernmost  bay  of  the  south  aisle.  The  constructive 
scheme  of  the  inside  is  interesting,  though  a  modern  boarded 
vault  has  done  its  best  to  hide  what  it  formerly  was.  The 
piers  are  cross-shaped  with  a  big  semicircular  shaft  on  each 
face,  and  a  large  roll-moulding  on  each  angle  which  is  con- 
tinued up  above  the  abacus  to  form  an  outer  order  for  both 
the  aisle  and  the  main  arches,  for  large  arches  are  carried 
across  the  nave  and  aisles  from  north  to  south  as  if  it  had 
been  intended  to  roof  the  church  with  an  ordinary  groined 
vault.  However,  it  is  clear  that  this  was  not  really  the  case, 
and  indeed  it  could  hardly  have  been  so  as  practically  no 
vaults  had  yet  been  built  in  the  country  except  a  few  small 
barrels.  Indeed,  though  later  the  Portuguese  became  very 
skilful  at  vaulting,  they  were  at  no  time  fond  of  a  nave  with 
high  groined  vault  upheld  by  flying  buttresses,  and  low  aisles, 
for  there  seems  to  have  been  never  more  than  three  or  four 
in  the  country,  one  of  which,  the  choir  of  Lisbon  Cathedral, 
fell  in  1755.  Instead  of  groined  vaults,  barrel  vaults  con- 
tinued to  be  used  where  a  stone  roof  was  wanted,  even  till 
the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  and  later,  long  after 
they  had  been  given  up  elsewhere,  but  usually  a  roof  of  wood 
was  thought  sufficient,  sometimes  resting,  as  was  formerly  the 

'  Namely,  to  give  back  some  Gallcian  towns  which  had  be<n  captured. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH    39 

case  here,  on  transverse  arches  thrown  across  the  nave  and 
aisles.  This  was  the  system  adopted  in  the  cathedrals  of 
Braga  and  of  Oporto  before  they  were  altered,  in  this  church 
and  in  that  of  Pombeiro  not  far  off,  and  in  that  of  Bayona 
near  Vigo  in  Galicia.'     (Fig-  14-) 

All  the  details  are  extremely  refined — almost  Byzantine  in 
their  delicacy — especially  the  capitals,  and  the  abaci  against 
the  walls,  which  are  carried  along  as  a  beautiful  string  course 
from  pier  to  pier.  The  bases  too  are  all  carved,  some  with 
animals'  heads  and  some  with  small  seated  figures  at  the 
angles,  while  the  faces  of  the  square  blocks  below  are  covered 
with  beautiful  leaf  ornament.  But  the  most  curious  thing  in 
the  whole  church  is  the  tomb  ot  Egas  Moniz  himself."  (Fig-  i  5-) 
Till  the  eighteenth  century  it  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  chancel, 
then  it  was  cut  in  two  and  put  half  against  the  wall  of  the 
south  aisle,  and  half  against  that  of  the  north.  It  has  on  it 
three  bands  of  ornament.  Of  these  the  lowest  is  a  rudely 
carved  chevron  with  what  are  meant  for  leaves  between,  the 
next,  a  band  of  small  figures  including  Egas  on  his  death- 
bed and  what  is  supposed  to  be  three  of  his  children  riding 
side  by  side  on  an  elongated  horse  with  a  camel-like  head, 
and  that  on  the  top,  larger  figures  showing  him  starting 
on  his  fateful  journey  to  the  court  of  Alfonso  of  Castile  and 
Leon  and  parting  from  his  weeping  wife.  Although  very 
rude, — all  the  horses  except  that  of  Egas  himself  having  most 
unhorselike  heads  and  legs, — some  of  the  figures  are  carved 
with  a  certain  not  unpleasing  vigour,  especially  that  of  a  spear- 
bearing  attendant  who  marches  with  swinging  skirts  behind 
his  master's  horse.  Outside  the  most  remarkable  feature  is 
the  fine  west  door,  with  its  eight  shafts,  four  on  each  side, 
some  round  and  some  octagonal,  the  octagonal  being  enriched 
with  an  ornament  like  the  English  dog-tooth,  with  their 
finely  carved  cubical  capitals  and  rich  abaci,  and  with  the  four 
orders  of  mouldings,  two  of  which  are  enriched  with  ball 
ornament.  Outside,  instead  of  a  drip-mould,  runs  a 
broad  band  covered  with  plaited  ribbon.     On  the  tympanum, 

'  Bayona  is  one  of  the  most  curious  and  unusual  churches  in  the  north  of  Spain. 
Untortunatcly,  during  a  restoration  made  a  few  years  ago  a  plaster  groined  vault  was 
added  hiding  the  old  wooden  roof. 

*  The  tomb  it  inscribed  :  Hie  requicscit  Fys  : 

Dei  :  Egas  :  Monis  ;  Vir: 
Inclitus  :  era  :  millesima: 
lentesima  :  LXXXii 
i.e.     Era  of  Caesar  1182,  A.D.  114+. 


40  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

which  rests  on  corbels  supported  on  one  side  by  the  head  of 
an  ox  and  on  the  other  by  that  of  a  man,  are  a  large  circle 
enclosing  a  modern  inscription,  and  two  smaller  circles  in 
which  are  the  symbols  of  the  Sun  and  Moon  upheld  by 
curious  little  half-figures.  The  two  apses  east  of  the 
transept  are  of  the  pattern  universal  in  Southern  Europe, 
being  divided  into  three  equal  parts  by  half-shafts  with 
capitals  and  crowned  with  an  overhanging  corbel  table. 
Pombeiro.  The  abbey  church   of  Pombeiro,   near   Guimarfies,   must 

once  have  been  very  similar  to  Siio  Salvador  at  Pa^o  de  Souza, 
except  that  the  nave  is  a  good  deal  longer,  and  that  it  once 
had  a  large  narthex,  destroyed  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago  by  an  abbot  who  wished  to  add  to  the  west  front  the 
two  towers  and  square  spires  which  still  exist.  So  full  was 
this  narthex  of  tombs  that  from  the  arms  on  them  it  had 
become  a  sort  of  Heralds'  College  for  the  whole  of  the  north 
of  Portugal,  but  now  only  two  remain  in  the  shallow  renais- 
sance porch  between  the  towers.  As  at  Pa^o  de  Souza,  the 
oldest  part  of  the  church  is  the  east  end,  where  the  two 
apses  flanking  the  square  chancel  remain  unaltered.  They 
are  divided  as  usual  by  semicircular  shafts  bearing  good 
romanesque  capitals,  and  crowned  by  a  cornice  of  three  small 
arches  to  each  division,  each  cut  out  of  one  stone,  and  rest- 
ing on  corbels  and  on  the  capitals.  Of  the  west  front  only 
the  fine  doorway  is  left  unchanged  ;  pointed  in  shape,  but 
romanesque  in  detail  ;  having  three  of  the  five  orders,  carved 
one  with  grotesque  animals  and  two  with  leafage.  Above 
the  shallow  porch  is  a  large  round  window  with  renaissance 
tracery,  but  retaining  its  original  framing  of  a  round  arch 
resting  on  tall  shafts  with  romanesque  capitals.  Everything 
else  has  been  altered,  the  inside  being  covered  with  elaborate 
rococo  painted  and  gilt  plaster-work,  and  the  outside  dis- 
figured by  shapeless  rococo  windows. 

Although  some,  and  especially  the  last  two  of  the  build- 
ings described  above  belong,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  time  of 
transition  from  romanesque  to  first  pointed,  and  although 
the  group  of  churches  at  Coimbra  are  wholly  romanesque, 
it  would  be  better  to  have  done  with  all  that  can  be  ascribed 
to  a  period  older  than  the  beginning  of  the  Portuguese 
monarchy  before  following  AfFonso  Henriques  in  his  success- 
ful efForts  to  extend  his  kingdom  southwards  to  the  Tagus. 

Although  Braga  was  the  ecclesiastical  capital  of  their  fief, 


O    VI 
X    < 


p.  o 


o 


<    < 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH    41 

Count  Henry  and  his  wife  lived  usually  at  Guimaraes,  a  small  Guimaries. 
town  some  fifteen  miles  to  the  south.  Towards  the  beginning  C^*^''^- 
of  the  tenth  century  there  died  D.  Hermengildo  Gongalves 
Mendcs,  count  of  Tuy  and  Porto,  who  by  his  will  left 
Vimaranes,  as  it  was  then  called,  to  his  widow,  Mumadona. 
About  927  she  there  founded  a  monastery  and  built  a  castle 
for  its  defence,  and  this  castle,  which  had  twice  suffered  from 
Moslem  invaders,  was  restored  or  rebuilt  by  Count  Henry, 
and  there  in  iiii  was  born  his  son  Affonso  Henriques,  who 
was  later  to  become  the  first  king  of  the  new  and  independent 
kingdom  of  Portugal.  Henry  died  soon  after,  in  1114,  at 
Astorga,  perhaps  poisoned  by  his  sister-in-law,  Urraca,  queen 
of  Castile  and  Leon,  and  for  several  years  his  widow  governed 
his  lands  as  guardian  for  their  son. 

Thirteen  years  after  Count  Henry's  death,  in  1127,  the 
castle  was  the  scene  of  the  famous  submission  of  Egas  Moniz 
to  the  Spanish  king,  and  this,  together  with  the  fact  that 
Affonso  Henriques  was  born  there,  has  given  it  a  place  in  the 
romantic  history  of  Portugal  which  is  rather  higher  than  what 
would  seem  due  to  a  not  very  important  building.  The 
castle  stands  to  the  north  of  the  town  on  a  height  which 
commands  all  the  surrounding  country.  Its  walls,  defended 
at  intervals  by  square  towers,  are  built  among  and  on  the  top 
of  enormous  granite  boulders,  and  enclose  an  irregular  space 
in  which  stands  the  keep.  The  inhabited  part  of  the  castle 
ran  aloncr  the  north-western  wall  where  it  stood  highest  above 
the  land  below,  but  it  has  mostly  perished,  leaving  only  a  few 
windows  which  are  too  large  to  date  from  the  beginning  of 
the  t\^■elfth  century.  The  square  keep  stands  within  a  few 
feet  of  the  western  wall,  rises  high  above  it,  and  was  reached 
by  a  drawbridge  from  the  walk  on  the  top  of  the  castle  walls. 
Its  wooden  floors  are  gone,  its  windows  are  mere  slits,  and 
like  the  rest  of  the  castle  it  owes  its  distinctive  appearance  to 
the  battlements  which  crown  the  whole  building,  and  whose 
merlons  are  plain  blocks  of  stone  brought  to  a  sharp  point 
at  the  top.  This  feature,  which  is  found  in  all  the  oldest 
Portuguese  castles  such  as  that  of  Almourol  on  an  island  in 
the  Tagus  near  Abrantcs,  and  even  on  some  churches  such  as 
the  old  cathedral  at  Coimbra  and  the  later  church  at  Le^a  de 
Baiio,  is  one  of  the  most  distinct  legacies  left  by  the  Moors: 
here  the  front  of  each  merlon  is  perpendicular  to  the  top,  but 
more  usually  it  is  finished  in  a  small  sharp  pyramid. 


42  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Church.  The   Other   foundation  of  Mumadona,   the   monastery  of 

Nossa  Senhora  and  Slo  Salvador  in  the  town  of  Guimaraes, 
had  since  her  day  twice  suffered  destruction  at  the  hands  of 
the  Moors,  once  in  967  when  the  castle  was  taken  by  Al- 
Coraxi,  emir  of  Seville,  and  thirty  years  later  when  Almansor^ 
in  998  swept  northwards  towards  Galicia,  sacking  and  burning 
as  he  went.  At  the  time  when  Count  Henry  and  Dona  Teresa 
were  living  in  the  castle,  the  double  Benedictine  monastery 
for  men  and  women  had  fallen  into  decay,  and  in  1109 
Count  Henry  got  a  Papal  Bull  changing  the  foundation  into 
a  royal  collegiate  church  under  a  Dom  Prior,  and  at  once 
began  to  rebuild  it,  a  restoration  which  was  not  finished  till 
1 172.  Since  then  the  church  has  been  wholly  and  the  cloisters 
partly  rebuilt  by  Joao  i.  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
but  some  arches  of  the  cloister  and  the  entrance  to  the 
chapter-house  may  very  likely  date  from  Count  Henry's  time. 
These  cloisters  occupy  a  very  unusual  position.  Starting 
from  the  north  transept  they  run  round  the  back  of  the 
chancel,  along  the  south  side  of  the  church  outside  the 
transept,  and  finally  join  the  church  again  near  the  west  front. 
The  large  round  arches  have  chamfered  edges  ;  the  columns 
are  monoliths  of  granite  about  eighteen  inches  thick ;  the 
bases  and  the  abaci  all  romanesque  in  form,  though  many  of 
the  capitals,  as  can  be  seen  from  their  shape  and  carving,  are 
of  the  fourteenth  or  even  fifteenth  century,  showing  how  Juan 
Garcia  de  Toledo,  who  rebuilt  the  church  for  Dom  Joao  i., 
tried,  in  restoring  the  cloister,  to  copy  the  already  existing 
features  and  as  usual  betrayed  the  real  date  by  his  later 
details.  A  few  of  the  old  capitals  still  remain,  and  are  of  good 
romanesque  form  such  as  may  be  seen  in  any  part  of  southern 
France  or  in  Spain."  To  the  chapter-house,  a  plain  oblong 
room  with  a  panelled  wood  ceiling,  there  leads,  from  the  east 
cloister  walk,  an  unaltered  archway,  flanked  as  usual  by  two 
openings,  one  on  either  side.  The  doorway  arch  is  plain, 
slightly  horseshoe  in  shape,  and  is  carried  by  short  strong 
halt-columns  whose  capitals  are  elaborately  carved  with  ani- 
mals and  twisting  branches,  the  animals,  as  is  often  the  case, 

'  He  died  soon  alter  at  Medinaceli,  and  a  Christian  contemporary  writer  records 
the  fact  saying:  'This  day  died  Al-Mansor.  He  desecrated  Santiago,  and  destroyed 
Pampluna,  Leon  and  Barcelona.     He  was  bnricd  in  Hell." 

'  Another  cloi>ter-llke  building  ot  even  earlier  date  is  to  be  found  behind  the 
foiiricenth-century  cluirch  of  Le^a  deBalio:  it  was  built  probably  after  the  decayed 
church  had  been  granted  to  the  Knights  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem.     (Fig.  17.) 


10 


'C  o 
o  c 


y. 


a.    T-    _ 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  NORTH    43 

being  set  back  to  back  at  the  angles  so  that  one  head  does 
duty  for  each  pair.  Above  is  a  large  hollow  hood-mould 
exactly  similar  to  those  which  enclose  the  side  windows.  The 
two  lights  of  these  windows  are  separated  by  short  coupled 
shafts  whose  capitals,  derived  from  the  Corinthian  or  Com- 
posite, have  stiff  leaves  covering  the  change  from  the  round  to 
the  square,  and  between  them  broad  tendrils  which  end  in 
very  carefully  cut  volutes  at  the  angles.  The  heads  them- 
selves are  markedly  horseshoe  in  shape,  which  at  first  sight 
suggests  some  Moorish  influence,  but  in  everything  else  the 
details  are  so  thoroughly  Western,  and  by  1109  such  a  long 
time,  over  a  hundred  years,  had  passed  since  the  Moors  had 
been  permanently  expelled  from  that  part  of  the  country, 
that  it  were  better  to  see  in  these  horseshoes  an  unskilled 
attempt  at  stilting,  rather  than  the  work  of  some  one  familiar 
with  Eastern  forms      {i'^g-  16.) 


44  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    II 

THE    EARLY    BUILDINGS    IN    THE    SOUTH 

In  1057  Fernando,  king  of  Castile,  Leon  and  Galicia  crossed 
the  Douro,  took  Lamego,  where  the  lower  part  of  the  tower  is 
all  that  is  left  of  the  romanesque  cathedral,  and  is  indeed  the 
only  romanesque  tower  in  the  country.  Vizeu  fell  soon  after, 
and  seven  years  later  he  advanced  his  borders  to  the  Mondego 
by  the  capture  of  Coimbra.  The  Mondego,  the  only  large 
river  whose  source  and  mouth  are  both  in  Portugal,  long 
remained  the  limit  of  the  Christian  dominion,  and  nearly  a 
hundred  years  were  to  pass  before  any  further  advance  was 
made.  In  1147  AfFonso  Henriques,  who  had  but  lately 
assumed  the  title  of  king,  convinced  at  last  that  he  was 
wasting  his  strength  in  trying  to  seize  part  of  his  cousin's 
dominions  of  Galicia,  determined  to  turn  south  and  extend 
his  new  kingdom  in  that  direction.  Accordingly  in  March  of 
that  year  he  secretly  led  his  army  against  Santarem,  one  of  the 
strongest  of  the  Moorish  cities  standing  high  above  the  Tagus 
on  an  isolated  hill.  The  vezir,  Abu-Zakariah,  was  surprised 
before  he  could  provision  the  town,  so  that  the  garrison  were 
able  to  offer  but  a  feeble  resistance,  and  the  Christians  entered 
after  the  attack  had  lasted  only  a  few  days.  Before  starting 
the  king  had  vowed  that  if  successful  he  would  found  a  mon- 
astery in  token  of  his  gratitude,  and  though  its  vast  domestic 
buildings  are  now  but  barracks  and  court-houses,  the  great 
Cistercian  abbey  of  Alcobaga  still  stands  to  show  how  well  his 
vow  was  fulfilled. 

Although  Santarem  was  taken  in  11 47,  the  first  stone  of 
Alcoba^a  was  not  laid  till  11 53,  and  the  building  was  carried 
out  very  slowly  and  in  a  style,  imported  directly  from  France, 
quite  foreign  to  any  previous  work  in  Portugal.  It  were 
better,  therefore,  before  coming  to  this,  the  largest  church 
and  the  richest  foundation  in  the  whole  country,  to  have  done 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     45 

with  the  other  churches  which  though  contemporary  with 
Alcoba^a  are  not  the  work  of  French  but  of  native  workmen, 
or  at  least  of  such  as  had  not  gone  further  than  to  Galicia 
for  their  models. 

The  same  year  that  saw  the  fall  of  Santarem  saw  also  the  Se,  Lisbon, 
more  important  capture  of  Lisbon.  Taken  by  the  Moors  in 
714,  it  had  long  been  their  capital,  and  although  thrice  captured 
by  the  Christians  had  always  been  recovered.  In  this  enter- 
prise Affonso  Henriques  was  helped  by  a  body  of  Crusaders, 
mostly  English,  who  sailing  from  Dartmouth  were  persuaded 
by  the  bishop  of  Oporto  to  begin  their  Holy  War  in 
Portugal,  and  when  Lisbon  fell,  one  of  them,  Gilbert  of 
Hastings,  was  rewarded  by  being  made  its  first  bishop.  Of 
the  cathedral,  begun  three  years  later,  in  11 50,  little  but  the 
plan  of  the  nave  and  transept  has  survived.  Much  injured 
by  an  earthquake  in  1344,  the  whole  choir  was  rebuilt  on  a 
French  model  by  AfFonso  iv.  only  to  be  again  destroyed  in 
1755.  T^^  original  plan  must  have  been  very  like  that  of 
Braga,  an  aisleless  transept,  a  nave  and  aisles  of  six  bays,  and 
two  square  towers  beyond  with  a  porch  between.  The  two 
towers  are  now  very  plain  with  large  belfry  windows  near  the 
top,  but  there  are  traces  here  and  there  of  old  built-up  round- 
headed  openings  which  show  that  the  walls  at  least  are  really 
old.  The  outer  arch  of  the  porch  has  been  rebuilt  since  the 
earthquake,  but  the  original  door  remains  inside,  with  a  carved 
hood-mould,  rich  abacus,  and  four  orders  of  mouldings 
enriched  with  small  balls  in  their  hollows.  The  eight  plain 
shafts  stand  on  unusually  high  pedestals  and  have  rather  long 
capitals,  some  carved  with  flat  acanthus  leaves  and  some  with 
small  figures  of  men  and  animals. 

Like  that  of  the  cathedral  of  Coimbra,  which  was  being 
built  about  the  same  time,  the  inside  is  clearly  founded  on  the 
great  cathedral  of  Santiago,  itself  a  copy  of  S.  Sernin  at 
Toulouse,  and  quite  uninfluenced  by  the  French  design  of 
Alcoba^a.  The  piers  are  square  with  a  half-shaft  on  each  face, 
the  arches  are  round,  and  the  aisles  covered  with  plain  unribbed 
fourpart  vaulting,  while  the  main  aisle  is  roofed  with  a  round 
barrel.  Instead  of  the  large  open  gallery,  which  at  Santiago 
allows  the  quadrant  vault  supporting  the  central  barrel  to  be 
seen,  there  is  here  a  low  blind  arcade  of  small  round  arches. 
Unfortunately,  when  restored  after  the  disaster  of  1755  the 
whole  inside  was  plastered,  all  the  capitals  both  of  the  main 


46 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


piers  and  of  the  gallery  were  converted  into  a  semblance  of  gilt 
Corinthian  capitals,  and  large  skylights  were  cut  through  the 
vault.     Only  the  inside  of  the  low  octagonal  lantern  remains 


CATHEDRAL 
LISBON. 

NAVE  BEGUN  1150 

CHOIR    1350 

CLOISTCR  ABOUT  1300 

CAPELLA  MOR    REBUILT 
<*-NAVE    PLASTERED 
AFTER     EARTHQUAKE 
OF    1755. 


tJlllll  ■ 


PLAN    OF    CATHEDRAL,    LL<!BON 

to  show  that  the  church  must  have  been  at  least  as  interesting, 
if  not  more  so,  than  the  Se  Velha  or  old  cathedral  at  Coimbra. 
If  the  nave  has  suffered  such  a  transformation  the  fourteenth- 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     47 


Coiinbra. 


century  choir  has  been  even  worse  treated.  The  whole  upper 
part,  which  once  was  as  high  as  the  top  of  the  lantern,  fell  and 
was  re-roofed  in  a  most  miserable  manner,  having  only  the 
ambulatory  and  its  chapels  uninjured.  But  these,  the  cloister 
and  a  rather  fine  chapel  to  the  north-west  of  the  nave,  had 
better  be  left  for  another  chapter.* 

Smaller  but  much  better  preserved  than   Lisbon  Cathedral   SeVelha, 
is  the  Se  Velha  or  old  cathedral  of  Coimbra.      According  to 
the  local  tradition,  the  cathedral  is  but  a   mosque  turned   into 
a  church  after  the  Christian  conquest,  and  it  may  well  be  that 
in    the    time    of   Dom    Sesnando, 
the   first  governor    of  Coimbra — 
a  Moor  who,  becoming  a  Chris- 
tian, was  made  count  of  Coimbra 
by   King     Fernando,     and    whose 
tomb,  broken  open  by  the  French, 
may  still  be  seen  outside  the  north 
wall    of   the     church — the    chief 
mosque  of  the  town  was  used  as 
the   cathedral.      But   although   an 
Arab  inscription  ^  is  built  into  the 
outer  wall  of  the   nave,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  present  build- 
ing   is    as    Christian    in    plan    and 
design  as  any  church  can  be.      It 

the  nave  of  the  cathedral  of  Lisbon  is  like  Santiago  in  con- 
struction, the  nave  here  is,  on  a  reduced  scale,  undoubtedly 
a  copy  of  Santiago  not  only  constructively  but  also  in  its 
general  details.  The  piers  are  shorter  but  of  the  same  plan, 
the  great  triforium  gallery  looks  towards  the  nave,  as  at 
Santiago  and  at  Toulouse,  by  a  double  opening  whose  arches 
spring  from  single  shafts  at  the  sides  to  rest  on  double  shafts 
in  the  centre,  both  being  enclosed  under  one  larger  arch, 
while  the  barrel  vault  and  the  supporting  vaults  of  the  gallery 
are  exactly  similar.  Now  Santiago  was  practically  finished  in 
1 128,  and  there  still  exists  a  book  called  the  Livro  Preto  in  which 
is  given  a  list  of  the  gifts  made  by  Dum  Miguel,  who  ruled  the 
see  of  Coimbra  from  1162  to  1176,  towards  the  building  and 


Scctle 


PLAN    OF    CATHEDRAL,    COIMBRA 


*  A  careful  restoration  is  now  being  carried  out  uniler  the  direction  of  Senhor 
Fuschini. 

-  The  inscription  is  mutilated  at  both  ends  and  seems  to  read,  '  Ahmed-ben- 
Ishmael  built  it  strongly  by  order  of  .  .  .' 


48  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

adorning  of  the  church.  Nothing  is  said  as  to  when  the  church 
was  begun,  but  we  are  told  that  Dom  IMiguel  gave  124  mora- 
bitinos  to  M;ister  Bernardo*  who  had  directed  the  building  for 
ten  years  ;  the  presents  too  of  bread  and  wine  made  to  his 
successor  Soeiro  are  also  mentioned,  so  that  it  seems  probable 
that  the  church  may  have  been  begun  soon  after  Dom  Miguel 
became  bishop,  and  that  it  was  finished  some  time  before  the 
end  of  his  episcopate. 

Though  the  nave  is  like  that  of  Santiago,  the  transepts  and 
choir  are  much  simpler.  There  the  transept  is  long  and  has 
an  aisle  on  each  side  ;  here  it  is  short  and  aisleless.  There  the 
choir  is  deep  with  a  surrounding  aisle  and  radiating  chapels, 
here  it  is  a  simple  apse  flanked  by  two  smaller  apses.  Indeed 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  Peninsula  the  French  east  end 
was  seldom  used  except  in  churches  of  a  distinctly  foreign 
origin,  such  as  Santiago,  Leon  or  Toledo  in  Spain,  or  Alcobaga 
in  Portugal,  and  so  it  is  natural  here  to  find  Bernardo  rejecting 
the  elaboration  and  difficult  construction  of  his  model,  and 
returning  to  the  simpler  plan  which  had  already  been  so  often 
used  in  the  north.     (Fig.  18.) 

Inside  the  piers  are  square  with  four  half-shatts,  one  of 
which  runs  up  in  front  to  carry  the  barrel  vault,  which  is 
about  sixty  feet  high.  All  the  capitals  are  well  carved,  and 
a  moulded  string  which  runs  along  under  the  gallery  is 
curiously  returned  against  the  vaulting  shafts  as  if  it  had 
once  been  carried  round  them  and  had  afterwards  been  cut 
off.  Almost  the  only  light  in  the  nave  comes  from  small 
openings  in  the  galleries,  the  aisle  windows  being  nearly  all 
blocked  up  by  later  altars,  and  from  a  large  window  at  the 
west  end.  The  transept  on  the  other  hand  is  very  light, 
with  several  windows  at  either  end,  and  eight  in  the  square 
lantern,  so  that  the  effect  is  extremely  good  of  the  dark  nave 
followed  by  the  brilliant  transept  and  ending  in  a  great 
carved  and  gilt  reredos.  This  reredos,  reaching  up  to  the 
blue-and-gold  apse  vault,  was  given  to  the  cathedral  in  1 508 
by  Bishop  D.  Jorge  dAlmeida,  and  was  the  work  of  '  Master 

'  It  is  a  pity  that  tlie  (illi'crencc  in  date  makes  it  impossible  to  identity  this 
Bernardo  with  the  Bernardo  who  built  Santiago.  For  the  work  Dom  Miguel  gave  500 
morabitinos,  besides  a  yoke  ot  oxen  worth  12,  also  silver  altar  fronts  made  by  Master 
Ptolomeu.  Besides  the  money  Bernardo  received  a  suit  of  clothes  worth  3  mora- 
bitinos and  food  at  the  episcopal  table,  while  Soeiro  his  successor  got  a  suit  of  clothes, 
a  quintal  ot  wine,  and  a  mora  of  bread.  The  bishop  also  gave  a  great  deal  of  church 
plate  showing  that  the  cathedral  was  practically  finished  before  his  death. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     49 

Vlimer  a  Framengo,'  that  is,  a  Fleming,  and  of  his  partner, 
Joao  D'ipri,  or  of  Ypres,  two  of  the  many  foreigners  who  at 
that  time  worked  for  King  D.  Manoel.  There  are  several 
picturesque  tombs  in  the  church,  especially  two  in  the  north- 
east corner  of  the  transept,  whose  recesses  still  retain  their 
original  tile  decoration.  Later  tiles  still  cover  the  aisle  walls 
and  altar  recesses,  but  beautiful  examples  of  the  Mozarabe  or 
Moorish  style  which  once  covered  the  piers  of  the  nave,  as 
well  as  the  wooden  choir  gallery  with  its  finely  panelled  under 
side,  have  been  swept  away  by  a  recent  well-meaning  if 
mistaken  restoration.  The  outside  of  the  church  is  more 
unusual  than  the  inside.  The  two  remaining  original  apses 
are  much  hidden  by  the  sacristy,  built  probably  by  Bishop 
Jorge  de  Castello  Branco  in  1593,  but  in  their  details  they 
are  greatly  like  those  of  the  church  of  San  Isidore  at  Leon, 
and  being  like  it  built  of  fine  limestone,  are  much  more 
delicately  ornamented  than  are  those  of  any  of  the  granite 
churches  further  north.  The  side  aisles  are  but  little  lower  than 
the  central  aisle  or  than  the  transepts,  and  are  all  crowned  with 
battlements  very  like  those  on  the  castle  of  Guimaraes.  The 
buttresses  are  only  shallow  strips,  which  in  the  transepts  are 
united  by  round  arches,  but  in  the  aisles  end  among  the  battle- 
ments in  a  larger  merlon.  The  west  front  is  the  most  striking 
and  original  part  of  the  whole  church.  Below,  at  the  sides, 
a  perfectly  plain  window  lights  the  aisles,  some  feet  above 
it  runs  a  string  course,  on  which  stands  a  small  two-light 
window  tor  the  gallery,  flanked  by  larger  blind  arches,  and 
then  many  feet  of  blank  walling  ending  in  battlements. 
Between  these  two  aisle  ends  there  projects  about  ten  feet  a 
large  doorway  or  porch.  This  doorway  is  of  considerable 
size  ;  some  of  its  eight  shafts  are  curiously  twisted  and  carved, 
its  capitals  are  very  refined  and  elaborate,  and  its  arches  well 
moulded  with,  as  at  Lisbon,  small  bosses  in  the  hollows.  The 
abacus  is  plain,  and  the  broad  pilasters  which  carry  the  outer- 
most order  are  beautifully  carved  on  the  broader  face  with  a 
small  running  pattern  of  leaves.  The  same  '  black  book ' 
which  tells  of  the  bishop's  gifts  to  the  church,  tells  how  a 
certain  Master  Robert  came  four  times  from  Lisbon  to  perfect 
the  work  of  the  door,  and  how  each  time  he  received  seven 
morabitinos,  besides  ten  for  his  expenses,  as  well  as  bread, 
wine  and  meat  for  his  four  apprentices  and  food  for  his  four 
asses.      It  is  not  often  that  the  name  of  a  man  who  worked  on 

D 


50  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

a  mediasval  church  has  been  so  preserved,  and  it  is  worth 
noticing  that  the  west  door  at  Lisbon  has  on  it  exactly  the 
same  ball  ornament  as  that  with  which  Master  Robert  and  his 
four  helpers  enriched  the  archway  here.  Above  the  door  runs 
an  arched  corbel  tabic  on  which  stands  the  one  large  window 
which  the  church  possesses.  This  window/  which  is  much  more 
like  a  door  than  a  window,  is  deeply  recessed  within  four  orders 
of  mouldings,  resting  on  shafts  and  capitals,  four  on  each  side, 
all  very  like  the  door  below.  Above,  the  whole  projection  is 
carried  up  higher  than  the  battlements  in  an  oblong  em- 
battled belfry,  having  two  arched  openings  in  front  and  one 
at  the  side,  added  in  1837  to  take  the  place  of  a  detached 
belfry  which  once  stood  to  the  south  of  the  church,  and  to 
hold  some  bells  brought  from  Thomar  after  that  rich  convent 
had  been  suppressed.     (Fig.  19.) 

Of  the  two  other  doorways,  that  at  the  end  of  the  north 
transept,  which  has  a  simple  archway  on  either  side,  and  is 
surmounted  by  an  arcade  of  five  arches,  has  been  altered  in 
the  early  sixteenth  century  with  good  details  of  the  first 
French  renaissance,  while  the  larger  doorway  in  the  third  bay 
of  the  nave  has  at  the  same  time  been  rebuilt  as  a  beautiful 
three-storied  porch,  reaching  right  up  to  the  battlements.  To 
the  south  lie  the  cloisters,  added  about  the  end  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  but  now  very  much  mutilated.  They  are  of  the 
usual  Portuguese  type  of  vaulted  cloister,  a  large  arch,  here 
pointed,  enclosing  two  round  arches  below  with  a  circular 
opening  above. 

The  central  lantern — the  only  romanesque  example  surviv- 
ing except  that  of  Lisbon  Cathedral — is  square,  and  not  as 
there  octagonal.  It  has  two  round-headed  windows  on  each 
side  whose  sills  are  but  little  above  the  level  of  the  flat  roof — 
for,  like  almost  all  vaulted  churches  in  Portugal,  the  roofs  are 
flat  and  paved — and  is  now  crowned  by  a  picturesque  dome 
covered  with  many-coloured  tiles. 

Somewhat  older  than  the  cathedral,  but  not  unlike  it, 
was  the  church  of  Sao  Christovao  now  destroyed,  while  Sao 
Thiago  still  has  a  west  door  whose  shafts  are  even  more 
elaborately  carved  and  twisted  than  are  those  at  the  Se  Velha.^ 

There  is    more  than   one   building,  such  as  the  Templar 

'  Compare  the  doorlike  window  of  Nossa  Senhora  da  Oliveira  at  Giiimaraes. 
'  The  small  church  of  SSo  Salvador  has  also  an  old  door,  plainer  and  smaller  than 
SSo  Thiago. 


1 1 


a 


1  ^HiBBflHaMBH^^H 

cy^ 

■ffp 

U^ 

t-"  ^^^A 

f^'. 

jL 

^^^^■i^^   n  '■' 

'^     o    ,, 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     51 

church  at  Thomar,  older  than  the  cathedral  of  Evora,  and 
indeed  older  than  the  Se  Velha  at  Coimbra  ;  but  Evora,  except 
that  its  arches  are  pointed  instead  of  round,  is  so  clearly 
derived  directly  from  the  Se  at  Lisbon  that  it  must  be  men- 
tioned next  in  order. 

Although  the  great  province  of  Alemtejo,  which  reaches 
from  the  south  bank  of  the  Tagus  to  within  about  twenty-five 
or  thirty  miles  of  the  Southern  Sea,  had  more  than  once  been 
entered  by  the  victorious  Portugese  king  Affonso  Henriques, 
it  was  not  till  after  his  death  in  11 85,  indeed  not  till  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century,  that  it  could  be  called  a 
part  of  Portugal.  As  early  as  1139  Affonso  Henriques  had 
met  and  defeated  five  kings  at  Ourique  not  tar  from  Beja,  a 
victory  which  was  long  supposed  to  have  secured  his  country's 
independence,  and  which  was  therefore  believed  to  have  been 
much  greater  and  more  important  than  was  really  the  case.' 
Evora,  the  Roman  capital  of  the  district,  did  not  fall  into  the 
hands  of  the  Christians  till  1 166,  when  it  is  said  to  have  been 
taken  by  stratagem  by  Giraldo  Sem  Pavor,  or  '  the  Fearless,' 
an  outlaw  who  by  this  capture  regained  the  favour  of  the  king. 
But  soon  the  Moors  returned,  first  in  1 174  when  they  won 
back  the  whole  of  the  province,  and  again  in  1 184  when  Dom 
Sancho,  Affonso's  son,  utterly  defeated  and  killed  their  leader, 
Yusuf.  Yusuf's  son,  Yakub,  returned  to  meet  defeat  in  1 188 
and  1 1 90  when  he  was  repulsed  from  Thomar,  but  when  he 
led  a  third  army  across  the  Straits  in  1192  he  found  that  the 
Crusaders  who  had  formerly  helped  Dom  Sancho  had  sailed  on 
to  Palestine,  and  with  his  huge  army  was  able  to  drive  the 
Christians  back  beyond  the  Tagus  and  compel  the  king  to 
come  to  terms,  nor  did  the  Christian  borders  advance  again 
for  several  years.  It  is  said  that  the  cathedral  begun  in  11  85  Se,  Evora. 
or  1186^  was  dedicated  in  1204,  so  it  must  have  been  still 
Incomplete  when  Yakub's  successful  Invasion  took  place,  and 

'  The  five  small  !.hiclds  nith  the  Wounds  of  Christ  on  the  Portuguese  coat  are 
Mipposcil  to  have  bci-n  adopteil  because  on  the  eve  of  this  battle  Christ  cnicitied 
appeared  to  Affonso  and  promised  him  victory,  and  because  five  kings  were  dekated. 

'  Andre  de  Rezendc,  a  fifteenth-century  antiquary,  says,  quoting  from  an  old 
'  book  of  anniversaries ' :  '  Each  year  an  anniversary  is  held  in  memory  ot  Bishop 
D.  Payo  on  St.  Mark's  Day,  that  is  .May  21st,  on  which  day  he  laid  the  first  stone  for 
ilie  founilation  of  this  cathedral,  on  the  spot  where  now  is  St.  Mark's  Altar,  and  he 
lies  behind  the  said  place  and  altar  in  the  Chapel  of  St.  John.  This  church  was 
founded  Era  122+,'  i.e.  1186  A.O.  D.  Payo  became  bishop  in  1181.  Another 
stone  in  the  chancel  records  the  death,  in  era  1521,  i.e.  1283  A.D.,  of  Bishop  D. 
Durando,  'who  built  and  enriched  this  cathedral  with  his  alms,'  but  probably  he 
only  made  some  additions,  perhaps  the  central  lantern. 


52 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


only  finished  after  the  Christians  had  again  recovered  the  town, 
though  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  church  can  have  been 
dedicated  in  that  year  as  the  town  remained  in  Moorish  power 
till  after  Dom  Sancho's  death  in  12  1 1.  Except  the  Se  Velha  at 
Coimbra,  Evora  is  the  best-preserved  of  all  the  older  Portuguese 
cathedrals,   and    must   always   have  been  one  of  the    largest. 


Scdie 


r^ 


50 


PLAN    OF    St.    EVORA 


The  plan  is  evidently  founded  on  those  of  the  cathedrals 
of  Lisbon  and  Braga  ;  a  nave  of  eight  bavs  155  feet  long 
by  75  wide,  leads  to  an  aisleless  transept  125  by  30,  with 
lantern  at  the  crossing,  to  the  east  of  which  were  five  chapels. 
Unfortunately  in  1718  the  Capella  Mor  or  main  chancel  was 
pulled  down  as  being  too  small  for  the  dignity  of  an  archi- 
episcopal  see,  and  a  new  one  of  many-coloured  marbles 
built  in  its  stead,  measuring  75  feet  by  30.^ 

'  It  was  built  1718-17+6  by  Luclovici  or  Luchvig  the  architect  of  Mafra  and  cost 
i6o:ooo$ooo,  or  about  ^30,000. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     53 

To  the  west  are  two  large  square  towers  ;  to  the  south 
a  cloister  added  in  1376  ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  north  transept 
a  chapel  built  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  and  entered 
by  a  large  archway  well  carved  with  rich  early  renaissance 
ornament.  If  there  is  no  advance  from  the  romanesque 
plan  of  older  churches,  there  is  none  in  construction.  All 
the  arches  are  pointed,  but  that  is  the  only  direction  in  which 
any  change  has  been  made.  The  piers  are  all  cross-shaped 
with  a  large  half-shaft  on  each  of  the  four  main  faces  and  a 
smaller  round  shaft  in  each  angle.  The  capitals  have  square 
moulded  abaci,  and  are  rather  rudely  carved  with  budlilce 
curled  leaves  ;  the  pointed  arches  of  the  arcade  are  well 
moulded,  and  above  them  runs  a  continuous  triforium  gallery 
like  that  in  the  nave  at  Lisbon,  but  with  small  pointed  arches. 
The  main  vault  is  a  pointed  barrel  with  bold  ribs  ;  it  is  held 
up  by  a  half-barrel  over  the  aisles,  which  have  groined  vaults 
with  very  large  transverse  arches.  The  galleries  over  the 
aisles  are  lit  by  small  pointed  windows  of  two  lights  with  a 
cusped  circle  between,  but  except  in  the  lantern  which  has 
similar  windows,  in  the  transept  ends  and  the  west  front, 
these  are  the  only  original  openings  which  survive.  (Fig.  20.) 
Both  transepts  have  large  rose  windows,  the  northern  filled  with 
tracery,  like  that,  common  in  Champagne,  radiating  towards 
and  not  from  the  centre.  The  southern  is  more  interesting. 
The  whole,  well  moulded,  is  enclosed  in  a  curious  square 
framing.  In  the  centre  a  doubly  cusped  circle  is  surrounded 
by  twelve  radiating  openings,  whose  trefoiled  heads  abut 
against  twelve  other  broad  trefoils,  which  are  rather  curiously 
run  into  the  mouldings  of  the  containing  circle.  Over  the 
west  porch  is  a  curious  eight-light  window.  There  are  four 
equal  two-light  openings  below  ;  on  the  two  in  the  centre 
rests  a  large  plain  circle,  and  the  space  between  it  and  the 
enclosing  arch  is  very  clumsily  filled  by  a  rib  which,  springing 
from  the  apex  of  either  light,  runs  concentrically  with  the 
enclosing  arch  till  it  meets  the  larger  circle.  The  whole 
building  is  surmounted  by  brick  battlements,  everything  else 
being  of  granite,  resting  on  a  good  trefoil  corbel  table,  and, 
as  the  roofs  are  perfectly  flat,  there  are  no  gables. 

The  two  western  towers  are  very  picturesque.  The  north- 
ern, without  buttresses,  has  its  several  windows  arranged 
without  any  regard  to  symmetry,  and  finishes  in  a  round 
spire    covered   with    green   and   white    glazed   tiles.       In  the 


54  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

southern  plain  buttresses  run  up  to  the  belfry  stage  which 
has  round-headed  openings,  and  above  it  is  a  low  octagonal 
spire  set  diagonally  and  surrounded  by  eight  pinnacles. 

The  most  unusual  feature  of  the  whole  cathedral  is  the 
fine  octagonal  lantern  at  the  crossing.  Each  face  has  a  two- 
light  window,  pointed  outside,  with  a  round-headed  arch 
within,  leaving  a  passage  between  the  two  walls.  At  each 
angle  are  plain  buttresses,  weathered  back  a  few  feet  below 
the  corbel  table,  above  which  stand  eight  octagonal  pinnacles 
each  with  eight  smaller  pinnacles  surrounding  a  conical  stone 
spire.  The  whole  lantern  is  covered  by  a  steep  stone  roof 
which,  passing  imperceptibly  from  the  octagonal  to  the  round, 
is  covered,  as  are  all  the  other  pinnacles,  with  scales  carved  in 
imitation  of  tiles.  Inside  the  well-moulded  vaulting  ribs  do 
not  rise  higher  than  the  windows,  leaving  therefore  a  large 
space  between  the  vault  and  the  outerstone  capping.    (Fig-  2  i .) 

Lanterns,  especially  octagonal  lanterns,  are  particularly 
common  in  Spain,  and  at  Salamanca  and  its  neighbourhood 
were  very  early  developed  and  attained  to  a  remarkable  degree 
of  perfection  before  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century.  It  is 
strange,  therefore,  that  they  should  be  so  rare  in  Portugal 
where  there  seem  now  to  be  only  three  :  one,  square,  at 
Coimbra,  an  octagonal  at  Lisbon,  and  one  here,  where  however 
there  is  nothing  of  the  internal  dome  which  is  so  striking 
at  Salamanca.  Probably  this  lantern  was  one  of  the  enrich- 
ments added  to  the  church  by  Bishop  Durando  who  died  in 
1283,  for  the  capitals  of  the  west  door  look  considerably 
later. 

This  door  Is  built  entirely  of  white  marble  with  shafts 
which  look,  as  do  those  of  the  south  transept  door,  almost 
like  Cipoilino,  taken  perhaps  from  some  Roman  building.  It 
has  well  -  moulded  arches  and  abaci  ;  capitals  richly  carved 
with  realistic  foliage,  and  on  each  side  six  of  the  apostles, 
all  very  like  each  other,  large-headed,  long-bearded,  and 
long-haired,  with  rather  good  drapery  but  bodies  and  legs 
which  look  far  too  short.  St.  Peter  alone,  with  short  curly 
hair  and  beard,  has  any  individuality,  but  is  even  less  prepos- 
sessing than  his  companions.  They  are,  however,  among  the 
earliest  specimens  of  large  figure  sculpture  which  survive,  and 
by  their  want  of  grace  make  it  easier  to  understand  why  Dom 
Manoel  employed  so  many  foreign  artists  in  the  early  years 
of  the  sixteenth  century. 


12 


a 
in    C 


<  Q  i 


■j-j  > 

s 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     SS 

The  large  cloister  to  the  south  must  once  have  been  one 
of  the  best  in  the  country.  Here  the  main  arches  alone  sur- 
vive, having  lost  whatever  subsidiary  arches  or  tracery  they 
may  once  have  contained,  but  higher  up  under  the  corbel 
table  are  large  open  circles,  not  as  everywhere  else  enclosed 
under  the  large  arch,  but  quite  independent  of  it.  Many  of 
these  circles  are  still  filled  with  thin  slabs  of  granite  all  pierced 
with  most  beautiful  patterns,  some  quite  Gothic,  but  the 
majority  almost  Moorish  in  design,  not  unlike  the  slabs  in 
the  circles  over  the  cloister  arcades  at  Alcoba^'a,  but  though 
this  is  probably  only  a  coincidence,  still  more  like  those  at 
Tarragona  in  Cataluiia.     (Fig-  22.) 

Like  the  cathedral  at  Evora,  some  of  the  arches  in  the  Templar 
Templar  Church  at  Thomar  are  pointed,  yet  like  it  again,  it  is  ,^'""''''' 
entirely  romanesque  both  in  construction  and  in  detail. 

The  Knights  Templars  were  already  established  in  Portugal 
in  1 126.  With  their  headquarters  at  Soure,  a  little  to  the 
south  of  Coimbra,  they  had  been  foremost  in  helping  Affonso 
Henriques  in  his  attacks  on  the  Moors,  and  when  Santerem 
was  taken  in  1 147  they  were  given  the  ecclesiastical  superiority 
of  the  town.  This  led  to  a  quarrel  with  Dom  Gilberto,  the 
English  bishop  of  Lisbon,  which  was  settled  in  11 50,  when 
Dom  Gualdim  Paes,  the  most  famous  member  the  order  ever 
produced  in  Portugal,  was  chosen  to  be  Grand  Master.  He 
at  once  gave  up  all  Santarem  to  the  bishop,  except  the  church 
of  Sao  Thiago,  and  received  instead  the  territory  of  Ceras  some 
forty  or  fifty  miles  to  the  north-east.  There  on  the  banks 
of  the  river  Nabao,  on  a  site  fimous  for  the  martyrdom  under 
Roman  rule  of  Sant'  Iria  or  Irene,  Dom  Gualdim  built  a 
church,  and  began  a  castle  which  was  soon  abandoned  for  a  tar 
stronger  position  on  a  steep  hill  some  few  hundred  yards  to  the 
west  across  the  river.  This  second  castle,  begun  in  1 160,  still 
survives  in  part  but  in  a  very  ruinous  condition  ;  the  walls  and 
the  keep  alike  have  lost  their  battlements  and  their  original 
openings,  though  a  little  further  west,  and  once  forming  part 
of  the  fortified  enclosure,  the  church,  begun  in  11 62,  still 
remains  as  a  high  tower-like  bastion  crowned  with  battlements. 
Dom  Gualdim  had  the  laudable  habit  of  carving  inscriptions 
telling  of  any  striking  event,  so  that  we  may  still  read,  not  only 
how  the  castle  was  founded,  but  how  '  In  the  year  of  the  Eia 
of  Cassar,  1228  (that  is  1190  a.d.,  on  the  3rd  of  July),  came 
the  King  of  Morocco,  leading  four  hundred  thousand  horsemen 


56  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

and  five  hundred  thousand  foot  and  besieged  this  castle  for  six 
days,  destroying  everything  he  found  outside  the  walls.  God 
delivered  from  his  hands  the  castle,  the  aforesaid  Master  and 
his  brethren.  The  same  king  returned  to  his  country  with 
innumerable  loss  of  men  and  of  animals.'^  Doubtless  the  size 
of  Yakub  the  Almohade  leader's  army  is  here  much  exaggerated, 
but  that  he  was  forced  to  retire  from  Thomar,  and  by  pestilence 
from  Santarcm  is  certain,  and  though  he  made  a  more  successful 
invasion  two  years  later  the  Moors  never  again  gained  a  footing 
to  the  north  of  the  Tagus. 

Dom  Gualdim's  church,  since  then  enlarged  by  the  addition 
of  a  nave  to  the  west,  was  originally  a  polygon  ot  sixteen  sides 
with  a  circular  barrel-vaulted  aisle  surrounding  a  small  octagon, 
which  with  its  two  stories  of  slightly  pointed  arches  contains 
the  high  altar.*     (F'g-  23.) 

The  round-headed  windows  come  up  high,  and  till  it  was  so 
richly  adorned  by  Dom  Manoel  during  his  grand  mastership 
of  the  Order  of  Christ  more  than  three  hundred  years  later, 
the  church  must  have  been  extremely  simple.  Outside  the 
most  noticeable  feature  is  the  picturesque  grouping  of  the  bell- 
towers  and  gable,  added  probably  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
which  now  rise  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  polygon,  and  which, 
seen  above  the  orange  and  medlar  trees  of  a  garden  reaching 
eastwards  towards  the  castle,  forms  one  of  the  most  pleasing 
views  in  the  whole  country. 

If  Evora   and  the  Templar  church  at  Thomar  show  one 

form  of  transition,  where  the  arches  are  pointed,  but  the  con- 

saojosode  struction  and  detail  is  romansque,  Sao  Joao   de   Alporao  at 

AJporSo,      Santarem  shows  another,  where  the  construction  is  Gothic  but 

Santarem.         ,  ,  -n      ii  i 

the  arches  are  still  all  round. 

'  The  whole  inscription,  the  first  part  occurring  also  on  a  stone  in  the  castle,  nins 
thus: — 

E  (f.i;-.  Era)  MC  :  Lx.  VIII.  regnant :  Afonso  :  illustrisimo  rege  Portugalis  :  magister: 

galdi- 
nus  :  Portugalensium  :  Militum  Templi :  cum  fratribus  suis  Primo :  die  :  Marcii  :  ce- 
pit  edificari  :   hoc  :  castelki  :  niiie  Thomar  :   qod  :  pretatus  rex  obtulit  :  Deo  :  et 

militibus:  Tem- 
pli: E.  M.  cc.  XX.  VIII:  III,  mens.  :  Julii  :  venit  rex  de  maroqis  ducens  :  cccc 

milia  cquitD: 
et  quingcnta  milia  :  peditQm  :  et  obsedit  castrum  istud  :  per  sex  Dies  :  et  delevit: 

quantum  extra  :  murum  invenit: 
castellQ  :  et  prcfatus:  magister:  cQ  :  trafribus  suis  liberavit  Deus  :  de  manibus :  suis 
Idem  :  rex  :  remeavit :  in  patria  :  sua :  cu  :  innumerabili  :  detrimento  :  hominO  et 
bestiamm. 
'  Cf.  Templar  church  at  Segovia,  Old  Castile,  where,  however,  the  interior  octagon 
is  nearly  solid  with  very  small  openings,  and  a  vault  over  the  lower  story  ;  it  has  also 
three  eastern  apses. 


13 


X 
u 
u 

D 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     57 

This  church  is  said  to  stand  on  the  site  of  a  mosque  and  to 
have  been  at  first  called  Al  Koran,  since  corrupted  into  Alporao, 
but  the  present  building  can  hardly  have  been  begun  till  the 
early  years  of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  church  consists  of 
an  aisleless  nave  with  good  groined  vaulting  and  a  five-sided 
apsidal  chancel.  The  round-arched  west  door  stands  under  a 
pointed  gable,  but  seems  to  have  lost  by  decay  and  consequent 
restoration  whatever  ornament  its  rather  flat  mouldings  may 
once  have  had.  Above  is  a  good  wheel  window,  with  a  cusped 
circle  in  the  centre,  surrounded  by  eight  radiating  two-arched 
lights  separated  by  eight  radiating  columns.  The  two  arches 
of  each  light  spring  from  a  detached  capital  which  seems  to 
have  lost  its  shaft,  but  as  there  is  no  trace  of  bases  for  these 
missing  shafts  on  the  central  circle  they  probably  never  existed. 
All  the  other  nave  windows  are  mere  slits  ;  and  above  them 
runs  a  rich  corbel  table  of  slightly  stilted  arches  with  their 
edges  covered  with  ball  ornament  resting  on  projecting  corbels. 
In  the  apse  the  five  windows  are  tall  and  narrow  with  square 
heads,  and  the  corbel  table  of  a  form  common  in  Portugal 
but  rare  elsewhere,  where  each  corbel  is  something  like  the 
bows  of  a  boat.' 

The  inside,  now  turned  into  a  museum,  is  much  more 
interesting.  The  chancel  is  entered,  under  a  circular  cusped 
window,  by  a  wide  round  arch,  whose  outer  moulding  is 
curiously  carried  by  shafts  with  capitals  set  across  the  angle  as 
if  to  carry  a  vaulting  rib  ;  in  the  chancel  itself  the  walls  are 
double,  the  outer  having  the  plain  square-headed  windows  seen 
outside,  and  the  inner  very  elegant  two-light  round-headed 
openings  resting  on  very  thin  and  delicate  shafts,  with  a  doubly 
cusped  circle  above.  The  vault,  whose  wall  arches  are  stilted 
and  slightly  pointed,  has  strong  well-moulded  ribs  springing 
from  the  well-wrought  capitals  of  tall  angle  shafts.  It  will  be 
seen  that  this  is  a  very  great  advance  on  any  older  vaulting, 
since  previously,  except  in  the  French  Church  at  Alcobai^a, 
groined  vaults  had  only  been  attempted  over  square  spaces. 
The  finest  of  the  many  objects  preserved  in  the  museum  is  the 
tomb  of  Dom  Duarte  de  Menezes,  who  was  killed  in  Africa  in 
1464  and  buried  in  the  church  of  Sao  Francisco,  whence,  Sao 
Francisco  having  become  a  cavalry  stable,  it  was  brought  here 
not  many  years  ago.     (Fig-  24.) 

Such  are,  except  for  the  church  at  Idanha  a  Veiha  and  that 

'  There  is  a  corbtl  table  like  it  but  more  elaborate  at  V'lzilay.in  Biirguncly. 


58 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


of  Castro  de  Avelans  near  Braganza,  nearly  all  the  early 
buildings  in  the  country.  Castro  de  Avelans  is  interesting  and 
unique  as  having  on  the  outside  brick  arcades,  like  those  on  the 
many  Mozarabic  churches  at  Toledo,  a  form  of  decoration  not 
"^  The  church  of  Alcoba^a  is  of 


found  elsewhere  in  Portugal 


lOO 

J  FCE.T. 


PLAK    OF    ALCOBAg.\ 


course,  in  part,  a  good  deal  older  than  are  some  of  those 
mentioned  above  ;  but  the  whole,  the  romanesque  choir  as 
well  as  the  early  pointed  nave,  is  so  unlike  anything  that  has 
come  before  or  anything  that  has  come  after,  that  it  seemed 
better  to  take  it  by  itself  without  regard  to  strict  chronological 
order. 


14 


B  -^ 
c/5 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     59 

The  first  stone  was  laid  in  1 158,  but  the  church  was  barely  Alcoba9a. 
finished  when  King  Sancho  i.  died  in  121 1  and  was  not 
dedicated  till  1220,  while  the  monastic  buildings  were  not 
ready  till  1223,  when  the  monks  migrated  from  Sta.  Maria 
a  Velha,  their  temporary  home.  The  abbey  was  immensely 
wealthy  :  it  had  complete  jurisdiction  over  fourteen  villages 
whose  inhabitants  were  in  fact  its  serfs :  it  or  its  abbot  was 
visitor  to  all  Benedictine  abbeys  in  the  country  and  was,  for 
over  three  hundred  years,  till  the  reign  of  Cardinal  King 
Henry,  the  superior  of  the  great  military  Order  of  Christ.  It 
early  became  one  of  the  first  centres  of  learning  in  Portugal, 
havintr  begun  to  teach  in  1269.  It  helped  Dom  Diniz  to 
found  the  University  of  Lisbon,  now  finally  settled  at 
Coimbra,  with  presents  of  books  and  of  money,  and  it  only 
acknowledged  the  king  in  so  far  as  to  give  him  a  pair  of  boots 
or  shoes  when  he  chanced  to  come  to  Alcoba9a.  All  these 
possessions  and  privileges  of  the  monks  were  confirmed  bv 
Dom  Joao  iv.  (1640-56)  after  the  supremacy  of  the  Spaniards 
had  come  to  an  end,  and  were  still  theirs  when  Beckford  paid 
them  his  memorable  visit  near  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  was  so  splendidly  entertained  with  feastings  and 
even  with  plays  and  operas  performed  by  some  of  the  younger 
brothers.  Much  harm  was  of  course  done  by  the  French 
invasion,  and  at  last  in  1834  the  brothers  were  turned  out, 
their  house  made  into  barracks,  and  their  church  and  cloister 
left  to  fall  into  decay — a  decay  from  which  they  are  only  being 
slowly  rescued  at  the  present  time. 

The  first  abbot,  Ranulph,  was  sent  by  St.  Bernard  of 
Clairvaux  himself  at  the  king's  special  request,  and  he  must 
have  brought  with  him  the  plan  of  the  abbey  or  at  least  of  the 
church.  Nearly  all  Cistercian  churches,  which  have  not  been 
altered,  are  of  two  types  which  resemble  each  other  in  being 
very  simple,  having  no  towers  and  very  little  ornament  of  any 
kind.  In  the  simpler  of  these  forms,  the  one  which  prevailed 
in  England,  the  transept  is  aisleless,  with  five  or  more  chapels, 
usually  square,  to  the  east,  of  which  the  largest,  in  the  centre, 
contains  the  main  altar.  Such  are  Fontenay  near  Monbirt 
and  Furness  in  Lancashire,  and  even  Melrose,  though  there 
the  church  has  been  rebuilt  more  or  less  on  the  old  plan  but 
with  a  wealth  of  detail  and  size  of  window  quite  foreign  to 
the  original  rule.  In  the  other,  a  more  complex  type,  the 
transept  may  have  a  western  aisle,  and  instead  of  a  plain  square 


6o  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

chancel  there  is  an  apse  with  surrounding  aisle  and  beyond  it 
a  series  of  four-sided  chapels.  Pontigny,  famous  for  the 
shelter  it  gave  to  Thomas-a-Becket,  and  begun  in  1 114,  is  of 
this  type,  and  so  was  Clairvaux  itself,  begun  in  11 15  and 
rebuilt  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Now  this  is  the  type 
followed  by  Alcnba^a,  and  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that,  as  far  as 
the  plan  of  choir  and  transept  goes,  Alcoba^a  and  Clairvaux 
are  practically  identical.  Pontigny  has  a  choir  of  three  bays 
between  the  transept  and  the  apse  and  seven  encircling  chapels  ; 
Clairvaux  had,  and  A!coba90  still  has,  a  choir  of  but  one  bay 
and  nine  instead  of  seven  chapels.  Both  had  long  naves, 
Clairvaux  of  eleven  and  Alcobaija  of  thirteen  bays,  but  at  the 
west  end  there  is  a  change,  due  probably  to  the  length  of 
time  which  passed  before  it  was  reached,  for  there  is  no  trace 
of  the  large  porch  or  narthex  found  in  most  early  Cistercian 
churches. 

The  church  is  by  far  the  largest  in  Portugal.  It  is 
altogether  about  365  feet  long,  the  nave  alone  being  about 
250  feet  by  75,  while  the  transept  measures  about  155  feet 
from  north  to  south.  Except  in  the  choir  all  the  aisles  are  of 
the  same  height,  about  68  feet. 

The  east  end  is  naturally  the  oldest  part  and  most  closely 
resembled  its  French  original  ;  the  eight  round  columns  of 
the  apse  have  good  plain  capitals  like  those  found  in  so  many 
early  Cistercian  churches,  even  in  Italy  ;^  the  round-headed 
clerestory  windows  are  high  and  narrow,  and  there  are  well- 
developed  flying  buttresses.  Unfortunately  all  else  has  been 
changed  :  in  the  apse  itself  everything  up  to  the  clerestory 
level  has  been  hidden  by  two  rows  of  classic  columns  and 
a  huge  reredos,  and  all  the  choir  chapels  have  been  filled  with 
rococo  woodwork  and  gilding,  the  work  of  an  Englishman, 
William  Elsden,  who  was  employed  to  beautify  the  church  in 
1770.'  Why  except  for  the  choir  aisle,  and  the  chapels  in 
choir  and  transept,  the  whole  church  should  be  of  the  same 
height,  it  is  difficult  to  say,  for  such  a  method  of  building  was 
unknown  in  France  and  equally  unknown  in  Spain  or  Portugal. 
Possibly  by  the  time  the  nave  was  reached  the  Frenchmen 
who  had  planned  the  church  were  dead,  and  the  native  work- 
men, being  quite  unused  to  such  a  method  of  construction,  for 
all  the  older  vaulted  churches  have  their  central  barrel  upheld 

'  E.g.  in  S.  Martino  al  Cimino  near  Viterbo. 

*  So  says  Murray.     Vilhena  Barbosa  says  1676.     1770  seems  the  more  probable. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     6i 

by  the  half-barrel  vault  of  the  galleries,  could  think  of  no 
other  way  of  supporting  the  groining  of  the  main  aisle.  They 
had  of  course  the  flying  buttresses  of  the  choir  apse  to  guide 
them,  but  there  the  points  of  support  come  so  much  closer 
together,  and  the  weight  to  be  upheld  is  consequently  so  much 
less  than  could  be  the  case  in  the  nave,  that  they  may  well 
have  thought  that  to  copy  them  was  too  dangerous  an  experi- 
ment as  well  as  being  too  foreign  to  their  traditional  manner  of 
construction.^  Whatever  may  be  the  reason,  the  west  aisle  of 
the  transept  and  the  side  aisles  of  the  nave  rise  to  the  full  height 
of  the  building.  Their  arches  are  naturally  very  much  stilted, 
and  with  the  main  vault  rest  on  piers  of  quite  unusual  size 
and  strength.  The  transverse  arches  are  so  large  as  almost  to 
hide  the  diagonal  ribs  and  to  give  the  impression  that  the  nave 
has,  after  all,  a  pointed  barrel  vault.  The  piers  are  through- 
out cross-shaped  with  a  half-shatt  on  each  cardinal  face  :  at 
the  crossing  there  is  also  a  shaft  in  the  angle,  but  elsewhere 
this  shaft  is  replaced  by  a  kind  of  corbel  capita!  "  at  the  very 
top  which  carries  the  diagonal  ribs — another  proof,  as  is  the 
size  of  the  transverse  arches,  that  such  a  ribbed  vault  was  still 
a  half-understood  novelty.  The  most  peculiar  point  about 
nave  piers  is  the  way  in  which  not  only  the  front  vaulting 
shafts  but  even  that  portion  of  the  piers  to  which  they  are 
attached  is,  except  in  the  two  western  bays,  cut  off  at  varying 
heights  from  the  ground.  In  the  six  eastern  bays,  where  the 
corbels  are  all  at  the  same  level,  this  was  done  to  leave  room 
for  the  monks'  stalls,^  but  it  is  difficult  to  see  why,  in  the  case 
of  the  following  five  piers,  against  which,  as  at  Clairvaux, 
stood  the  stalls  of  the  lay  brothers,  the  level  of  the  corbels 
should  vary  so  much.  Now  all  stalls  are  gone  and  the  church 
is  very  bare  and  desolate,  with  nothing  but  the  horrible  reredos 
to  detract  from  that  severity  and  sternness  which  was  what 
St.  Bernard  wished  to  see  in  all  churches  of  theOrder.  (Fig.  25.) 
The  small  chapel  to  the  west  of  the  south  transept  is  the 
only   part  of  the   church,  except  the    later    sixteenth-century 

•  Indeed  to  the  end  the  native  builders  have  been  very  chary  of  building  churches 
with  a  high-groined  vault  and  a  well-developed  clerestory.  The  nave  of  Batalha  and 
of  the  cathedral  of  Guarda  seem  to  be  almost  the  only  examples  which  h,ave  survived, 
for  Lisbon  choir  was  destroyed  by  the  great  earthiiuake  of  1755,  as  was  also  the 
church  of  the  Carmo  in  the  same  city,  which  perhaps  shows  that  tlicy  were  right  in 
rejecting  such  a  method  ot  construction  in  a  country  so  liable  to  be  shaken. 

"  Ct.  similar  corbel  capitals  in  the  nave  ot  the  cathedral  of  Orense  in  Galicia. 

'  Before  the  Black  Death,  which  reduced  the  number  to  eight,  there  are  said  to 
have  sometimes  been  as  many  as  999  monks ! 


62  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

sacristy,  where  there  is  any  richness  of  detail,  and  there  it  is 
confined  to  the  tombs  of  some  of  the  earlier  kings  and  queens, 
and  especially  to  those  of  D.  Pedro  and  the  unfortunate  Inez 
de  Castro  which  belongs  of  course  to  a  much  later  date. 

The  windows  which  are  high  up  the  aisle  walls  are  large, 
round-headed,  and  perfectly  plain.  At  the  transept  ends  are 
large  round  windows  filled  with  plain  uncusped  circles,  and 
there  is  another  over  the  west  door  filled  with  a  rococo 
attempt  at  Gothic  tracery,  which  agrees  well  with  the  two 
domed  western  towers  whose  details  are  not  even  good  rococo. 
Between  these  towers  still  opens  the  huge  west  door,  a  very 
plainly  moulded  pointed  arch  of  seven  orders,  resting  on  the 
simple  capitals  of  sixteen  shafts  :  a  form  of  door  which  became 
very  common  throughout  the  fourteenth  century.  The  great 
cloister  was  rebuilt  later  in  the  time  of  Dom  Diniz,  leaving 
only  the  chapter-house  entrance,  which  seems  even  older  than 
the  nave.  As  usual  there  is  one  door  in  the  centre,  with  a 
large  two-light  opening  on  each  side  :  all  the  arches  are  round 
and  well  moulded,  and  the  capitals  simply  carved  with  stiff 
foliage  showing  a  gradual  transition  from  the  earlier 
romanesque.  In  the  monastery  itself,  now  a  barrack,  there 
are  still  a  few  vaulted  passages  which  must  belong  to  the 
original  building,  but  nearly  all  else  has  been  rebuilt,  the  main 
cloister  in  the  fourteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  and  the 
greater  part  of  the  domestic  buildings  in  the  eighteenth,  so 
that  except  for  the  cloister  and  sacristy,  which  will  be  spoken 
of  later  on,  there  is  little  worthy  of  attention.^ 

Now  none  of  these  buildings  may  show  any  very  great 
originality  or  differ  to  any  marked  degree  from  contemporary 
buildings  in  Spain  or  even  in  the  south  of  France,  yet  to  a 
great  extent  they  fixed  a  type  which  in  many  ways  was 
followed  down  to  the  end  of  the  Gothic  period.  The  plan  of 
Braga,  Pombeiro,  Evora  or  Coimbra  is  reproduced  with  but 
little  change  at  Guarda,  and  if  the  western  towers  be  omitted, 
at  Batalha,  some  two  hundred  years  later,  and  the  flat  paved 
roofs  of  Evora  occur  again  at  Batalha  and  at  Guarda.  The 
barrel-vaulted  nave  also  long  survived,  being  found  as  late  as 
the   beginning  of  the   fourteenth  century   in    the   church    of 

'  It  was  a  monk  of  Alcoba^a  wlio  came  to  General  Wellesley  on  the  night  of 
1 6th  August  iSoS,  and  told  him  that  if  he  wished  to  catch  the  French  he  must  be 
quick  as  they  muant  to  retire  early  in  the  morning,  thus  enabling  him  to  win  the 
battle  of  Roli^a,  the  first  fight  of  the  Peninsular  War. 


EARLY  BUILDINGS  IN  THE  SOUTH     63 

Santa  Clara  at  Coimbra,  and  even  about  seventy  years  later  in 
the  church  of  the  Knights  of  Sao  Thiago  at  Palmella. 

The  battlements  also  of  the  castle  at  Guimaraes  are  found 
not  only  at  Coimbra,  but  as  late  as  1336  in  the  church  of 
Le9a  do  Balio  near  Oporto,  and,  modified  in  shape  by  the 
renaissance  even  in  the  sixteenth-century  churches  of  Villa  do 
Conde  and  of  Azurara. 

Although  the  distinctively  French  features  of  Alcobafaseem 
to  have  had  but  little  influence  on  the  further  development  of 
building  in  Portugal,  a  few  peculiarities  are  found  there  which 
are  repeated  again.  For  example,  the  unusually  large  trans- 
verse arches  of  the  nave  occur  at  Batalha,  and  the  large  plain 
western  door  is  clearly  related  to  such  later  doors  as  those  at 
Le9a  do  Balio  or  of  Sao  Francisco  at  Oporto.  Again  the 
vaulting  of  the  apse  in  Sao  Joao  de  Alporao  is  arranged  very 
much  in  the  wav  which  was  almost  universal  during  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  in  the  chancels  and  side 
chapels  of  many  a  church,  such  as  Santa  Maria  do  Olival  at 
Thomar,  or  the  Grac^a  at  Santarem  itself,  and  the  curious 
boatlike  corbels  of  Sao  Joao  are  found  more  than  once,  as  in 
the  choir  of  the  old  church,  formerly  the  cathedral  of  Silves, 
tar  south  in  the  Algarve.  The  large  round  windows  at  Evora 
do  not  seem  to  be  related  to  the  window  at  Sao  Joao,  but  to 
be  of  some  independent  origin  ;  probably,  like  the  similar 
windows  at  Le^a  and  at  Oporto,  they  too  belong  to  the 
thirteenth  or  fourteenth  centuries. 


64  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    THIRTEENTH    AND     FOURTEENTH     CENTURIES     DOWN 
TO    THE     BATTLE     OF    ALJUBARROTA 

In  Portugal  the  twelfth  century  is  marked  by  a  very  consider- 
able activity  in  building,  but  the  thirteenth,  which  in  France 
and  England  saw  Gothic  architecture  rise  to  a  height  of 
perfection  both  in  construction  and  in  ornament  which  was 
never  afterwards  excelled,  when  more  great  churches  and 
cathedrals  were  built  than  almost  ever  before  or  since,  seems 
here  to  have  been  the  least  productive  period  in  the  whole 
history  of  the  country.  In  the  thirteenth  century,  indeed, 
Portugal  reached  its  widest  European  limits,  but  the  energies, 
alike  of  the  kings  and  of  the  people,  seem  to  have  been 
expended  rather  in  consolidating  their  conquests  and  in 
cultivating  and  inhabiting  the  large  regions  of  land  left  waste 
bv  the  long-continued  struggle.  Although  Dom  Sancho's 
kingdom  only  extended  from  the  IVIinho  to  the  Tagus,  in  the 
early  years  of  the  thirteenth  century  the  rich  provinces  of 
Beira,  and  still  more  of  Estrcmadura,  were  very  thinly  peopled  : 
the  inhabitants  lived  only  in  walled  towns,  and  their  one 
occupation  was  fighting,  and  plunder  almost  their  only  way  of 
gaining  a  living.  It  is  natural  then  that  so  few  buildings 
should  remain  which  date  from  the  reigns  of  Dom  Sancho's 
successors, AfFon so  ii.(i2i  1-1223),  Sancho  11.(1223-1248),  and 
Affbnso  111.(1248-1279):  the  necessary  churches  and  castles 
had  been  built  at  once  after  the  conquest,  and  the  people 
had  neither  the  leisure  nor  the  means  to  replace  them  by 
larger  and  more  refined  structures  as  was  being  done  elsewhere. 
Ot  course  some  churches  described  in  the  last  chapter  may  be 
actually  of  that  period  though  belonging  artistically  and 
constructionally  to  an  earlier  time,  as  for  instance  a  large  part 
of  the  cathedral  of  Evora  or  the  church  of  Silo  Joao  at 
Santarem. 
Sso  Francisco,  The  Franciscans  had  been  introduced  into  Portugal  by 
Guimaraes.      Dona  Sancha,   the  daughter  of  Dom  Sancho  i.,   and  houses 


TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA     65 

were  built  for  them  by  Dona  Urraca,  the  wife  of  Dom 
AfFonso  II.,  at  Lisbon  and  at  Guimaraes.  Their  church  at 
Guimaraes  has  been  very  much  altered  at  different  times, 
mostly  in  the  eighteenth  century,  but  the  west  door  may  very 
well  belong  to  Dona  Urraca's  building.  It  has  a  drip-mould 
covered  with  closely  set  balls,  and  four  orders  of  mouldings 
of  which  the  second  is  a  broad  chamfer  with  a  row  of  flat 
four-leaved  flowers  ;  the  abacus  is  well  moulded,  but  the 
capitals,  which  are  somewhat  bell-shaped,  have  the  bell  covered 
with  rude  animals  or  foliage  which  are  still  very  romanesque 
in  design.  The  entrance  to  the  chapter-house  is  probably  not 
much  later  in  date  :  from  the  south  walk  of  the  simple  but 
picturesque  renaissance  cloister  a  plain  pointed  doorway  leads 
into  the  chapter-house,  with,  on  either  side,  an  opening  of 
about  equal  size  and  sl^ape.  In  these  openings  there  stand 
three  pairs  of  round  coupled  shafts  with  plain  bases,  rudely 
carved  capitals  and  large  square  overhanging  abaci,  from  which 
spring  two  pointed  arches  moulded  only  on  the  under  side  : 
resting  on  these,  but  connected  with  them  or  with  the  enclosing 
arch  by  no  moulding  or  fillet,  is  a  small  circle,  moulded  like 
the  arches  only  on  one  side  and  containing  a  small  quatrefoil.^ 
This  is  one  of  the  earliest  attempts  at  window  tracery  in  the 
country,  for  the  west  window  at  Evora  seems  later,  but  like  it, 
it  shows  that  tracery  was  not  really  understood  in  the  country, 
and  that  the  Portuguese  builders  were  not  yet  able  so  to  unite 
the  different  parts  as  to  make  such  a  window  one  complete 
and  beautiful  whole.  Indeed  so  unsuccessful  are  their  attempts 
throughout  that  whenever,  as  at  Batalha,  a  better  result  is 
seen,  it  may  be  put  down  to  foreign  influence.  Much  better 
as  a  rule  are  the  round  windows,  mostly  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  but  they  are  all  very  like  one  another,  and  are 
probably  mostly  derived  from  the  same  source,  perhaps  from 
one  of  the  transept  windows  at  Evora,  or  from  the  now  empty 
circle  over  the  west  door  at  Lisbon. 

Much  more  refined  than  this  granite  church  at  Guimaraes  sao  Francisco, 
has    been    Sao     Francisco    at    Santarem,    now    unfortunately  ^■"i'^"''-"'"' 
degraded  into  being  the  stable  of  a  cavalry  barracks.     There 
the  best-preserved  and  most  interesting  part  is  the  west  door, 
which  does  not  lead  directly  into  the  church  but  into  a  low 

'  Cf.  the  clerestory  windows  of  Burgos  Cathedral,  or  those  at  Dunblane,  where 
as  at  Guimaraes  the  circle  merely  rests  on  the  lights  below  without  being  properly 
united  with  them. 

E 


66 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Santa  Maria 
dos  Olivaes, 

Thomar. 


porch  or  narthcx.  The  narthex  itself  has  central  and  side 
aisles,  all  of  the  same  height,  is  two  bays  in  length  and  is 
covered  by  a  fine  strong  vault  resting  on  short  clustered 
piers.^  The  doorway  itself,  which  is  not  acutely  pointed, 
stands  under  a  gable  which  reaches  up  to  the  plain  battle- 
mented  parapet  of  the  flat  narthex  roof.  There  are  four 
shafts  on  each  side  with  a  ring-moulding  rather  less  than  half- 
way up,  which  at  once  distinguishes  them  from  any  roman- 
esque  predecessors  ;  the  capitals  are  round  with  a  projecting 
moulding  half-way  up  and  another  one  at  the  top  with  a 
curious  projection  or  claw  to  unite  the  round  cap  and  the 
square  moulded  abacus.  Of  the  different  orders  of  the  arch, 
all  well  moulded,  the  outer  has  a  hood  with  billet-mould  ;  the 
second  a  well-developed  chevron  or  zigzag  ;  and  the  innermost 
a  series  of  small  horseshoes,  which  like  the  chevron  stretch  across 
the  hollow  so  as  to  hold  in  the  large  roll  at  the  angle."  (Fig.  26.) 
In  a  previous  chapter  the  building  of  a  church  at  Thomar 
by  Dom  Gualdim  Paes,  Grand  Master  of  the  Templars,  has 
been  mentioned.  Of  this  church  and  the  castle  built  at 
the  same  time,  both  of  which  stood  on  the  east  or  flat  bank 
of  the  river  Nabao,  nothing  now  remains  except  perhaps 
the  lower  part  of  the  detached  bell-tower.  This  church, 
Santa  Maria  dos  Olivaes,  was  the  Matriz  or  mother  church 
of  all  those  held,  first  by  the  Templars  and  later  by  their 
successors,  the  Order  of  Christ,  not  only  in  Portugal  but  even 
in  Africa,  Brazil,  and  in  India.  Of  so  high  a  dignity  it  is 
scarcely  worthy,  being  but  a  very  simple  building  neither  large 
nor  richly  ornamented.  A  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays,  three 
polygonal  apses  to  the  east  and  later  square  chapels  beyond 
the  aisles,  make  up  the  whole  building.  The  roofs  are  all  of 
panelled  wood  of  the  sixteenth  century  except  in  the  three 
vaulted  apses,  of  which  the  central  is  entered  by  an  arch, 
which,  rising  no  higher  than  the  aisle  arches,  leaves  room  for 
a  large  window  under  the  roof.  All  the  arches  of  the  aisle 
arcade  spring  from  the  simple  moulded  capitals  of  piers  whose 
section  is  that  of  four  half-octagons  placed  together.     In  the 

'  From  the  north-east  corner  of  the  narthex  a  door  leads  to  the  cloisters,  which 
have  a  row  of  coupled  shafts  and  small  pointed  arches.  From  the  east  walk  a  good 
doorway  of  Dom  Manoel's  time  led  into  the  chapter-house,  now  the  barrack  kitchen, 
the  smoke  from  which  has  entirely  blackened  alike  the  doorway  and  the  cloister 
near. 

*  Compare  the  horseshoe  moulding  on  the  south  door  of  the  cathedral  of 
Orense,  Galicia,  begun  1120,  where,  however,  each  horseshoe  is  separated  from  the 
next  by  a  deep  groove. 


15 


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o 
o 

a 


TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA     67 

clerestory  are  windows  of  one  small  light,  in  the  aisles  of  two 
larger  lights,  and  in  the  apses  single  lancets.  The  great 
simplicity  of  the  building  notwithstanding  it  can  scarcely 
be  as  old  as  the  thirteenth  century :  the  curious  way  in 
which  the  two  lancet  lights  of  the  aisle  windows  are  enclosed 
under  one  larger  trefoiled  arch  recalls  the  similar  windows  in 
the  church  at  Le^a  do  Balio  near  Oporto  begun  in  1336, 
though  there  the  elliptical  head  of  the  enclosing  arch  is 
much  less  satisfxctory  than  the  trefoiled  head  here  used.  The 
only  part  of  the  church  which  can  possibly  have  been  built  in 
the  thirteenth  century  is  the  central  part  of  the  west  front. 
The  pointed  door  belov/  stands  under  a  projecting  gable  like  that 
at  Sao  Francisco  Santarem,  except  that  there  is  a  five-foiled 
circle  above  the  arch  containing  a  pentalpha,  put  there  perhaps 
to  keep  out  witches.  The  door  itself  has  three  large  shafts 
on  each  side  with  good  but  much-decayed  capitals  of  foliage, 
and  a  moulded  jamb  next  the  door.  The  arch  itself  is  terribly 
decayed,  but  one  of  its  orders  still  has  the  remains  of  a  series 
of  large  cusps,  arranged  like  the  horseshoe  cusps  at  Santarem 
but  much  larger.  Above  the  door  gable  is  a  circular  window 
of  almost  disproportionate  size.  It  has  twelve  trefoil- 
headed  lights  radiating  from  a  small  circle,  and  curiously 
crossing  a  larger  circle  some  distance  from  the  smaller. 
Unfortunately  the  spaces  between  the  trefoils  and  the  outer 
mouldings  have  been  filled  up  with  plaster  and  the  lights  them- 
selves subdivided  with  meaningless  wood  tracery  to  hold 
the  horrible  blue-and-red  glass  now  so  popular  in  Por- 
tugal. Though  Santa  Maria  dos  Olivaes  cannot  be  nearly 
as  old  as  has  usually  been  believed,  it  is  one  of  the  earliest 
churches  built  on  the  plan  derived  perhaps  first  from  Braga 
Cathedral  or  from  the  Franciscan  and  Dominican  churches  in 
Galicia,  of  a  wooden  roofed  basilica  with  or  without  transept, 
and  with  three  or  more  apses  to  the  east  ;  a  form  which  to 
the  end  of  the  Gothic  period  was  the  most  common  and 
which  is  found  even  in  cathedrals  as  at  Silves  or  at  Funchal  in 
Madeira. 

Dom  Sancho  ii.,  whose  reign  had  begun  with  brilliant 
attacks  on  the  Moors,  had,  because  of  his  connection  with 
Dona  Mencia  de  Haro,  the  widow  of  a  Castilian  nobleman, 
and  his  consequent  inactivity,  become  extremely  unpopular, 
so  was  supplanted  in  1246  by  his  brother  Dom  Affonso  in. 
The  first  care  of  the  new  king  was  to  carry  on   the  conquest 


68         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

of  the  Algarve,  which  his  brother  had  given  up  when  he  fell 
under  the  evil  influence  of  Dona  Mencia,  and  by  about 
1260  he  had  overrun  the  whole  country.  At  first  Alfonso  x., 
the  Wise,  king  of  Castile  and  Leon,  was  much  displeased  at 
this  extension  of  Portuguese  power,  but  on  Dom  AfFonso 
agreeing  to  marry  his  daughter  Beatrix  de  Guzman,  the 
Spanish  king  allowed  his  son-in-law  to  retain  his  conquests 
and  to  assume  the  title  of  King  of  the  Algarve,  a  title  which 
his  descendants  still  bear.  The  countess  of  Boulogne, 
Affonso's  first  wife,  was  indeed  still  alive,  but  that  seems  to 
Silves.  have  troubled  neither  Dona  Beatrix  nor  her  father.  At  Silves 
or  Chelb,  for  so  the  Moorish  capital  had  been  called,  a 
bishopric  was  soon  founded,  but  the  cathedral,^  though  many 
of  its  details  seem  to  proclaim  an  early  origin,  was  probably 
not  begun  till  the  early,  and  certainly  not  finished  till  near 
the  later,  years  of  the  fourteenth  century.  It  is  a  church  of 
the  same  type  as  Santa  Maria  at  Thomar  but  with  a  transept. 
The  west  door,  a  smaller  edition  of  that  at  Alcobaca,  leads  to 
a  nave  and  aisles  of  four  bays,  with  plain  octagonal  columns, 
whose  bases  exactly  resemble  the  capitals  reversed — an 
octagon  brought  to  a  square  by  a  curved  chamfer.  The  nave 
has  a  wooden  roof,  transepts  a  pointed  barrel  vault,  and  the 
crossing  and  chancel  with  its  side  chapels  a  ribbed  vault. 
Though  some  of  the  capitals  at  the  east  end  look  almost 
romanesque,  the  really  late  date  is  shown  by  the  cusped 
fringing  of  the  chancel  arch,  a  feature  very  common  at  Batalha, 
which  was  begun  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  by 
the  window  tracery,  where  in  the  two-light  windows  the  head 
is  filled  by  a  flat  pierced  slab.  Outside,  the  chancel  has  good 
buttresses  at  the  angles,  and  is  crowned  by  that  curious  boat- 
like corbel  table  seen  at  Santarem  and  by  a  row  of  pyramidal 
battlements.  The  church  is  only  about  150  feet  long,  but 
with  its  two  picturesque  and  dilapidated  towers,  and  the 
wonderful  deep  purple  of  its  sandstone  walls  rising  above  the 
whitewashed  houses  and  palms  of  the  older  Silves  and  backed 
by  the  Moorish  citadel,  it  makes  a  most  picturesque  and  even 
striking  centre  to  the  town,  which,  standing  high  above  the 

'  The  town  having  much  decayed  owing  to  fevers  and  to  the  gradual  shallowing 
of  the  river  the  see  was  transferred  to  Faro  in  1579.  The  cathedral  there,  sacked 
by  Essex  in  1596,  and  shattered  by  the  earthquake  of  1755,  has  little  left  of  its 
original  work  except  the  stump  of  a  west  tower  standing  on  a  porch  open  on  three 
sides  with  plain  pointed  arches,  and  leading  to  the  church  on  the  fourth  by  a  door 
only  remarkable  tor  the  dog-tooth  of  its  hood-mould. 


TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA     69 

river,   preserves    the    memory   of  its   Moslem  builders  in  its 
remarkable  and  many-towered  city  walls.'      (Fig-  27.) 

King  Diniz  the  Labourer,  so  called  for  his  energy  in 
settling  and  reclaiming  the  land  and  in  fixing  the  moving 
sands  along  the  west  coast  by  plantations  of  pine-trees,  and 
the  son  of  Dom  AfFonso  and  Dona  Beatriz,  was  a  more 
active  builder  than  any  of  his  immediate  predecessors.  Of 
the  many  castles  built  by  him  the  best  preserved  is  that  of 
Beja,  the  second  town  of  Alemtejo  and  the  Pax  Julia  of  'Jcja- 
Roman  times.  The  keep,  built  about  1 310,  is  a  great  square 
tower  over  a  hundred  feet  high.  Some  distance  from  the  top 
it  becomes  octagonal,  with  the  square  fortified  by  corbelled 
balconies  projecting  far  out  over  the  corners.  Liside  are 
several  stories  of  square  halls  finely  vaulted  with  massive 
octagonal  vaults  ;  below,  the  windows  are  little  more  than 
slits,  but  on  one  floor  there  are  larger  two-light  pointed 
openings.^ 

Far  finer  and  larger  has  been  the  castle  of  Leiria,  some  Leiria. 
fifty  miles  south  of  Coimbra  :  it  or  the  keep  was  begun  by 
Dom  Diniz  in  1324.*  The  rock  on  which  it  stands,  in  steep- 
ness and  in  height  recalls  that  of  Edinburgh  Castle,  but 
without  the  long  slope  of  the  old  town  leading  nearly  to  the 
summit  :  towering  high  above  Leiria  it  is  further  defended 
on  the  only  accessible  quarter  by  the  river  Lis  which  runs 
round  two  sides  not  far  from  the  bottom  of  the  steep  descent. 
Unfortunately  all  is  ruined,  only  enough  remaining  to  show 
that  on  the  steepest  edge  of  the  rock  there  stood  a  palace 
with  large  pointed  windows  looking  out  over  the  town  to  the 
green  wooded  hills  beyond.  On  the  highest  part  stands  what 
is  left  of  the  keep,  and  a  little  lower  the  castle-church  whose 
bell-tower,  built  over  the  gate,  served  to  defend  the  only 
access  to  the  inner  fortification.  This  church,  built  about  the 
same  time,  with  a  now  roofless  nave  which  was  never  vaulted, 
is  entered  by  a  door  on  the  south,  and  has  a  polygonal  vaulted 

'  The  towers  stand  quite  separate  from  the  walls  ami  are  united  to  tlu-m  by  wide 
round  arches. 

'••  In  the  dilapidated  courtyard  of  the  castle  there  is  one  very  picturesque  window 
of  Dom  Manoel's  time  (his  father  the  duke  of  Beja  is  buried  in  the  church  of  the 
Concei(;lo  in  the  town). 
'  An  inscription  says : — 

'Era  1362  [i.e.  a.d.  1324]  anos  foi 
csta  tore  co  (mc^ad)  a  (aos)  8 
dias  demaio.  e  mandou  a  faze  (r 
o  muito)  nobre  Dom  Diniz 
rei  de  P.  .  .' 


70         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

apse.  The  mouldings  of  the  door  as  well  as  the  apse  vault 
and  its  tall  two-light  windows  show  a  greater  delicacy  and 
refinement  than  is  seen  in  almost  any  earlier  building,  and 
some  of  the  carving  has  once  been  of  great  beauty,  especially 
of  the  boss  at  the  centre  of  the  apse.' 

But  besides  those  two  castles  there  is  another  building 
of  this  period  which  had  a  greater  and  more  lasting  effect  on 
the  work  of  this  fourteenth  century.  In  England  the  arrival 
of  the  Cistercians  and  the  new  style  introduced  or  rather 
developed  by  them  seems  almost  more  than  anything  else 
to  have  determined  the  direction  of  the  change  from  what 
is  usually,  perhaps  wrongly,^  called  Norman  to  Early  English, 
but  in  Portugal  the  great  foundation  of  Alcoba9a  was 
apparently  powerless  to  have  any  such  marked  effect  except 
in  the  one  case  of  cloisters.  Now  with  the  exception  of  the 
anomalous  and  much  later  Claustro  Real  at  Batalha,  all 
cloisters  in  Portugal,  before  the  renaissance,  follow  two 
types  :  one,  which  is  clearly  only  a  modification  of  the  con- 
tinuous romanesque  arcades  resting  on  coupled  shafts,  has 
usually  a  wooden  roof,  and  consists  of  a  row  of  coupled 
shafts  bearing  pointed  arches,  and  sometimes  interrupted  at 
intervals  by  square  piers  ;  this  form  of  cloister  is  found  at 
Santo  Thyrso  near  Guimariies,  at  Sao  Domingos  in  Guimaraes 
itself,  and  in  the  Cemetery  cloister  built  by  Prince  Henry 
the  Navigator  at  Thomar  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
Cloister.Cellas.  The  most  remarkable  of  all  the  cloisters  of  the  first  type 
is  that  of  the  nunnery  of  Cellas  near  Coimbra.  Founded 
in  I2IO  by  Dona  Sancha,  daughter  of  Sancho  i.,  the  nunnery 
is  now  a  blind  asylum.  The  cloister,  with  round  arches  and 
coupled  columns,  seems  thoroughly  romanesque  in  character, 
as  are  also  the  capitals.  It  is  only  on  looking  closer  that 
the  real  date  is  seen,  for  the  figures  on  the  capitals,  which 
are  carved  with  scenes  such  as  the  beheading  of  St.  John  the 
Baptist,  are  all  dressed  in  the  fashion  that  prevailed  under 
Dom  Diniz — about  1300 — while  the  foliage  on  others,  though 
still  romanesque  in  arrangement,  is  much  later  in  detail. 
More  than  half  of  the  arcades  were  rebuilt  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  but  enough  remains  to  make  the  cloister  of  Cellas 

'  Just  outside  the  castle  there  is  a  good  romanesqvie  door  belonging  to  a  now 
desecrated  church. 

'  Some  of  the  distinctive  features  of  Norman  such  as  cushion  capitals  seem  to  be 
tmknown  in  Normandy  and  not  to  be  found  any  nearer  than  Lombardy. 


TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA     71 

one  of  the  most  striking  examples  of  the  survival  of  old 
forms  and  methods  of  building  which  in  less  remote  countries 
had  been  given  up  more  than  a  hundred  years  before. 

The  church,  though  small,  is  not  without  interest.  It  has 
a  round  nave  of  Dom  Manoel's  time  with  a  nuns'  choir  to 
the  west  and  a  chancel  to  the  east,  and  is  entered  by  a  pictur- 
esque door  of  the  later  sixteenth  century. 

More  interesting  is  the  second  type  which  was  commonly 
used  when  a  cloister  with  a  vault  was  wanted  ;  and  of  it  there 
are   still  examples   to  be   seen  at  the  Se   Velha  Coimbra,  at 
Alcoba^a,  Lisbon   Cathedral,  Evora,   and   Oporto.     None   ot 
these  five  examples  are  exactly  alike,  but  they  resemble  each 
other  sufficiently  to  make  it  probable  that  they  are  all,  ulti- 
mately at  least,  derived  from  one  common  source,  and  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  that  source  was  Cistercian.     In  France 
what  was  perhaps  its  very  first  beginnings  may  be  seen  in  the 
Cistercian  abbey  of  Fontenay  near   Monbart,  where  in  each 
bay  there   are   two  round   arches   enclosed   under   one  larger 
round  arch.     This  was  further  developed  at  Fonttroide  near 
Narbonne,  where  an  arcade  of  four  small  round  arches  under 
a   large    pointed  arch  carries   a  thin  wall  pierced  by  a  large  Cloister, 
round    circle.       Of   the    different    Portuguese    examples    the  <-"«"'"b"- 
oldest  may  very  well  be  that  at  Coimbra  which  differs  only 
from   Fontfroide  in  having  an  arcade  of  two  arches  in  each 
bay  instead  of  one   of  four,  but   even   though   it   may  be  a 
little  older  than  the  large  cloister  of  Alcoba^a,  it  must  have  cloister, 
been    due    to    Cistercian    influence.     The    great    Claustro   do  Alcoba^a. 
Silencio  at  Alcoba9a  was,  as  an  inscription  tells,  begun  in  the 
year  13 10,*  when  on  April   13th  the  first  stone  was  laid  by 
the  abbot   in  the    presence   of  the   master   builder   Domingo 
Domingues."     In  this  case  each  bay  has  an  arcade  of  two  or 
three  pointed  arches  resting  on  coupled  columns  with  strong 
buttresses   between  each  bay,  but    the  enclosing   arch   is  not 
pointed    as    at    Coimbra    or    Fontfroide    but    segmental    and 
springs   from   square  jambs   at   the   level   of  the  top    of  the 
buttresses,  and    the   circles  have    been    all    filled  with    pierced 

'  Sub  Era  mcccxlviii.  idus  Aprilis,  Dnus  Niini  Abbas  monasterij  de  Alcobatie 
posuit  priiiiaiT)  lapiilcm  in  t'undamento  Claustri  ejusilem  loci,  presente  Dominico 
Dominici  magistro  oprris  dicli  Claustri.     Era  1348  =  A.D.  1510. 

'  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  the  master  builder  was  called  Domingo  Dominpies, 
who,  it'  Domingues  was  already  a  pruper  name  and  not  still  merely  a  patronymic,  may 
have  been  the  ancestor  of  Attonso  Dumingues  who  built  Bataiha  lome  eighty  years 
later  and  died  1402. 


72         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

slabs,  some  of  which  have  ordinary  quartrefoils  and  some 
much  more  intricate  patterns,  though  in  no  case  do  they  show 
the  Moorish  influence  which  is  so  noticeable  at  Evora.  On 
the  north  side  projects  the  lavatory,  an  apsidal  building  with 
two  stories  of  windows  and  with  what  in  France  would  be 
regarded  as  details  of  the  thirteenth  century  and  not,  as  is 
really  the  case,  of  the  fourteenth.  A  few  bays  on  the  west 
walk  seem  rather  later  than  the  rest,  as  the  arches  of  the 
arcade  are  trefoil-headed,  while  the  upper  part  of  a  small 
projection  on  the  south  side  which  now  contains  a  stair,  as 
well  as  the  upper  cloister  to  which  it  leads,  were  added  by 
Joao  de  Castilho  for  Cardinal  Prince  Henry,  son  of  Dom 
Manoel,  and  commendator  of  the  abbey  in  1518.     (Fig.  28.) 

Cloister,  In  the  cloister  at  Lisbon  which  seems  to  be  of  about  the 

*  °"'  same  date,  and  which,  owing  to  the  nature  of  the  site,  runs 
round  the  back  of  the  choir,  there  is  no  outer  containing 
arch,  and  in  some  bays  there  are  two  large  circles  instead  of 
one,  but  in  every  other  respect,  except  that  some  of  the 
round  openings  are  adorned  with  a  ring  of  dog-tooth  mould- 
ing, the  details  are  very  similar,  the  capitals  and  bases  being 
all  of  good  thirteenth-century  French  forni.^     (^'g-  29.) 

If  the  cloister  at  Evora,  which  was  built  in  1376  and  has 
already  been  described,  is  the  one  which  departs  furthest  from 
the  original  type,  retaining  only  the  round  opening,  that  of 

Cloister,  the  cathedral  of  Oporto,  built  in  1385,  comes  nearer  to  Font- 
P°  °'  froide  than  any  of  the  others.  Here  each  bay  is  designed 
exactly  like  the  French  example  except  that  the  small  arches 
are  pointed,  that  the  large  openings  are  chamfered  instead 
of  moulded,  and  that  there  are  buttresses  between  each  bay. 
The  capitals  which  are  rather  tall  are  carved  with  rather 
shallow  leaves,  but  the  most  noticeable  features  are  the  huge 
square  moulded  abaci  which  are  so  large  as  to  be  more  like 
those  of  the  romanesque  cloisters  at  Moissac  or  of  Sta.  Maria 
del  Sar  at  Santiago  than  any  fourteenth-century  work. 

The  most  important  church  of  the  time  of  Dom  Diniz  is, 

Sta.  Clara,  or  rather  was,  that  of  the  convent  of  Poor  Clares  founded  at 

Coimbra.  Coimbra  by  his  wife  St.  Isabel.  Although  a  good  king, 
Diniz  had  not  been  a  good  husband,  and  the  queen's 
sorrows  had  been  still  further  increased  by  the  rebellion  of 

'  In  this  cloister  are  kept  in  a  cage  some  unliappy  ravens  in  memory  of  their 
ancestors  having  guided  the  boat  which  miraculously  brought  St.  Vincent's  body  to 
the  Tagus. 


16 


"      O 


=    b  a 


o 

u 


TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA     -ji 

her  son,  afterwards  Affonso  iv.,  a  rebellion  to  which  Isabel 
was  able  to  put  an  end  by  interposing  between  her  husband 
and  her  son.  When  St.  Isabel  died  in  1327,  two  years  after 
her  husband,  the  church  was  not  yet  quite  finished,  but  it  must 
have  been  so  soon  after.  Unfortunately  the  annual  floods 
of  the  Mondego  and  the  sands  which  they  bring  down 
led  to  the  abandonment  of  the  church  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  have  so  buried  it  that  the  floor  of  the  barn 
— for  that  is  the  use  to  which  it  is  now  put — is  almost  level 
with  the  springing  of  the  aisle  arches,  but  enough  is  left  to 
show  what  the  church  was  like,  and  were  not  its  date  well 
assured  no  one  would  believe  it  to  be  later  than  the  end  of 
the  twelfth  century.  The  chancel,  which  was  aisleless  and 
lower  than  the  rest  of  the  church,  is  gone,  but  the  nave  and 
its  aisles  are  still  in  a  tolerable  state  of  preservation,  though 
outside  all  the  detail  has  been  destroyed  except  one  round 
window  on  the  south  side  filled  in  with  white  marble  tracery 
of  a  distinctly  Italian  type,  and  the  corbel  table  of  the  boat- 
keel  shap*  The  inside  is  most  unusual  for  a  church  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  The  central  aisle  has  a  pointed  barrel 
vault  springing  from  a  little  above  the  aisle  arches,  while 
the  aisles  themselves  have  an  ordinary  cross  vault.  All  the 
capitals  too  look  early,  and  the  buttresses  broad  and  rather 
shallow.     (Fig.  30.) 

A  few  miles  north  of  Oporto  on  the  banks  of  the  clear  Lega  do  Balio. 
stream  of  the  Le9a  a  monastery  for  men  and  women  had  been 
founded  in  986.  In  the  course  of  the  next  hundred  vears  it 
had  several  times  fallen  into  decay  and  been  restored,  till  about 
the  year  1 1 15  when  it  was  handed  over  to  the  Knights  Hos- 
pitaller of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem  and  so  became  their  head 
quarters  in  Portugal.  The  church  had  been  rebuilt  by  Abbot 
Guntino  some  years  before  the  transfer  took  place,  and  had  in 
time  become  ruinous,  so  that  in  1336  it  was  rebuilt  by  Dom 
Frei  Estevao  Vasques  Pimentel,  the  head  of  the  Order.  This 
church  still  stands  but  little  altered  since  the  fourteenth 
century,  and  though  not  a  large  or  splendid  building  it  is  the 
most  complete  and  unaltered  example  of  that  thoroughly 
national  plan  and  style  which,  developed  in  the  previous 
century,  was  seen  at  Thomar  and  will  be  seen  again  in  many 
later  examples.  The  church  consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  of 
four  bays,  transepts  higher  than  the  side  but  lower  than  the 
centre  aisle  of  the  nave,  three  vaulted  apses  to  the  east,  and   at 


74 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


the  south-west  corner  a  square  tower.  Like  many  Portuguese 
buildings  Sta.  Maria  de  Le9a  do  Balio  looks  at  first  sight  a 
good  deal  earlier  than  is  really  the  case.  The  west  and  the 
south  doors,  which  are  almost  exactly  alike,  except  that  the 
south  door  is  surmounted  by  a  gable,  have  three  shafts  on  each 
side  with  early-looking  capitals  and  plain  moulded  archivolts, 
and  within  these,  jambs  moulded  at  the  angles  bearing  an 
inner  order  whose  flat  face  is  carved  with  a  series  of  circles 
enclosing  four  and  five-leaved  flowers.  Above  the  west  door 
runs  a  projecting  gallery  whose  parapet,  like  all  the  other 
parapets  of  the  church,  is  defended  by  a  close-set  row  of  pointed 
battlements.  Above  the  gallery  is  a  large  rose-window  in 
which  twelve  spokes  radiate  from  a  cusped  circle  in  the  middle 
to  the  circumference,  where  the  lights  so  formed  are  further 
enriched  by  cusped  semicircles.  The  aisle  and  clerestory 
windows  show  an  unusual  attempt  to  include  two  lancets  into 
one  window  by  carrying  on  the  outer  framing  of  the  window 
till  it  meets  above  the  mullion  in  a  kind  of  pendant  arch.^ 

The  square  tower  is  exceedingly  plain,  without  string 
course  or  buttress  to  mitigate  its  severity.  Half-way  up  on 
the  west  side  is  a  small  window  with  a  battlemented  balcony 
in  front  projecting  out  on  three  great  corbels  ;  higher  up  are 
plain  belfry  windows.  At  the  top,  square  balconies  or 
bartizans  project  diagonally  from  the  corners  ;  the  whole, 
though  there  are  but  three  pyramidal  battlements  on  each  side, 
being  even  more  strongly  fortified  than  the  rest  of  the  church. 
Now  in  the  fourteenth  century  such  fortification  of  a  church 
can  hardly  have  been  necessary,  and  they  were  probably  built 
rather  to  show  that  the  church  belonged  to  a  military  order 
than  with  any  idea  of  defence.  The  inside  is  less  interesting, 
the  pointed  arches  are  rather  thin  and  the  capitals  poor,  the 
only  thing  much  worthy  of  notice  being  the  font,  belonging  to 
the  time  ot  change  from  Gothic  to  Renaissance,  and  given  in 
1512.^ 

Chancel,  Of  the  Other  buildings  of  the  time  of  Dom  AfFonso  iv. 

s^,  Lisbon,    who  Succeeded  his  father  Diniz  in   1328   the  most  important 

•  Cf.  the  aisle  windows  of  Sta.  Maria  ilos  Olivaes  at  Thomar. 

'  It  was  at  Le<;a  that  Dom  Fernando  in  1372  announced  his  marriage  with  Dona 
Leonor  Telles  de  iNlenezes,  the  wife  of  Jo5o  Louren^o  da  Cunha,  whom  he  had  seen 
at  his  sister's  wedding,  and  whom  he  married  though  lie  was  liimself  betrothed  to  a 
daughter  of  the  Castilian  king,  and  though  Dona  Leonor's  husband  was  still  alive: 
a  marriage  which  nearly  ruined  Portugal,  and  caused  the  extinction  of  the  legitimate 
branch  of  the  house  of  Burgundy. 


17 


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FIG.  30. 

COIMHRA. 
SlA.    Cl.AKA. 


TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA     75 

has  been  the  choir  of  the  cathedral  at  Lisbon  ;  the  church  had 
been  much  injured  by  an  earthquake  in  1344  and  the  whole 
east  end  was  at  once  rebuilt  on  the  French  plan,  otherwise 
unexampled  in  Portugal  except  by  the  twelfth-century  choir  at 
Alcoba9a.  Unfortunately  the  later  and  more  terrible  earth- 
quake of  1755  so  ruined  the  whole  building  that  of  Dom 
Affonso's  work  only  the  surrounding  aisle  and  its  chapels 
remain.  The  only  point  which  calls  for  notice  is  that  the 
chapels  are  considerably  lower  than  the  aisle  so  as  to  admit  of 
a  window  between  the  chapel  arch  and  the  aisle  vault.  All  the 
chapels  have  good  vaulting  and  simple  two-light  windows,  and 
capitals  well  carved  with  naturalistic  foliage.  In  one  chapel, 
that  of  SS.  Cosmo  and  Damifio,  screened  off  by  a  very  good 
early  wrought-iron  grill,  are  the  tombs  of  Lopo  Fernandes 
Pacheco  and  of  his  second  wife  Maria  Rodrigues.  Dona 
Maria,  lying  on  a  stone  sarcophagus,  which  stands  on  four 
short  columns,  and  whose  sides  are  adorned  with  four  shields 
with  the  arms  of  her  father,  Ruy  di  Villa  Lobos,  has  her  head 
protected  by  a  carved  canopy  and  holds  up  in  her  hands  an 
open  book  which,  from  her  position,  she  could  scarcely  hope  to 
read.' 

Far  more  interesting  both  historically  and  artistically  than 
these  memorials  at  Lisbon  are  the  royal  tombs  in  the  small  Royal  tombs, 
chapel  opening  off  the  south  transepts  of  the  abbey  church  at  ^p[°  ^^^ 
Alcoba9a.  This  vaulted  chapel,  two  bays  deep  and  three 
wide,  was  probably  built  about  the  same  time  as  the  cloister, 
and  has  good  clustered  piers  and  well-carved  capitals.  On 
the  floor  stand  three  large  royal  tombs  and  two  smaller  for 
royal  children,  and  in  deep  recesses  in  the  north  and  south 
walls,  four  others.  Only  the  three  larger  standing  clear  of  the 
walls  call  for  notice ;  and  of  these  one  is  that  of  Dona 
Beatriz,  the  wife  of  Dom  Affonso  iii.,  who  died  in  1279,  the 
same  lady  who  married  Dom  AfFonso  while  his  wife  the 
countess  of  Boulogne  was  still  alive.  Her  tomb,  which 
stands  high  above  the  ground  on  square  columns  with  circular 
ringed  shafts  at  the  corners,  was  clearly  not  made  for  Dona 
Beatriz  herself,  but  for  some  one  else  at  least  a  hundred  years 
before.      It  is  of  a  white  marble,  sadly  mutilated  at  one  corner 

•  Opening  off  the  north-west  corner  of  tlie  c.ithedral  is  an  apsidal  chapel  of  about 
the  fame  perloil,  cntcroi  by  a  tine  pointeit  door,  one  of  ivhose  mouldings  is  enriched 
by  an  early-looking  chevron,  but  whose  real  date  is  shown  by  the  leaf-carving  of  its 
capitals. 


76         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

by  French  treasure-seekers,  and  has  on  each  side  a  romanesque 
arcade  with  an  apostle,  in  quite  archaic  style,  seated  under 
each  arch  ;  at  the  ends  are  large  groups  of  seated  figures,  and 
on  the  sloping  lid  Dona  Beatriz  herself,  in  very  shallow  relief, 
evidently  carved  out  of  the  old  roof-shaped  cover,  which  not 
being  very  thick  did  not  admit  of  any  deep  cutting.  Far 
richer,  indeed  more  elaborate  than  almost  any  other  fourteenth- 
century  tombs,  are  those  of  Dom  Pedro  i.  who  died  in 
1367,  and  of  Inez  de  Castro  who  was  murdered  in  1355. 
When  only  sixteen  years  old  Dom  Pedro,  to  strengthen  his 
father  AfFonso  the  Fourth's  alliance  with  Castile,  had  been 
married  to  Dona  Costan9a,  daughter  of  the  duke  of  Penafiel. 
In  her  train  there  came  as  a  lady-in-waiting  Dona  Inez  de 
Castro,  the  daughter  of  the  high  chamberlain  of  Castile,  and 
with  her  Dom  Pedro  soon  fell  in  love.  As  long  as  his  wife, 
who  was  tiie  mother  of  King  Fernando,  lived  no  one  thought 
much  of  his  connection  with  Dona  Inez,  or  of  that  with  Dona 
Thereza  Louren^o,  whose  son  afterwards  became  the  great 
liberator,  King  Joao  i.,  but  after  Dona  Costan9a's  death  it 
was  soon  seen  that  he  loved  Dona  Inez  more  than  any  one  had 
imagined,  and  he  was  believed  even  to  have  married  her.  This, 
and  his  refusal  to  accept  any  of  the  royal  princesses  chosen  by 
his  father,  so  enraged  Dom  AfFonso  that  he  determined  to 
have  Dona  Inez  killed,  and  this  was  done  by  three  knights  on 
7th  January  1355  in  the  Quinta  das  Lagrimas— that  is,  the 
Garden  of  Tears — near  Coimbra.  Dom  Pedro,  who  was 
away  hunting  in  the  south,  would  have  rebelled  against  his 
father,  but  was  pursuaded  by  the  queen  to  submit  after  he 
had  devastated  all  the  province  of  Minho.  Two  years 
later  Dom  Affonso  died,  and  after  Dom  Pedro  had  caught 
and  tortured  to  death  two  of  the  murderers — the  third  escaped 
to  Castile — he  in  1361  had  Dona  Inez's  body  removed 
from  its  grave,  dressed  in  the  royal  robes  and  crowned,  and 
swearing  that  he  had  really  married  her,  he  compelled  all 
the  court  to  pay  her  homage  and  to  kiss  her  hand  :  then  the 
body  was  placed  on  a  bier  and  carried  by  night  to  the  place 
prepared  for  it  at  Alcoba9a,  some  seventy  miles  away.  When 
six  years  later,  in  1367,  he  came  to  die  himself  he  left 
directions  that  they  should  be  buried  with  their  feet  towards 
one  another,  that  at  the  resurrection  the  first  thing  he  should 
see  should  be  Dona  Inez  rising  from  her  tomb.  Unfortun- 
ately the  French  soldiers  in   18 10  broke  open    both  tombs, 


TO  THE  BATTLE  OF  ALJUBARROTA     ^j 

smashing  away  much  fine  carved  work  and  scattering  their 
bones. ^  The  two  tombs  are  much  alike  in  design  and  differ 
only  in  detail  ;  both  rest  on  four  lions  ;  the  sides,  above  a 
narrow  border  of  sunk  quatrefoils,  are  divided  by  tiny 
buttresses  rising  from  behind  the  gables  of  small  niches  into 
six  parts,  each  of  which  has  an  arch  under  a  gable  whose 
tympanum  is  filled  with  the  most  minute  tracery.  Each  of 
these  arches  is  cusped  and  foliated  differently  according  to  the 
nature  of  the  figure  subject  it  contains.  Behind  the  tops  of 
the  gables  and  pinnacles  of  the  buttresses  runs  a  small  arcade 
with  beautiful  little  figures  only  a  {<t\{  inches  high  :  above  this 
a  still  more  delicate  arcade  runs  round  the  whole  tomb, 
interrupted  at  regular  intervals  by  shields,  charged  on  Dom 
Pedro's  tomb  with  the  arms  of  Portugal  and  on  that  of  Dona 
Inez  with  the  same  and  with  those  of  the  Castros  alternately. 
At  the  foot  of  Dom  Pedro's  is  represented  the  Crucifixion,  and 
facing  it  on  that  of  Dona  Inez  the  Last  Judgment.  Nothing 
can  exceed  the  delicacy  and  beauty  of  the  figure  sculpture,  the 
drapery  is  all  good,  and  the  smallest  heads  and  hands  are  worked 
with  a  care  not  to  be  surpassed  in  any  country.     (Fig.  32.) 

On  the  top  of  one  lies  King  Pedro  with  his  head  to  the 
north,  on  the  other  Dona  Inez  with  hers  to  the  south  ;  both  are 
life  size  and  are  as  well  wrought  as  are  the  smaller  details 
below.  Both  have  on  each  side  three  angels  who  seem  to  be 
just  about  to  lift  them  from  where  they  lie  or  to  have  just 
laid  them  down.  These  angels,  especially  those  near  Dom 
Pedro's  head,  are  perhaps  the  finest  parts  of  either  tomb,  with 
their  beautiful  drapery,  their  well-modelled  wings,  and  above 
all  with  the  outstretching  of  their  arms  towards  the  king  and 
Dona  Inez.  There  seems  to  be  no  record  as  to  who  worked 
or  designed  these  tombs,  but  there  can  be  little  or  no  doubt 
that  he  was  a  Frenchman,  the  whole  feeling,  alike  of  the  archi- 
tectural detail  and  the  figures  themselves,  is  absolutely  French  ; 
there  had  been  no  previous  figure  sculpture  in  the  country 
in  any  way  good  enough  to  lead  up  to  the  skill  in  design  and 
in  execution  here  shown,  nor,  with  regard  to  the  mere  archi- 

'  A  note  in  Sir  H.  Maxwell's  Life  of  Wellington,  vol.  i.  p.  Z15,  says  of  Alcoba^a: 
'They  had  burned  what  they  could  and  destroyed  the  remainder  with  an  immense 
deal  ot'  trouble.  The  embalmed  kmgs  and  queens  were  taken  out  of"  their  tombs,  and 
I  saw  them  lying  in  as  great  preservation  as  the  day  they  were  interred.  The  tine 
tesselated  pavement,  trom  the  entrance  to  the  Altar,  was  picked  up,  the  facings  of  the 
stone  pillars  were  destroyed  nearly  to  the  top,  scatiolding  having  been  erected  for  that 
purpose.  An  orderly  book  found  near  the  place  showed  that  regular  parties  had 
been  ordered  for  the  purpose'  (Tonikinson,  77). 


78 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


tectural  detail,  had  Gothic  tracery  and  ornament  yet  been 
sufficiently  developed  for  a  native  workman  to  have  invented 
the  elaborate  cuspings,  mouldings,  and  other  enrichments 
which  make  both  tombs  so  pre-eminent  above  all  that  came 
before  them.^  These  tombs,  as  indeed  the  whole  church, 
as  well  as  the  neighbouring  convent  of  Batalha,  are  constructed 
of  a  wonderfully  fine  limestone,  which  seems  to  be  practically 
the  same  as  Caen  Stone,  and  which,  soft  and  easy  to  cut  when 
first  quarried,  grows  harder  with  exposure  and  in  time,  when 
not  in  a  too  shady  or  damp  position,  where  it  gets  black,  takes 
on  a  most  beautiful  rich  yellow  colour. 

These  tombs,  beautiful  as  they  are,  do  not  seem  to  have 
any  very  direct  influence  on  the  work  of  the  next  century  :  it  is 
true  that  a  distinct  advance  was  made  in  modelling  the  effigies 
of  those  who  lay  below,  but  apart  from  that  the  decoration  of 
these  high  tombs  is  in  no  case  even  remotely  related  to  that  of 
the  later  monuments  at  Batalha ;  nor,  except  that  the  national 
method  of  church  planning  was  more  firmly  established  than 
ever,  and  that  some  occasional  features  such  as  the  cuspings 
on  the  arch-mould  of  the  door  of  Sao  Francisco  Santarem, 
which  are  copied  on  an  archaistic  door  at  Batalha,  are  found 
in  later  work,  is  there  much  to  point  to  the  great  advance  that 
was  soon  to  be  made  alike  in  detail  and  in  construction. 

1  There  is  in  the  Carnio  Museum  at  Lisbon  a  fine  tomb  to  Dom  Fernando,  Dom 
Pedro's  unfortunate  successor.  It  was  brought  from  Sao  Francisco  at  Santarem,  but 
is  very  much  less  elaborate,  having  three  panels  on  each  side  filled  with  variously 
shaped  cuspings,  enclosing  shields,  all  beautifully  wrought. 


18 


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BATALHA 


79 


CHAPTER    IV 

BATALHA    AND    THE     DELIVERANCE     OF     PORTUGAL 

Towards  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  came  the  most 
important  and  critical  years  that  Portugal  had  yet  known. 
Dom  Pedro,  dying  after  a  reign  of  only  ten  years,  was 
succeeded  by  his  only  legitimate  son,  Fernando,  in  1367. 
Unfortunately  the  new  king  at  his  sister's  wedding  saw  and 
fell  in  love  with  the  wife  of  a  northern  nobleman,  and  soon 
openly  married  this  Dona  Leonor  Telles  de  Menezes,  though 
he  was  himself  already  betrothed  to  a  Castilian  princess,  and 
though  her  own  husband  was  still  alive.  At  the  first  court  or 
Beja  Manos  held  by  Dona  Leonor  at  Le^a  near  Oporto,  all 
the  Portuguese  nobility  except  Dom  Diniz,  the  king's  half- 
brother  and  a  son  of  Inez  de  Castro,  acknowledged  her  as 
queen.  But  soon  the  evil  influence  she  exercised  over  the 
king  and  the  stories  of  her  cruelty  made  her  extremely  un- 
popular and  even  hated  by  the  whole  nation.  The  memory 
of  the  vengeance  she  took  on  her  own  sister.  Dona  Maria 
Telles,  is  preserved  by  an  interesting  old  house  in  Coimbra 
which  has  indeed  been  rebuilt  since,  in  the  early  sixteenth 
century,  but  is  still  called  the  House  of  the  Telles.  To  the 
dislike  Qiieen  Leonor  felt  for  the  sons  of  Inez  de  Castro, 
owing  to  Dom  DIniz's  refusal  to  kiss  her  hand,  was  added  the 
hatred  she  had  borne  her  sister,  who  was  married  to  Dom 
Joao,  another  son  of  Dona  Inez,  ever  since  this  sister  Dona 
Maria  had  warned  her  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  king  ; 
she  was  also  jealous  because  Dona  Maria  had  had  a  son  while 
her  own  two  eldest  children  had  died.  So  plotting  to  be  rid 
of  them  both,  she  at  last  pursuaded  Dom  Joao  that  his  wife 
was  not  faithful  to  him,  and  sent  him  full  of  anger  to  that 
house  at  Coimbra  where  Dona  Maria  was  living  and  where, 
without  even  giving  his  wife  time  to  speak,  he  stabbed  her  to 
death.     Soon  after  Dona  Leonor  came  in  and  laughed  at  him 


8o         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

for  having  believed  her  lies  so  as  to  kill  his  own  wife.  Failing 
to  kill  the  queen,  Dom  Joao  fled  to  Castile. 

When  Dom  Fernando  himself  died  in  1383  he  left  his 
widow  as  regent  of  the  kingdom  on  behalf  of  their  only 
daughter,  Dona  Brites,  whom  they  had  married  to  Don 
Juan  I.  of  Castile.  It  was  of  course  bad  enough  for  the 
nation  to  find  itself  under  the  regency  of  such  a  woman, 
but  to  be  absorbed  by  Castile  and  Leon  was  more  than 
could  be  endured.  So  a  great  Cortes  was  held  at  Coimbra, 
and  Dom  Joiio,  grand  master  of  the  Order  of  Aviz,  and 
the  son  of  Dom  Pedro  and  Dona  Thereza  Louren^o,  was 
elected  king.  The  new  king  at  once  led  his  people  against 
the  invaders,  and  after  twice  defeating  them  met  them  for 
the  final  struggle  at  Aljubarrota,  near  Alcoba^a,  on  14th  August 
1385.  The  battle  raged  all  day  till  at  last  the  Castilian  king 
fled  with  all  his  army,  leaving  his  tent  with  its  rich  furniture 
and  all  his  baggage.  Before  the  enemy  had  been  driven 
from  the  little  town  of  Aljubarrota,  the  wife  of  the  village 
baker  made  herself  famous  by  killing  nine  Spaniards  with 
her  wooden  baking  shovel — a  shovel  which  may  still  be  seen 
on  the  town  arms.  When  all  was  over  Dom  Joao  dedicated 
the  spoil  he  had  taken  in  the  Castilian  king's  tent  to  Our 
Lady  of  the  Olive  Tree  at  Guimaraes  where  may  still  be 
seen,  with  many  other  treasures,  a  large  silver-gilt  triptych 
of  the  Nativity  and  one  of  the  silver  angels  from  off  the 
royal  altar.^  Besides  this,  he  had  promised  if  victorious  to 
rebuild  the  church  at  Guimaraes  and  to  found  where  the 
victory  had  been  won  a  monastery  as  a  thankoffering  for  his 
success. 
Batalha.  This  VOW  was  fulfilled  two   years  later  in   1387  by  build- 

ing the  great  convent  of  Sta.  Maria  da  Victoria  or  Batalha, 
that  is  Battle,  at  a  place  then  called  Pinhal-  in  a  narrow 
valley  some  nine  or  ten  miles  north  of  Aljubarrota  and  seven 
south  of  Leiria.  Meanwhile  John  of  Gaunt  had  landed  in 
Galicia  with  a  large  army  to  try  and  win  Castile  and  Leon, 
which  he  claimed  for  his  wife  Constance,  elder  daughter  of 
Pedro  the  Cruel  ;  marching  through  Galicia  he  met  Dom 
Joao  at  Oporto  in  February  1387,  and  then  the  Treaty  of 
Windsor,  which  had  been  signed  the  year  before  and  which 

>  Another  tropliy  is  now  at  Alcobaga  in  the  shape  ot"  a  huge  copper  caldron 
some  four  feet  in  diameter. 

'  This  site  at  Pinhal  was  bought  from  one  Egas  Coelho. 


BATALHA 


8i 


had  declared  the  closest  union  of  friendship  and  alliance  to 
exist  between  England  and  Portugal,  was  further  strengthened 
by  the  marriage  of  King  Joao  to  Philippa,  the  daughter  of 
John  of  Gaunt  and  of  his  first  wife,  Blanche  of  Lancaster. 
Soon  after,  the  peace  of  the  Peninsula  was  assured  by  the 
marriage  of  Catherine,  the  only  child  of  John  of  Gaunt  and 
of  Constance  of  Castile,  to  Enrique,  Prince  of  the  Asturias 
and  heir  to  the  throne  of  Castile. 

But   it    is    time    now    to    turn    from    the    history    of   the 


Chapter-house,  2.  Sacristy. 

Chapel  of  Sta.  Barbara. 

Chapel  of  N.  S.  do  Kosario. 

Capclla  Mor. 

Chapel  of  N.  S.  do  Pranto. 

Chapel  of  Sao  Miguel. 

Tomb  of  Dom  Duarle,  d.  T433. 

Tomb  of  Infante  D.  Fernando,  Master 

of  Av'u. 
Tomb  of  Infante  D.  Joao,  Constable  of 

Portugal. 
Tomb   of  Infante    D.    Henrique    (the 

Navigator),  duke  of  Vizeu. 
Tomb  of  Infante  D.  Pedro,  duke   of 

Coimbra. 
Tomb  of  D.  Joao  I.,  1385-1433,  and  of 

Queen  Philippa  of  Lancaster,  d.  1415- 


PL.\N    OF    B.\TALH.\ 


foundation  of  Batalha  to  the  buildings  themselves,  and  surely 
no  more  puzzling  building  than  the  church  is  to  be  found 
anywhere.  The  plan,  indeed,  of  the  church,  omitting  the 
Capella  do  hundador  and  the  great  Capcllas  Imperfcitas, 
presents  no  difficulty  as  it  is  only  a  repetition  of  the  already 
well-known  and  national  arrangement  of  nave  with  aisles, 
an  aislelcss  transept,  with  in  this  case  five  apsidal  chapels 
to  the  east.  Now  in  all  this  there  is  nothing  the  least  unusual 
or  different  from  what  might  be  expected,  except  perhaps 
that  the   nave,   of  eight   bays,    is    rather  lonacr    than    in    anv 

F 


82         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

previous  example.  But  the  church  was  built  to  commemo- 
rate a  great  national  deliverance,  and  by  a  king  who  had  just 
won  immense  booty  from  his  defeated  enemy,  and  so  was 
naturally  built  on  a  great  and  imposing  scale.' 

The  first  architect,  AfFonso  Domingues,  perhaps  a  grand- 
son of  the  Domingo  Domingues  who  built  the  cloister  at 
Alcobaga,  is  said  to  have  been  born  at  Lisbon  and  so,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  his  plan  shows  no  trace  at  all  of  foreign 
influence.  And  yet  even  this  ordinary  plan  has  been  com- 
pared by  a  German  writer  to  that  of  the  nave  and  transepts 
of  Canterbury  Cathedral,  a  most  unlikely  model  to  be  followed, 
as  Chillenden,  who  there  carried  out  the  transformation  ot 
Lanfranc's  nave,  did  not  become  prior  till  1390,  three  years 
after  Batalha  had  been  begun."  But  though  it  is  easy  enough 
to  show  that  the  plan  is  not  English  but  quite  national  and 
Portuguese,  it  is  not  so  easy  to  say  what  the  building  itself  is. 
AfFonso  Domingues  died  in  1402,  and  was  succeeded  by  a 
man  whose  name  is  spelt  in  a  great  variety  of  ways,  Ouguet, 
Huguet,  or  Huet,  and  to  whom  most  of  the  building  apart 
from  the  plan  must  have  been  due.  His  name  sounds  more 
French  than  anything  else,  but  the  building  is  not  at  all 
French  except  in  a  few  details.  Altogether  it  is  not  at  all 
easy  to  say  whence  those  peculiarities  of  tracery  and  detail 
which  make  Batalha  so  strange  and  unusual  a  building 
were  derived,  except  that  there  had  been  in  Portugal  nothing 
to  lead  up  to  such  tracery  or  to  such  elaboration  of  detail,  or  to 
the  constructive  skill  needed  to  build  the  high  groined  vaults 
of  the  nave  or  the  enormous  span  required  to  cover  the 
chapter-house.  Perhaps  it  may  be  better  to  describe  the 
church  first  outside  and  then  in,  and  then  see  if  it  is  possible 
to  discover  from  the  details  themselves  whence  they  can  have 
come. 

The  five  eastern  apses,  of  which  the  largest  in  the  centre  is 
also  twice  as  high  as  the  other  four,  are  probably  the  oldest 
part  of  the  building,  but  all,  except  the  two  outer  apses  and 
the  upper  part  of  the  central,  have  been  concealed  by  the  Pateo 

'  Though  a  good  deal  larger  than  most  Portuguese  churches,  except  of  course 
Alcoba^a,  the  church  is  not  really  very  large.  Its  total  length  is  about  265  feet  with 
a  transept  of  about  109  feet  long.  The  central  aisle  is  about  25  feet  wide  by  106 
high — an  unusual  proportion  anywhere. 

2  Albrecht  Haiijit,  Die  Baukunsl  Jer  Renaissance  in  Portugal,  says  that  '  Der  Plan 
durchaus  tnglisch  ist  (Lang-  und  Querschitf  fast  ganz  identisch  mit  dener  dcr 
Kathedral  zu  Canterbury,  nur  thurmlos).' 


BATALHA  83 

built  by  Dom  Manocl  to  unite  the  church  with  the  Capellas 
Imperfeitas,  or  unfinished  chapels,  beyond.  Here  there  is 
nothing  very  unusual  :  the  smaller  chapels  all  end  in  three- 
sided  apses,  at  whose  angles  are  buttresses,  remarkable  onlv 
for  the  great  number  of  string  courses,  five  in  all,  which 
divide  them  horizontally  ;  these  buttresses  are  finished  by 
two  offsets  just  below  a  plain  corbel  table  which  is  now 
crowned  by  an  elaborately  pierced  and  cusped  parapet  which 
may  well  have  been  added  later.  Each  side  of  the  apse  has 
one  tall  narrow  single-light  window  which,  filled  at  some 
later  date  from  top  to  bottom  with  elaborate  stone  tracery, 
has  two  thin  shafts  at  each  side  and  a  rather  bluntly-pointed 
head.  The  central  apse  has  been  much  the  same  but  with 
five  sides,  and  two  stories  of  similar  windows  one  above  the 
other.  So  far  there  is  nothing  unexpected  or  what  could  not 
easily  have  been  developed  from  already  existing  buildings, 
such  as  the  church  at  Thomar  or  the  Franciscan  and 
Dominican  churches  no  further  away  than  Pontevedra  in 
Galicia. 

Coming  to  the  south  transept,  there  is  a  large  doorway 
below  under  a  crocketed  gable  flanked  by  a  tall  pinnacle  on 
either  side.  This  door  with  its  thirteenth-century  mouldings 
is  one  of  the  most  curious  and  unexpected  features  of  the 
whole  building.  Excepting  that  the  capitals  are  well  carved 
with  leaves,  it  is  a  close  copy  of  the  west  door  of  Sao  Francisco 
at  Santarem.  Here  the  horseshoe  cuspings  are  on  the  out- 
most of  the  five  orders  of  mouldings,  and  the  chevron  on  the 
fourth,  while  there  is  also  series  of  pointed  cusps  on  the 
second.  Only  the  innermost  betrays  its  really  late  origin  by 
the  curious  crossing  and  interpenetrating  of  the  mouldings  of 
its  large  trefoiled  head.  All  this  is  thoroughly  Portuguese 
and  clearly  derived  from  what  had  gone  before  ;  but  the  same 
cannot  be  said  for  the  crockets  or  for  the  pinnacles  with  their 
square  and  gabled  spirelets.  These  crockets  are  of  the 
common  vine-leaf  shape  such  as  was  used  in  England  and  also 
in  France  early  in  the  fourteenth  century,  while  the  two-storied 
pinnacles  with  shallow  traceried  panels  on  each  tace,  and  still 
more  the  square  spirelets  with  rather  large  crockets  and  a  large 
bunchy  finial,  are  not  at  all  French,  but  a  not  bad  imitation 
of  contemporary  English  work.  On  the  gable  above  the  door 
are  two  square  panels,  each  containing  a  coat-of-arms  set  in  a 
cusped    quatrefoil,   while    the    vine-leaves   which    fill    in    the 


84         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

surface  between  the  quatrefoils  and  the  outer  mouldings  of 
the  square,  as  also  those  on  the  crowns  which  surmount  the 
coats,  are  also  quite  English.  The  elaborate  many-sided 
canopies  above  are  not  so  much  so  in  form  though  they  might 
well  have  been  evolved  from  English  detail.  Above  the  gable 
comes  another  English  feature,  a  very  large  three-light  window 
running  up  to  the  very  vault  ;  at  the  top  the  mullions  of  each 
light  are  carried  up  so  as  to  intersect,  with  cusped  circles 
filling  in  each  space,  while  the  whole  window  to  the  top  is  filled 
with  a  veil  of  small  reticulated  tracery.  Above  the  top  of  the 
large  window  there  is  a  band  of  reticulated  panelling  whose 
shafts  run  down  till  they  reach  the  crocketed  hood-mould  of 
the  window :  and  above  this  an  elaborately  pierced  and  foliated 
parapet  between  the  square  pinnacles  of  the  angle  buttresses, 
which  like  these  of  the  apses  are  remarkable  for  the  extra- 
ordinary number  (ten)  of  offsets  and  string  courses. 

The  next  five  bays  of  the  nave  as  well  as  the  whole  north 
side  (which  has  no  buttresses)  above  the  cloister  are  all 
practically  alike  ;  the  buttresses,  pinnacles  and  parapet  are  just 
the  same  as  those  of  the  transept  :  the  windows  tall,  standing 
pretty  high  above  the  ground,  are  all  of  three  lights  with 
tracery  evidently  founded  on  that  of  the  large  transept 
window,  but  set  very  far  back  in  the  wall  with  as  many  as 
three  shafts  on  each  side,  and  with  each  light  now  filled  in 
with  horrid  wood  or  plaster  work.  The  clerestory  windows, 
also  of  three  lights  with  somewhat  similar  tracery,  are 
separated  by  narrow  buttresses  bearing  square  pinnacles, 
between  which  runs  on  a  pointed  corbel  table  the  usual  pierced 
parapet,  and  by  strong  flying  buttresses,  which  at  least  in  the 
western  bays  are  doubly  cusped,  and  are,  between  the  arch  and 
the  straight  part,  pierced  with  a  large  foliated  circle  and  other 
tracery.  The  last  three  bays  on  the  south  side  are  taken  up 
by  the  Founder's  Chapel  (Capella  do  Fundador),  in  which  are 
buried  King  Joao,  Qiieen  Philippa,  and  four  of  their  sons. 
This  chapel,  which  must  have  been  begun  a  good  deal  later 
than  the  church,  as  the  church  was  finished  in  1415  when  the 
queen  died  and  was  temporarily  buried  before  the  high  altar, 
while  the  chapel  was  not  yet  ready  when  Dom  Joao  made  his 
will  in  1426,  though  it  was  so  in  1434  when  he  and  the  queen 
were  there  buried,  is  an  exact  square  of  about  80  feet  exter- 
nally, within  which  an  octagon  of  about  38  feet  in  diameter 
rises  above  the  flat  roof  of  the  square,  rather  higher  than  to 


BATALHA  85 

the  top  of  the  aisles.  Each  exposed  side  of  the  square  is 
divided  into  three  bays,  one  wider  in  the  centre  with  one 
narrower  on  each  side.  The  buttresses,  pinnacles  and  corbel 
table  are  much  the  same  as  before,  but  the  parapet  is  much 
more  elaborate  and  more  like  French  flamboyant.  Of  the 
windows  the  smaller  are  of  four  lights  with  very  elaborate  and 
unusual  flowing  tracery  in  their  heads  ;  small  parts  of  which, 
such  as  the  tracery  at  the  top  of  the  smaller  lights,  is  curiously 
English,  while  the  whole  is  neither  English  nor  French  nor 
belonging  to  any  other  national  school.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  larger  eight-light  window  in  the  central  bay,  but 
that  there  the  tracery  is  even  more  elaborate  and  extravagant. 
The  octagon  above  has  buttresses  with  ordinary  pinnacles  at 
each  corner,  a  parapet  like  that  below,  and  flying  buttresses, 
all  pierced,  cusped  and  crocketed  like  those  at  the  west  front. 
On  each  face  is  a  tall  two-light  window  with  flowing  tracery 
packed  in  rather  tightly  at  the  top. 

As  for  the  west  front  itself,  which  has  actually  been  com- 
pared to  that  of  York  Minster,  the  ends  of  the  aisles  are  much 
like  the  sides,  with  similar  buttresses,  pinnacles  and  parapet, 
but  with  the  windows  not  set  back  quite  so  far.  On  each 
side  of  the  large  central  door  are  square  buttresses,  running  up 
to  above  the  level  of  the  aisle  roof  in  six  stories,  the  four 
upper  of  which  are  panelled  with  what  looks  like  English 
decorated  tracery,  and  ending  in  large  square  crocketed  and 
gabled  pinnacles.  The  door  itself  between  these  buttresses  is 
another  strange  mixture.  In  general  design  and  in  size  it  is 
entirely  French  :  on  either  side  six  large  statues  stand  on 
corbels  and  under  elaborate  many-sided  canopies,  while  on  the 
arches  themselves  is  the  usual  French  arrangement  of  different 
canopied  figures  :  the  tympanum  is  upheld  by  a  richly  cusped 
segmental  arch,  and  has  on  it  a  curiously  archaistic  carving  of 
Our  Lord  under  a  canopy  surrounded  by  the  four  Evangelists. 
Above,  the  crocketed  drip-mould  is  carried  up  in  an  ogee 
leaving  room  for  the  coronation  of  the  Virgin  over  the  apex 
of  the  arch.  So  far  all  might  be  French,  but  on  examining  the 
detail,  a  great  deal  of  it  is  found  to  be  not  F"rench  but 
English:  the  half  octagonal  corbels  with  their  panelled  and 
traceried  sides,  and  still  more  the  strips  of  panelling  on  the 
jambs  with  their  arched  heads,  are  quite  English  and  might  be 
found  in  almost  any  early  perpendicular  reredos  or  tomb,  nor 
are  the  larger  canopies  quite  French.      (Fig.  33.) 


86         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Above  the  fiiiial  of  the  ogee  runs  a  corbel  table  supporting 
a  pierced  and  crested  parapet,  a  little  different  in  design  from 
the  rest. 

Above  this  parapeted  gallery  is  a  large  window  lighting 
the  upper  part  of  the  nave,  a  window  which  for  extravagance 
and  exuberance  of  tracery  exceeds  all  others  here  or  elsewhere. 
The  lower  part  is  evidently  founded  on  the  larger  windows  of 
the  Capella  do  Fundador.  Like  them  it  has  two  larger 
pointed  lights  under  a  big  ogee  which  reaches  to  the  apex  of 
a  pointed  arch  spanning  the  whole  window,  the  space  between 
this  ogee  and  the  enclosing  arch  being  filled  in  with  more  or 
less  ordinary  flowing  tracery.  These  two  main  lights  are 
again  much  subdivided  :  at  the  top  is  a  circle  with  spiral 
tracery  ;  below  it  an  arch  enclosing  an  ogee  exactly  similar  to 
the  larger  one  above,  springing  from  two  sub-lights  which  are 
again  subdivided  in  exactly  the  same  manner,  into  circle, 
sub-arch,  ogee  and  two  small  lights,  so  that  the  whole  lower 
part  of  the  window  is  really  built  up  from  the  one  motive 
repeated  three  times.  The  space  between  the  large  arch  and 
the  window  head  is  taken  up  by  a  large  circle  completely 
filled  with  minute  spiral  tracery  and  two  vesicae  also  filled  in 
with  smaller  vesicae  and  circles.  Now  such  a  window  could 
not  have  been  designed  in  England,  in  France,  or  anywhere 
else  ;  not  only  is  it  ill  arranged,  but  it  is  entirely  covered  from 
top  to  bottom  with  tracery,  which  shows  that  an  attempt  was 
being  made  to  adapt  forms  suitable  in  a  northern  climate  to 
the  brilliant  summer  sun  of  Portugal,  a  sun  which  a  native 
builder  would  rather  try  to  keep  out  than  to  let  in.  Above 
the  window  is  a  band  of  reticulated  tracery  like  that  below, 
and  the  front  is  finished  with  a  straight  line  of  parapet  pierced 
and  foliated  like  that  below,  joining  the  picturesque  clusters 
of  corner  pinnacles.  The  only  other  part  of  the  church  which 
calls  for  notice  is  the  bell-tower  which  stands  at  the  north  end 
ot  a  very  thick  wall  separating  the  sacristy  from  the  cloister  ; 
it  is  now  an  octagon  springing  strangely  from  the  square 
below,  with  a  rich  parapet,  inside  which  stands  a  tall  spire  ; 
this  spire,  which  has  a  sort  of  coronet  rather  more  than  half- 
way up,  consists  of  eight  massive  crocketed  ribs  ending  in  a 
huge  finial,  and  with  the  space  between  filled  in  with  very  fine 
pierced  work.'     From  such  of  the  original   detail  which  has 

'   This  spire  has  been  rebuilt  since  tlie  earthquake  ot  1755,  and  so  may  be  quite 
il;(Ferent  from  that  originally  intended. 


\9 


X    $ 
o 

X    4 
3  °    t 

^^  :- 


fcj      a 


BATALHA  Sy 

survived  the  beautiful  alterations  ot  Dom  Maiioel,  the  details 
of  the  cloister  must  have  been  very  like  those  of  the  church. 
The  refectory  to  the  west  of  the  cloister  is  a  plain  room  roofed 
with  a  pointed  barrel-vault  ;  but  the  chapter-house  is  con- 
structively the  most  remarkable  part  of  the  whole  convent. 
It  is  a  great  room  over  sixty  feet  square,  opening  off  the  east 
cloister  walk  by  a  large  pointed  door  with  a  two-light  window 
each  side.  This  great  space  is  covered  by  an  immense  vault, 
upheld  by  no  central  shaft  ;  arches  are  thrown  across  the 
corners  bringing  the  square  to  an  octagon,  and  though  not 
very  high,  it  is  one  of  the  boldest  Gothic  vaults  ever 
attempted  ;  there  is  nowhere  else  a  room  of  such  a  size 
vaulted  without  supporting  piers,  and  probably  none  where 
the  buttresses  outside,  with  their  small  projection,  look  so 
unequal  to  the  work  they  have  to  do,  yet  this  vault  has 
successfully  withstood  more  than  one  earthquake. 

The  inside  of  the  church  is  in  singular  contrast  to  the 
floridness  of  the  outside.  The  clustered  piers  are  exceptionally 
large  and  tall  ;  there  is  no  tritorium,  and  the  side  windows 
are  set  so  far  back  as  to  be  scarcely  seen.  The  capitals  have 
elaborate  Gothic  foliage,  but  are  so  square  as  to  look  at  a 
distance  almost  romanesque.  In  front  of  each  pier  triple 
vaulting  shafts  run  up,  but  instead  of  the  side  shafts  carrying 
the  diagonal  ribs  as  they  should  have  done,  all  three  carry 
bold  transverse  arches,  leaving  the  vaulting  ribs  to  spring  as 
best  they  can.  Each  bay  has  horizontal  ridge  ribs,  though 
their  effect  is  lost  by  the  too  great  strength  of  the  transverse 
arches.  The  chancel,  a  little  lower  than  the  nave  and 
transepts,  is  entered  by  an  acutely  pointed  and  richly  cusped 
arch,  and  has  a  regular  Welsh  groined  vault,  with  a  well- 
developed  ridge  rib.  Unfortunately  almost  all  the  church 
furniture  was  destroyed  during  the  French  retreat,  and  of  the 
stained  glass  only  that  in  the  windows  of  the  main  apse  sur- 
vives, save  in  the  three-light  window  of  the  chapter-house, 
a  window  which  can  be  exactly  dated  as  it  displays  the  arms 
of  Portugal  and  Castile  quartered.  This  could  only  have 
been  done  during  the  lite  of  Dom  Manoel's  first  wife,  Isabel, 
eldest  daughter  and  heir  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella.  Dom 
Manoel  married  her  in  1497,  and  she  died  in  149S  leaving  a 
son  who,  had  he  lived,  would  have  inherited  the  whole  Peninsula 
and  so  saved  Spain  from  the  fatal  connection  with  the  Nether- 
lands inherited  by  Charles  v.  from  his  own  father.      (Fig.  34.) 


88         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

The  most  elaborate  part  of  the  interior  is  not  unnaturally 
the  Capelia  do  Fundador  :  though  even  there,  the  four 
beautiful  carved  and  painted  altars  and  retables  on  the  east 
side,  and  the  elaborate  carved  presses  on  the  west,  have  all 
vanished  from  their  places,  burned  for  firewood  by  the  invaders 
in  1810.  In  the  centre  under  the  lantern,  lie  King  Joao  who 
died  in  1433,  and  on  the  right  Queen  Philippa  of  Lancaster 
who  died  seventeen  years  before.  The  high  tomb  itself  is  a 
plain  square  block  of  stone  from  which  on  each  side  there 
project  four  lions  :  at  the  head  are  the  royal  arms  surrounded 
by  the  Garter,  and  on  the  sides  long  inscriptions  in  honour  of 
the  king  and  queen.  The  figures  of  the  king  and  queen  lie 
side  by  side  with  very  elaborate  canopies  at  their  heads.  King 
Joao  is  in  armour,  holding  a  sword  in  his  left  hand  and  with 
his  other  clasping  the  queen's  right  hand.  The  figures  are 
not  nearly  so  well  carved  as  are  those  of  Dom  Pedro  and 
Inez  de  Castro  at  Alcoba^a,  nor  is  the  tomb  nearly  as 
elaborate.  On  the  south  wall  are  the  recessed  tombs  of  four 
of  their  younger  sons.  The  eldest,  Dom  Duarte,  intended  to 
be  buried  in  the  great  unfinished  chapel  at  the  east,  but  still 
lies  with  his  wife  before  the  high  altar.  Each  recess  has  a 
pointed  arch  richly  moulded,  and  with  broad  bands  of  very 
unusual  leaves,  while  above  it  rises  a  tall  ogee  canopy, 
crocketed  and  ending  in  a  large  finial.  The  space  between 
arch  and  canopy  and  the  sills  of  the  windows  is  covered  with 
reticulated  panelling  like  that  on  the  west  front,  and  the 
tombs  are  divided  by  tall  pinnacles.  The  four  sons  here 
buried  are,  beginning  at  the  west  :  first,  Dom  Pedro,  duke  of 
Coimbra  ;  next  him  Dom  Henrique,  duke  of  Vizeu  and  master 
of  the  Order  of  Christ,  famous  as  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator  ; 
then  Dom  Joao,  Constable  of  Portugal  ;  and  last,  Dom  Fer- 
nando, master  of  the  Order  of  Aviz,  who  died  an  unhappy 
captive  in  Morocco.  During  the  reign  of  his  brother  Dom 
Duarte  he  had  taken  part  in  an  expedition  to  that  country, 
and  being  taken  prisoner  was  offered  his  freedom  if  the 
Portuguese  would  give  up  Ceuta,  captured  by  King  Joao  in 
the  year  in  which  Queen  Philippa  died.  These  terms  he 
indignantly  refused  and  died  after  some  years  of  misery.  On 
the  front  of  each  tomb  is  a  large  panel  on  which  are  two  or 
three  shields — one  on  that  of  Dom  Henrique  being  sur- 
rounded with  the  Garter — while  all  the  surface  is  covered  with 
beautifully    carved    foliage.       Dom   Henrique    alone    has    an 


20 


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BATALHA  89 

effigy,  the  others  having  only  covers  raised  and  panelled, 
while  the  back  of  the  Constable's  monument  has  on  it  scenes 
from  the  Passion. 

The  eight  piers  of  the  lantern  are  made  up  of  a  great 
number  of  shafts  with  a  moulded  angle  between  each.  The 
capitals  are  covered  with  two  tiers  of  conventional  vine-leaves 
and  have  octagonal,  not  as  in  the  church  square  abaci,  while  the 
arches  are  highly  stilted  and  are  enriched  with  most  elaborate 
cusping,  each  cusp  ending  in  a  square  vine-leaf.      (Fig.  25-) 

Such  then  are  the  main  features  of  the  church,  the  design 
of  which,  according  to  most  writers,  was  brought  straight  from 
England  by  the  English  queen,  an  opinion  which  no  one  who 
knows  I'jiglish  contemporary  buildings  can  hold  for  a  moment. 

First,  to  take  the  entirely  native  features.  The  plan  is 
only  an  elaboration  of  that  of  many  already  existing  churches. 
The  south  transept  door  is  a  copy  of  a  door  at  Santarem. 
The  heavy  transverse  arches  and  the  curious  way  the  diagonal 
vaulting  ribs  are  left  to  take  care  of  themselves  have  been 
seen  no  further  away  than  at  Alcobaga  ;  the  flat-paved  terraced 
roofs,  whose  origin  the  Visconde  di  Condeixa  in  his  mono- 
graph on  the  convent,  sought  even  as  far  off  as  in  Cyprus, 
existed  already  at  Evora  and  elsewhere. 

Secondly,  from  France  might  have  come  the  general  design 
of  the  west  door,  and  the  great  height  of  the  nave,  though  the 
proportion  between  the  aisle  arcade  and  the  clerestory,  and 
the  entire  absence  of  any  kind  of  triforium,  is  not  at  all 
French. 

Thirdly,  several  details,  as  has  been  seen,  appear  to  be 
more  English  than  anything  else,  but  they  are  none  of  them 
very  important  ;  the  ridge  ribs  in  the  nave,  the  Welsh  groin- 
ing of  the  chancel  vault,  the  general  look  of  the  pinnacles,  a 
few  pieces  of  stone  panelling  on  buttresses  or  door,  a  small 
part  of  a  few  of  the  windows,  the  moulding  of  the  chapter- 
house door,  the  leaves  on  the  capitals  of  the  Capclla  do 
F'undador,  and  the  shape  of  the  vine-leaves  at  the  ends  of  the 
cuspings  of  the  arches.  From  a  distance  the  appearance  ot 
the  church  is  certainly  more  English  than  anything  else,  but 
that  is  due  chiefly  to  the  flat  roof — a  thoroughly  Portuguese 
feature — and  to  the  upstanding  pinnacles,  which  suggest  a 
long  perpendicular  building  such  as  one  of  the  college  chapels 
at  Oxford. 

Lastly,  if   the   open-work   spire    is  a    real    copy   of   that 


90         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

destroyed  in  1755,  •'"'^  '^  there  ever  was  another  like  it  on  the 
Capella  do  Fundador,'  they  suggest  German  influence,  although 
the  earliest  Spanish  examples  of  such  German  work  were  not 
begun  at  Burgos  till  1442,  by  which  time  the  church  here  must 
have  been  nearly  it  not  quite  finished. 

It  is  then  not  difliculc  to  assign  a  great  many  details,  with 
perhaps  a  certain  amount  of  truth,  to  the  influence  of  several 
foreign  countries,  yet  as  a  whole  the  church  is  unlike  any 
building  existing  in  any  of  these  countries  or  even  in  Spain, 
and  it  remains  as  diflicuit,  or  indeed  as  impossible,  to  discover 
whence  these  characteristics  came.  So  far  there  had  been 
scarcely  any  development  of  window  tracery  to  lead  up  to  the 
elaborate  and  curious  examples  which  are  found  here  ;  still 
less  had  any  such  constructive  skill  been  shown  in  former 
buildings  as  to  make  so  great  a  vault  as  that  of  the  chapter- 
house at  all  likely,  for  such  a  vault  is  to  be  found  perhaps 
nowhere  else. 

Probably  the  plan  of  the  church,  and  perhaps  the  eastern 
chapel  and  lower  part  of  the  transept,  are  the  work  of  AfFonso 
Domingues,  and  all  the  peculiarities,  the  strange  windows,  the 
cusped  arches,  the  English-looking  pinnacles,  as  well  as  all  the 
constructive  skill,  are  due  to  Huguet  his  successor,  who  may 
perhaps  have  travelled  in  France  and  England,  and  had  come 
back  to  Portugal  with  increased  knowledge  of  how  to  build, 
but  with  a  rather  confused  idea  of  the  ornamental  detail  he 
had  seen  abroad. 

When  Dom  Jofio  died  in  1433  his  eldest  son,  Dom  Duarte 
or  Edward,  determined  to  build  for  himself  a  more  splendid 
tomb-house  than  his  father's,  and  so  was  begun  the  great 
octagon  to  the  east. 

Unfortunately  Dom  Duarte's  reign  was  short  ;  he  died  in 
1438,  partly  it  is  said  of  distress  at  the  ill  success  of  his 
expedition  to  Morocco  and  at  the  captivity  there  of  his 
youngest  brother,  so  that  he  had  no  time  to  finish  his  chapel, 
and  his  son  Affonso  v.,  the  African,  was  too  much  engaged  in 
campaigning  against  the  Moors  to  he  able  to  give  either  money 
or  attention  to  his  father's  work  ;  and  it  was  still  quite 
unfinished  when  Dom  Manoel  came  to  the  throne  in  1495,  ^"*^ 
though    he   did   much   towards   carrying  on   the  work  it  was 

'  In  his  book  on  Batalha,  .\hirpliy,  who  stayed  in  the  abbey  for  some  months 
towards  the  end  of  the  eighteentli  century,  gives  an  engraving  ot  an  open-work  spire 
on  this  chapel,  saying  it  had  been  destroyed  in  1755. 


BATALHA  91 

unfinished  when  he  died  in  1521  and  so  remains  to  the  present 
day.  It  is  in  designing  this  chapel  that  Huguet  showed  his 
greatest  originality  and  constructive  daring  :  a  few  feet  behind 
the  central  apse  he  planned  a  great  octagon  about  seventy-two 
feet  in  diameter,  surrounded  by  seven  apsidal  chapels,  one  on 
each  side  except  that  next  the  church,  while  between  these 
chapels  are  small  low  chambers  where  were  to  be  the  tombs 
themselves.  There  is  nothing  to  show  how  this  chapel  was  to 
be  united  to  the  church,  as  the  great  doorway  and  vaulted  hall 
were  added  by  Dom  Manoel  some  seventy  years  later.  When 
Dom  Duarte  died  in  1438,  or  when  Huguet  himself  died  not 
long  after,'  the  work  had  only  been  carried  out  as  fiir  as  the 
tops  of  the  surrounding  chapels,  and  so  remained  all  through 
his  son's  and  his  grandson's  reigns,  although  in  his  will  the 
king  had  specially  asked  that  the  building  should  be  carried 
on.  in  all  this  original  part  of  the  Capellas  Imperfeitas  there 
is  little  that  differs  from  Huguet's  work  in  the  church.  The 
buttresses  and  corbel  table  are  very  similar  (the  pinnacles  and 
parapets  have  been  added  since  1834),  and  the  apses  quite  like 
those  of  the  church.      (Fig.  36.) 

The  tracery  of  the  chief  windows  too  is  not  unlike  that 
of  the  lantern  windows  of  the  founder's  chapel  except  that 
there  is  a  well-marked  transome  half-way  up — a  feature  which 
has  been  attributed  to  English  influence — while  the  single 
windows  ot  the  tomb  chambers  are  completely  filled  with 
geometric  tracery.  Inside,  the  capitals  of  the  chapel  arches 
as  well  as  their  rich  cuspings  are  very  like  those  of  the 
founder's  chapel  ;  the  capitals  having  octagonal  abaci  and  stiff 
vine-leaves,  and  the  trefoiled  cusps  ending  in  square  vine- 
leaves,  while  the  arch  mouldings  are,  as  in  King  Jofio's  chapel, 
more  English  than  French  in  section.  There  is  nothing  now 
to  show  how  the  great  central  octagon  was  to  be  roofed — for 
the  eight  great  piers  which  now  rise  high  above  the  chapel 
were  not  built  till  the  time  of  Dom  Manoel — but  it  seems 
likely  that  the  vault  was  meant  to  be  low,  and  not  to  rise 
much  above  the  chapel  roofs,  finishing,  as  everywhere  else  in 
the  church,  in  a  flat,  paved  terrace. 

'  Huguet  witntsMci  a  ilocumciit  il.itcil  December  7,  1402,  lonci-ining  a  piece  of 
laiul  belonging  lo  Margariila  Annes,  servant  to  Affonso  Domingues,  master  of  the 
works,  ami  his  name  also  occurs  in  a  ilocunicnt  ot  1450  as  having  had  a  house 
granted  to  him  by  Dom  Duarte,  hut  he  must  have  been  ilcail  some  time  before  that 
as  his  successor  as  master  of  the  works,  Master  Vasquez,  was  already  dead  before 
1448.      I'lobably  Hugutt  died  about  1440. 


92         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

The  only  important  addition  made  during  the  reigns 
of  Dom  Affonso  v.  and  of  Dom  Joao  ii.  was  that  of  a 
second  cloister,  north  of  the  Claustro  Real,  and  still  called 
the  Cloister  of  Affonso.  This  cloister  is  as  plain  and  wanting 
in  ornament  as  everything  else  about  the  monastery  is  rich 
and  elaborate,  and  it  was  probably  built  under  the  direction 
of  Fcrnfio  d'Evora,  who  succeeded  his  uncle  Martim  Vasques 
as  master  of  the  works  before  1448,  and  held  that  position 
for  nearly  thirty  years.  Unlike  the  great  cloister,  whose 
large  openings  must,  from  the  first,  have  been  meant  for 
tracery,  the  cloister  of  Affonso  v.  is  so  very  plain  and  simple, 
that  if  its  date  were  not  known  it  would  readily  be  attributed 
to  a  period  older  even  than  the  foundation  of  the  monastery. 
On  each  side  are  seven  square  bays  separated  by  perfectly 
plain  buttresses,  each  bay  consisting  of  two  very  plain  pointed 
arches  resting  on  the  moulded  capitals  of  coupled  shafts. 
Except  for  the  buttresses  and  the  vault  the  cloister  differs 
in  no  marked  way  from  those  at  Guimaraes  and  elsewhere 
whose  continuous  pointed  arcades  show  so  little  advance  from 
the  usual  romanesque  manner  of  cloister-building.  Above  is 
a  second  storv  of  later  date,  in  which  the  tiled  roof  rests  on 
short  columns  placed  rather  far  apart,  and  with  no  regard 
to  the  spacing  of  the  bays  below.  Round  this  are  the 
kitchens  and  various  domestic  offices  of  the  convent,  and 
behind  it  lay  another  cloister,  now  utterly  gone,  having 
been  burned  by  the  French  in  1810.  Such  are  the  church 
and  monastery  of  Batalha  as  planned  by  Dom  Joao  and 
added  to  by  his  son  and  grandson,  and  though  it  is  not 
possible  to  say  whence  Huguet  drew  his  inspiration,  it 
remains,  with  all  the  peculiarities  of  tracery  and  detail 
which  make  it  seem  strange  and  ungrammatical — if  one  may 
so  speak — to  eyes  accustomed  to  northern  Gothic,  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  examples  of  original  planning  and 
daring  construction  to  be  found  anywhere.  Of  the  later 
additions  which  give  character  to  the  cloister  and  to  the 
Capellas  Imperfeitas  nothing  can  be  said  till  the  time  of 
Dom  Manoel  is  reached. 


21 


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THE  EARLIER  FIFTEENTH  CENTURA'     9. 


CHAPTER    V 

THE     EARLIER     FIFTEENTH     CENTURY 

Besides  building  Batalha,  King  Jofio  dedicated  the  spoils  he  GuimarSes. 
had  taken  at  Aljubarrota  to  the  church  of  Nossa  Senhora  da 
Oliviera  at  Guimaraes,  which  he  rebuilt  from  the  designs 
of  Juan  Garcia  of  Toledo.  The  most  important  of  these 
spoils  is  the  silver-gilt  reredos  taken  in  the  Spanish  king's 
travelling  chapel.  It  is  in  the  shape  of  a  triptych  about  four 
feet  high.  In  the  centre  is  represented  the  Virgin  v\ith  the 
Infant  Christ  on  a  bed,  with  Joseph  seated  and  leaning  wearily 
on  his  staff  at  the  foot,  the  figures  being  about  fourteen 
inches  high  ;  above  two  angels  swing  censers,  and  the  heads 
of  an  ox  and  an  ass  appear  feeding  from  a  manger.  All 
the  background  is  richly  diapered,  and  above  are  four  cusped 
arches,  separated  by  angels  under  canopies,  while  above  the 
arches  to  the  top  there  rises  a  rich  mass  of  tabernacle 
work,  with  the  window-like  spaces  filled  in  with  red  or 
green  enamel.  At  the  top  are  two  half-angeis  holding  the 
arms  of  Portugal,  added  when  the  reredos  was  dedicated  to 
Our  Lady  by  Dom  Joao.  The  two  leaves,  each  about  twenty 
inches  wide,  are  divided  into  two  equal  stories,  each  of  which 
has  two  cusped  and  canopied  arches  enclosing,  those  on  the 
left  above,  the  Annunciation,  and  below  the  Presentation,  and 
those  on  the  right,  the  Angel  appearing  to  the  Shepherds 
above,  and  the  Wise  Men  below.  All  the  tabernacle  work  is 
most  beautifully  wrought  in  silver,  but  the  figures  are  less  good, 
that  of  the  Virgin  Mary  being  distinctly  too  large.'  (Fig-  37-) 
Of  the  other  things  taken  from  the  defeated  king's  tent, 
only  one  silver  angel  now  remains  of  the  twelve  which  were 
sent  to  Guimaraes. 

'  Ga>par  Est;i(;o,  writing  in  the  sixtccnih  century,  says  that  this  triplycli  was  maifc 
of  the  silver  against  which  King  JoJo  weighed  himsclt,  but  the  story  ot  its  capture  at 
Aljubarrota  seems  the  older  tradition. 


94  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Of  the  church  rebuilt  in  commemoration  of  this  great 
victory,  only  the  west  front  has  escaped  a  terrible  transforma- 
tion carried  out  not  so  long  ago,  and  which  has  made  it 
impossible  to  see  what  the  inside  was  once  like.  If  the 
builder  was  a  Spaniard,  as  his  name,  Juan  Garcia  de  Toledo, 
seems  to  imply,  there  is  nothing  Spanish  about  his  design. 
The  door  is  like  many  another  door  of  about  the  same  period, 
with  simple  mouldings  ornamented  with  small  bosses,  but  the 
deeply  recessed  window  above  is  most  unusual.  The  tracery 
is  gone,  but  the  framing  of  the  window  remains,  and  is 
far  more  like  that  of  a  French  door  than  of  a  window. 
On  either  jamb  are  two  stories  of  three  canopied  niches,  con- 
taining figures,  while  the  arches  are  covered  with  small  figures 
under  canopies  ;  all  is  rather  rude,  but  the  whole  is  most 
picturesque  and  original. 

To  the  left  rises  the  tower,  standing  forward  from  the 
church  front  :  it  is  of  three  stories,  with  cable  moulding  at 
the  corners,  a  picturesque  cornice  and  battlements  at  the 
top  ;  a  bell  gable  in  front,  and  a  low  octagonal  spire.  On 
the  ground  floor  are  two  large  windows  defended  by  simple 
but  good  iron  grilles,  and  in  the  upper  part  are  large  belfry 
windows.  This  is  not  the  orginal  tower,  tor  that  was  pulled 
down  in  151  5,  when  the  present  one  was  built  in  its  stead  by 
Pedro  Esteves  Cogominho.  Though  of  so  late  a  date  it  is 
quite  uninfluenced,  not  only  by  those  numerous  buildings  of 
Dom  Manoel's  time,  which  are  noted  for  their  fantastic 
detail,  but  by  the  early  renaissance  which  had  already  begun  to 
show  itself  here  and  there,  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
church  towers  in  the  country. 

A  few  feet  to  the  west  of  the  church  there  is  a  small  open 
shrine  or  chapel,  a  square  vault  resting  on  four  pointed 
arches  which  are  well  moulded,  enriched  with  dog-tooth  and 
surmounted  by  gables.  This  chapel  was  built  soon  after  1342 
to  commemorate  the  miracle  to  which  the  church  owes  its 
name.  Early  in  the  fourteenth  century  there  grew  at  Sao 
Torquato,  a  few  miles  ofl^,  an  olive-tree  which  provided  the 
oil  for  that  saint's  lamp.  It  was  transported  to  Guimaraes 
to  fulfil  a  like  ofiice  there  for  the  altar  of  Our  Lady.  It 
naturally  died,  and  so  remained  for  many  years  till  1342,  when 
one  Pedro  Esteves  placed  on  it  a  cross  which  his  brother  had 
bought  in  Normandy.  This  was  the  8th  of  September,  and 
three  days  after  the  dead  olive-tree  broke   into  leaf,  a  miracle 


22 


3 


=  H 


•<  - 

z  is 


THE  EARLIER  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY     95 

greatly  to  the  advantage  and  wealth  of  the  church  and  of  the 
town.  From  that  day  the  church  was  called  Our  Lady  of  the 
Olive  Tree. 

Far  more  interesting  than  this  church,  because  much  Ouarda. 
better  preserved  and  because  it  is  clearly  derived,  in  part  at 
least,  from  Batalha,  is  the  cathedral  of  Guarda,  begun  by 
Joao  I.  Guarda  is  a  small  town,  not  far  from  the  Spanish 
border,  built  on  a  hill  rising  high  above  the  bleak  surround- 
ing tableland  to  a  height  of  nearly  four  thousand  feet,  and 
was  founded  by  Dom  Sancho  i.  in  11 97  to  guard  his  frontier 
against  the  Spaniards  and  the 
Moors.  Begun  by  Joao  i. 
the  plan  and  general  design 
of  the  whole  church  must 
belong  to  the  beginning  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  though' 
the  finishing  of  the  nave,  and 
the  insertion  of  larger  tran- 
sept windows,  were  carried 
out  under  Dom  Manoel,  and 
though  the  great  reredos  is 
of  the  time  of  Dom  Joao  in. 
Yet  the  few  chapels  between 
the  nave  buttresses  are  almost 
the  only  real  additions  made 
to  the  church.  Though  of 
but  moderate  dimensions,  it 
is  one  of  the  largest  of  Portu- 
guese cathedrals,  being  175 
feet  long  by  70  feet  wide  and 
1 10  teet  across  the  transepts. 
It  is  also  unique  among  the 

aisled  and  vaulted  churches  in  copying  Batalha  by  having 
a  well-developed  clerestory  and  flying  buttresses. 

The  plan  consists  of  a  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays,  a 
transept  projecting  one  bay  beyond  the  aisles,  and  three  apses 
to  the  east.  At  tlie  crossing  the  vault  is  slightly  raised  so  as 
to  admit  of  four  small  round  windows  opening  above  the  flat 
roofs  of  the  central  aisle  and  transepts.  The  only  peculiarity 
about  the  plan  lies  in  the  two  western  towers,  which  near  the 
ground  are  squares  set  diagonally  to  the  front  of  the  church 
and  higher  u[i  change  to  octagons,    and    so    rise  a    few    feet 


CATHEDRAL.     GUARDA. 


so 


I.I.I 


30 
—I— 


J° 


FEET 


96         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

above  the  flat  roof.  About  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century 
two  small  chapels  were  added  to  the  north  of  the  nave,  and 
later  still  the  spaces  between  the  buttresses  were  filled  in  with 
shallow  altar  recesses. 

The  likeness  to  Batalha  is  best  seen  in  the  Capella  Mor. 
/Vs  the  apse  has  only  three  instead  of  five  sides,  the  windows 
are  rather  wider,  and  there  are  none  below,  but  otherwise  the 
resemblance  is  as  great  as  may  be,  when  the  model  is  of  fine 
limestone  and  the  copy  of  granite.  The  buttresses  have  off- 
sets string  courses,  and  square  crocketed  pinnacles  just  as  at 
Batalha  ;  there  has  even  been  an  attempt  to  copy  the  parapet, 
though  only  the  trefoil  corbel  table  is  really  like  the  model, 
for  the  parapet  itself  is  solid  with  a  cresting  of  rather  clumsy 
fleurs-de-lis.  These  pinnacles  and  this  crested  parapet  are 
found  everywhere  all  round  the  church,  though  the  pinnacles 
on  the  aisle  walls  from  which  the  plain  flying  buttresses  spring 
are  quite  different,  being  of  a  Manoelino  design.  Again 
the  north  transept  door  has  evidently  been  inspired  by  the 
richness  of  Batalha.  Here  the  door  itself  is  plain,  but  well 
moulded,  with  above  it  an  elaborately  crocketed  ogee  drip- 
mould,  which  ends  in  a  large  finial ;  above  this  rises  to  a 
considerable  height  some  arcaded  panelling,  ending  at  the  top 
in  a  straight  band  of  quatrefoil,  and  interrupted  by  a  steep 
gable.      (Fig.  38.) 

No  other  part  of  the  outside  calls  for  much  notice  except 
the  boat-keel  corbels  of  the  smaller  apses,  the  straight  gable- 
less  ends  to  transept  and  nave  which  show  that  the  roofs 
are  flat  and  paved,  and  the  western  towers.  These  are 
of  three  stories.  The  lowest  is  square  at  the  bottom  and 
octagonal  above,  the  change  being  effected  by  a  curved  offset 
at  two  corners,  while  at  the  third  or  western  corner  the  curve 
has  been  cut  down  so  as  to  leave  room  for  an  eighteenth- 
century  window,  lighting  the  small  polygonal  chapel  inside,  a 
chapel  originally  lit  by  two  narrow  round-headed  windows  on 
the  diagonal  sides.  In  the  second  story  there  are  again 
windows  on  the  same  diagonal  sides,  but  they  have  been  built 
up  :  while  on  the  third  or  highest  division — where  the  octagon 
is  complete  on  all  sides — are  four  belfry  windows.  The 
whole  is  finished  by  a  crested  parapet.  The  west  front  between 
these  towers  is  very  plain.  At  the  top  a  cresting,  simpler  than 
that  elsewhere,  below  a  round  window  without  tracery,  lower 
still    two    picturesque    square    rococo    windows,    and    at    the 


THE  EARLIER  FIFTEENTH  CEMTURY     97 

bottom  a  rather  elaborate  Manoelino  doorway,  built  not  many 
years  ago  to  replace  one  of  the  same  date  as  the  windows 
above. 

Throughout  the  clerestory  windows  are  not  large.  They 
are  round-headed  of  two  lights,  with  simple  tracery,  and  deep 
splays  both  inside  and  out.  The  large  transept  windows  with 
half  octagonal  heads  under  a  large  trefoil  were  inserted  about 
the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

Inside  the  resemblance  to  Batalha  is  less  noticeable.  The 
ribs  of  the  chancel  vault  are  well  moulded,  as  are  the  arches  of 
the  lantern,  but  in  the  nave,  which  cannot  have  been  finished 
till  the  end  ot  the  fifteenth  century,  the  design  is  quite  different. 
The  piers  are  all  a  hollow  square  set  diagonally  with  a  large 
round  shaft  at  each  corner.  In  the  aisle  arches  the  hollows 
of  the  diagonal  sides  are  carried  round  without  capitals,  with 
which  the  round  shafts  alone  are  provided  ;  while  the  shaft  in 
front  runs  up  to  a  round  Manoelino  capital  with  octagonal 
abacus  from  which  springs  the  vaulting  at  a  level  higher  than 
the  sills  of  the  clerestory  windows.'  The  most  unusual  part  of 
the  nave  is  the  vaulting  of  all  three  aisles,  where  all  the  ribs, 
diagonal  as  well  as  transverse,  are  ot  exactly  the  same  section 
and  size  as  is  the  round  shaft  from  which  they  spring,  even  the 
wall  rib  being  of  the  same  shape  though  a  little  smaller.  At 
the  crossing  there  are  triple  shafts  on  each  side,  those  of  the 
nave  being  twisted,  which  is  another  Manoelino  feature.  The 
nave  then  must  be  about  a  hundred  years  later  than  the  eastern 
parts  of  the  church,  where  the  capitals  are  rather  long  and  are 
carved  with  foliage  and  have  square  abaci,  while  those  of  the 
nave  are  all  of  the  time  of  King  Jofio  ii.  or  ot  King  Manoel. 
At  about  the  same  time  some  small  and  picturesque  windows 
were  inserted  above  the  smaller  apses  on  the  east  side  of  the 
transept,  and  rather  later  was  built  the  chapel  to  the  north-east 
ot  the  nave,  which  is  entered  through  a  segmental  arch  whose 
jambs  and  head  are  well  carved  with  early  renaissance  foliage 
and  figures,  and  which  contains  the  simple  tomb  of  a  bishop. 
The  pulpits,  organs,  and  stalls,  both  in  the  chancel  and  in  the 
western  choir  gallery,  are  fantastic  and  late,  but  the  great 
reredos  which  rises  in  three  divisions  to  the  springing  of  the 
vault   is  the  largest  and  one  of  the  finest   in  the  country,  but 

'  These  capitals  have  the  distinctive  Manoelino  feature  of  the  mouUiing  just 
under  the  eight-sided  abacus,  being  twisted  like  a  rope  or  like  two  interlacing 
branches. 


98  PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

belonging  as  it  does  to  a  totally  difFercnt  period  and  school 
must  be  left  for  another  chapter. 
Nossa  Senhora  Much  need  not  be  said  about  the  Carmoat  Lisbon,  another 

^1°  Y^"*^^""'"'"  church  of  the  same  date,  as  it  has  been  almost  entirely  wrecked 
Carmo, Lisbon,  by  the  earthquake  of  1755.  The  victory  of  Aljubarrota  was 
due  perhaps  even  more  to  the  grand  Constable  ot  Portugal, 
Dom  Nuno  Alvares  Pereira,  than  to  the  king  himself,  and, 
like  the  king,  the  Constable  commemorated  the  victory  by 
founding  a  monastery,  a  great  Carmelite  house  in  Lisbon. 
The  church  of  Nossa  Senhora  do  Vencimento  do  Monte  do 
Carmo  stands  high  up  above  the  central  valley  of  Lisbon  on 
the  very  verge  of  the  steep  hill.  Begun  in  July  1J89  the 
foundations  twice  gave  way,  and  it  was  only  after  the  Constable 
had  dismissed  his  first  master  and  called  in  three  men  of  the 
same  name,  Affonso,  Gon(;alo,  and  Rodrigo  Eannes,  that  a  real 
beginning  could  be  made,  and  it  was  not  finished  till  1423,  when 
it  was  consecrated  ;  at  the  same  time  the  founder  assumed  the 
habit  of  a  Carmelite  and  entered  his  own  monastery  to  die 
eight  years  later,  and  to  become  an  object  of  veneration  to  the 
whole  people.  In  plan  the  church  was  almost  exactly  like  that 
of  Batalha,  though  with  a  shorter  nave  of  only  five  bays.'  To 
the  east  of  the  transept  are  still  five  apses — the  best  preserved 
part  of  the  whole  building — having  windows  and  buttresses 
like  those  at  Batalha.  The  only  other  part  of  the  church 
which  has  escaped  destruction  is  the  west  door,  a  large  simple 
opening  of  six  moulded  arches  springing  from  twelve  shafts 
whose  capitals  are  carved  with  foliage.  From  what  is  left  it 
seems  that  the  church  was  more  like  what  Batalha  was  planned 
to  be,  rather  than  what  it  became  under  the  direction  of 
Huguet  :  but  the  downfall  of  the  nave  has  been  so  complete 
that  it  is  only  possible  to  make  out  that  there  must  have  been 
a  well-developed  clerestory  and  a  high  vaulted  central  aisle. 
What  makes  this  destruction  all  the  more  regrettable  is  the 
fact  that  the  church  was  full  of  splendid  tombs,  especially  that 
of  the  Holy  Constable  himself:  a  magnificent  piece  of  carving 
in  alabaster  sent  from  Flanders  by  Dom  Joao's  daughter, 
Isabel,  duchess  of  Flanders.^ 

'  The  cluinli  was  about  256  feet  long  with  a  transept  of  over  100  feet,  which  is 
about  the  length  of  the  Batalha  transept. 

2  She  also  sent  the  beautiful  bronze  tomb  in  which  her  eldest  brother  Afi'onso, 
who  (lied  young,  lies  in  the  cathedral,  Braga.  The  bronze  effigy  lies  on  the  top  of 
an  altar-tonib  under  a  canopy  upheld  by  two  slender  bronze  shafts.  Untortunately  it 
IS  much  damaged  and  stands  in  so  dark  a  corner  that  it  can  scarcely  be  seen. 


THE  EARLIER  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY     99 

After  this  catastrophe  an  attempt  was  made  to  rebuild 
the  church,  but  little  was  done,  and  it  still  remains  a  com- 
plete ruin,  having  been  used  since  the  suppression  of  all 
monasteries  in  1834  as  an  Archasological  Museum  where 
many  tombs  and  other  architectural  fragments  may  still  be 
seen. 

Towards  the  end  of  King  Joao's  reign  a  man  named  Joao  viiiar  dc 
Vicente,  noting  the  corruption  into  which  the  religious  orders  F^des. 
were  falling,  determined  to  do  what  he  could  by  preaching  and 
example  to  bring  back  a  better  state  of  things.     He  first  began 
his  work  in  Lisbon,  but  was  driven  from  there  by  the  bishop 
to  find  a  refuge  at  Braga.     There  he  so  impressed  the  arch- 
bishop that  he  was  given  the  decayed  and  ruined  monastery  of 
Villar  de  Frades  in  1425.     Soon  he  had  gathered  round  him  a 
considerable  body  of  followers,  to  whom  he  gave  a  set  of  rules 
and  who,  after  receiving  the  papal  sanction,  were  known  as  the 
Canons  Secular  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist  or,  popularly,  Loyos, 
because  their  first  settlement  in  Lisbon  was  in  a   monastery 
formerly  dedicated  to  St.  Eloy.     The  church  at  Villar,  which  is 
of  considerable   size,   was   probably  long  of  building,  as  the 
elliptical-headed  west  door  with  its  naturalistic  treelike  posts 
has  details  which  did  not  become  common  till  at  least  the  very 
end  of  the  century.     Inside   the  church  consists  of  a  nave  of 
five  bays,  flanked  with  chapels  but  not  aisles,  transepts  which 
are  really  only  enlarged  chapels,  and  a  chancel  like  the  nave 
but  without  chapels.     The  chief  feature  of  the  inside  is  the 
very  elaborate  vaulting,  which  with   the  number  and   intricacy 
of  its  ribs,  is  not  at  all  unlike  an  English  Perpendicular  vault, 
and  indeed  would  need  but  little  change  to  develop  into  a  fan 
vault.      Here  then  there  has  been  a  considerable  advance  from 
the  imperfect  vaulting  of  the  central  aisle  at  Batalha,  where  the 
diagonal  ribs  had  to  be  squeezed  in  wherever  they  could  go, 
although  there  are  at  Villar  no  side  aisles  so  that  the  construc- 
tion  of  supporting    buttresses   was   of  course   easier   than   at 
Batalha  :   and  it  is  well  worth  noticing  how  from  so  imperfect 
a  beginning  as  the  nave  at  Batalha  the  Portuguese  masters  soon 
learned  to  build  elaborate  and  even  wide  vaults,  without,  as  a 
rule,  covering  them  with  innumerable  and  meaningless  twisting 
ribs  as  was  usually  done  in  Spain.      In  the  north-westernmost 
chapel    stands    the    font,    an     elaborate    work    of    the    early 
renaissance  ;  an  octagonal  bowl  with  twisted  sides  resting  on  a 
short  twisted  base. 


loo        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Matriz, 
Alvlto. 


Tombln 

Gra^a, 

Santarem. 


Not  unlike  the  vaulting  at  Villar  is  that  of  the  Matrix  or 
mother  church  of  Alvito,  a  small  town  in  the  Alemtejo,  nor 
can  it  be  very  much  later  in  date.  Outside  it  is  only  remark- 
able for  its  west  door,  an  interesting  example  of  an  attempt  to 
use  the  details  of  the  early  French  renaissance,  without  under- 
standing how  to  do  so — as  in  the  pediment  all  the  entablature 
except  the  architrave  has  been  left  out — and  for  the  short 
twisted  pinnacles  which  somehow  give  to  it,  as  to  many  other 
buildings  in  the  Alemtejo,  so  Oriental  a  look,  and  which  are 
seen  again  at  Belem.  Inside,  the  aisles  are  divided  from  the 
nave  by  round  chamfered  arches  springing  from  rather  short 
octagonal  piers,  which  have  picturesque  octagonal  capitals  and 
a  moulded  band  half-way  up.  Only  is  the  easternmost  bay, 
opening  to  large  transeptal  chapels,  pointed  and  moulded. 
The  vaulting  springs  from  corbels,  and  although  the  ribs  are 
but  simply  chamfered  they  are  well  developed.  Curiously, 
though  the  central  is  so  much  higher  than  the  side  aisles,  there 
is  no  clerestory,  nor  any  signs  of  there  ever  having  been  one, 
while  the  whole  wall  surface  is  entirely  covered  with  those 
beautiful  tiles  which  came  to  be  so  much  used  during  the 
seventeenth  century. 

In  the  year  1415  her  five  sons  had  sailed  straight  from  the 
deathbed  of  Qi^ieen  Philippa  to  the  coast  of  Morocco  and  had 
there  captured  the  town  of  Ceuta,  a  town  which  remained  in 
the  hands  of  the  Portuguese  till  after  their  ill-fated  union  with 
Spain  ;  for  in  1668  it  was  ceded  to  Spain  in  return  for  an 
acknowledgment  of  Portuguese  independence,  thus  won  after 
twenty-seven  years'  more  or  less  continuous  fighting.  This 
was  the  first  time  any  attempt  had  been  made  to  carry  the 
Portuguese  arms  across  the  Straits,  and  to  attack  their  old 
enemies  the  Moors  in  their  own  land,  where  some  hundred  and 
seventy  years  later  King  Joao's  descendant,  Dom  Sebastiao,  was 
to  lose  his  life  and  his  country's  freedom. 

The  first  governor  of  Ceuta  was  Dom  Pedro  de  Menezes, 
count  of  Viana.  There  he  died  in  1437,  after  having  for 
twenty-two  years  bravely  ciefended  and  governed  the  city — 
then,  as  is  inscribed  on  his  tomb,  the  only  place  in  Africa 
possessed  bv  Christians.  This  tomb,  which  was  made  at  the 
command  of  his  daughter  Dona  Leonor,  stands  in  the  church 
of  the  Graga  at  Santarem,  a  church  which  had  been  founded 
by  his  grandfather  the  count  of  Oiirem  in  1376  for  canons 
regular  of  St.  Augustine.      Inside  the  church  itself  is  not  very 


THE  EARLIER  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY   loi 

remarkable,'  having  a  nave  and  aisles  with  transepts  and  three 
vaulted  chapels  to  the  east,  built  very  much  in  the  same  style 
as  is  the  church  at  Le^a  do  Balio,  except  that  it  has  a  fine  west 
front,  to  be  mentioned  later,  that  the  roof  of  the  nave  was 
knocked  down  by  the  Devil  in  1548  in  anger  at  the  extreme 
piety  of  Frey  Martinho  de  Santarem,  one  of  the  canons,  and 
that  many  famous  people,  including  Pedro  Alvares  Cabral,  the 
discoverer  of  Brazil,  are  therein  buried. 

In  general  outline  the  tomb  of  the  count  of  Viana  is  not 
unlike  that  of  his  master  Dom  Joao,  but  it  is  much  more  highly 
decorated.  On  eight  crouching  lions  rests  a  large  altar-tomb. 
It  has  a  well-moulded  and  carved  base  and  an  elaborately 
carved  cornice,  rich  with  deeply  undercut  foliage,  while  on 
the  top  lie  Pedro  de  Menezes  and  his  wife  Dona  Beatriz 
Coutinho,  with  elaborately  carved  canopies  at  their  heads,  and 
pedestals  covered  with  figures  and  foliage  at  their  feet. 
Beneath  the  cornice  on  each  of  the  longer  sides  is  cut  in  Gothic 
letters  a  long  inscription  telling  of  Dom  Pedro's  life,  and  lower 
down  and  on  all  four  sides  there  is  in  the  middle  a  shield,  now 
much  damaged,  with  the  Menezes  arms.  On  each  side  of  these 
shields  are  carved  spreading  branches,  knotted  round  a  circle 
in  the  centre  in  which  is  cut  the  word  '  Aleo.'  Once,  when 
playing  with  King  Joao  at  a  game  in  which  some  kind  of  club 
or  mallet  was  used,  the  news  came  that  the  Moors  were 
collecting  in  great  numbers  to  attack  Ceuta.  The  king, 
turning  to  Dom  Pedro,  asked  him  what  reinforcements  he 
would  need  to  withstand  the  attack  ;  the  governor  answered  : 
'This  "Aleo,"  or  club,  will  be  enough,'  and  in  fact,  returning 
at  once  to  his  command,  he  was  able  without  further  help  to 
drive  back  the  enemy.  So  this  word  has  been  carved  on  his 
tomb  to  recall  how  well  he  did  his  duty.-'     (Fig.  39.) 

Not  far  from  the  Grac^a  church  is  that  of  Sao  Joao  de  Tomb  In  Sao 
Alponlo,  of  which  something  has  already  been  said,  and  in  it  ^J^^q^jq 
now  stands  the  tomb  of  another  Menezes,  who  a  generation 
later  also  died  in  Africa,  fighting  to  save  the  lite  ot  his  king, 
Dom  AfFonso  v.,  grandson  of  King  Joao.  Notwithstanding 
the  ill-success  of  the  expedition  of  his  father,  Dom  Duarte,  to 
Tangier,  Dom  AfFonso,  after  having  got  rid  of  his  uncle  the 
duke  of  Coimbra,  who  had  governed   the  country  during  his 

'  In  one  transept  there  is  a  ver)'  large  blue  tile  picture. 

'  The  Aleo  is  still  at  Ccuta.    In  the  cathedral  Our  Laily  of  Africa  holJsit  in  her 
hand,  and  it  is  given  to  each  new  governor  on  his  arriv.il  a»  a  symbol  of  orfice. 


I02        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

minority,  and  who  fell  in  battle  defending  himself  against  the 
charge  of  treason,  led  several  expeditions  to  Morocco,  taking 
first  Alcazar  es  Seghir  or  Alcacer  Seguer,  and  later  Tangier 
and  Arzilla,  thereby  uselessly  exhausting  the  strength  of  the 
people,  and  hindering  the  spread  of  maritime  exploration 
which  Dom  Henrique  had  done  so  much  to  extend. 

This  Dom  Duarte  de  Menezes,  third  count  of  Viana,  was, 
as  an  inscription  tells,  first  governor  of  Alcacer  Seguer,  which 
with  five  hundred  soldiers  he  successfully  defended  against  a 
hundred  thousand  Moors,  dying  at  last  in  the  mountains  of 
Bonacofii  in  defence  of  his  king  in  I464.' 

The  monument  was  built  by  his  widow,  Dona  Isabel  de 
Castro,  but  so  terribly  had  Dom  Duarte  been  cut  to  pieces  by 
the  Moors,  that  only  one  finger  could  be  found  to  be  buried 
there.^  Though  much  more  elaborate,  the  tomb  is  not 
altogether  unlike  those  of  the  royal  princes  at  Batalha.  The 
count  lies,  armed,  with  a  sword  drawn  in  his  right  hand,  on 
an  altar-tomb  on  whose  front,  between  richly  traceried  panels, 
are  carved  an  inscription  above,  upheld  by  small  figures,  and 
below,  in  the  middle  a  flaming  cresset,  probablv  a  memorial  of 
his  watchfulness  in  Africa,  and  on  each  side  a  shield. 

Surmounting  the  altar-tomb  is  a  deeply  moulded  ogee  arch 
subdivided  into  two  hanging  arches  which  spring  from  a 
pendant  in  the  middle,  while  the  space  between  these  sub- 
arches  and  the  ogee  above  is  filled  with  a  canopied  carving  of 
the  Crucifixion.  At  about  the  level  of  the  pendant  the  open 
space  is  crossed  by  a  cusped  segmental  arch  supporting  elaborate 
flowing  tracery.  The  outer  sides  of  the  ogee,  which  ends  in 
a  large  finial,  are  enriched  with  large  vine-leaf  crockets.  On 
either  side  of  the  arch  is  a  square  pier,  moulded  at  the  angles, 
and  with  each  face  covered  with  elaborate  tracery.  Each  pier, 
which  ends  in  a  square  crocketed  and  gabled  pinnacle,  has  half- 

'  The  inscription  is: — 

Memoria  de  D.  Duarte  de  Menezes 

Terceiro  conde   <ie  Viana,  Tronco 

dos  condes  de  Tarouca.  Primeiro 
Cjpitao   de  Alcacer-Seguer,  em   Africa, 

que    com    quinhentos  soldados   de- 

fendeu     esta     praca    contra    cem- 

niil    Mouros,   com    os   quaes    teve 

muitos  encontros,  ficando  n'cllcs 
om  grande  honra  e  gloria.     Morreu  na 

scrra    de    Bonacofu    per    salvar  a 

vida  do  seu  rei  D.  Alfonso  o  J^uinto. 

2  When  the  tomb  was  moved  from  Sao  Francisco,  only  one  tooth,  not  a  finger, 
was  found  inside. 


23 


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THE  EARLIER  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY   103 

way  up  a  small  figure  standing  on  an  octagonal  corbel  under 
an  elaborate  canopy.  The  whole  at  the  top  is  finished  with  a 
cornice  running  straight  across  from  pier  to  pier,  and  crested 
with  interlacing  and  cusped  semicircles,  while  the  flat  field 
below  the  cornice  and  above  the  outer  moulding  of  the  great 
arch  is  covered  with  flaming  cressets.     (Fig.  40.) 

This  is  perhaps  one  of  the  finest  of  the  tombs  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  like  those  at  Alcoba^a  is  made  of  that 
very  fine  limestone  which  is  found  in  more  than  one  place  in 
Portugal. 

Farther  up  the  Tagus  at  Abrantes,  in  the  church  of  Santa  At  Abrantes. 
Maria  do  Castello,  are  some  more  tombs  of  the  same  date, 
more  than  one  of  which  is  an  almost  exact  copy  of  the  princes' 
tombs  at  Batalha,  though  there  is  one  whose  arch  is  fringed 
with  curious  reversed  cusping,  almost  Moorish  in  appearance. 

Before  turning  to  the  many  churches  built  towards  the  Cloister  at 
end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  one  of  the  cloisters  of  the  great  ' 'i°'"*''- 
convent  at  Thomar  must  be  mentioned.  It  is  that  called  '  do 
Cemiterio,'  and  was  built  by  Prince  Henry  the  Navigator, 
duke  of  Vizeu,  during  his  grandmastership  of  the  Order  ot 
Christ  about  the  year  1440.  Unlike  those  at  Alcoba^a  or  at 
Lisbon,  which  were  derived  from  a  Cistercian  plan,  and  were 
always  intended  to  be  vaulted,  this  small  cloister  followed  the 
plan,  handed  down  from  romanesque  times,  where  on  each 
side  there  is  a  continuous  arcade  resting  on  coupled  shafts. 
Such  cloisters,  differing  only  from  the  romanesque  in  having 
pointed  arches  and  capitals  carved  with  fourteenth-century 
foliage,  may  still  be  seen  at  Santo  Thyrso  and  at  Sao  Domingos, 
Guimaraes,  in  the  north.  Here  at  Thomar  the  only  difference 
is  that  the  arches  are  very  much  wider,  there  being  but  five  on 
each  side,  and  that  the  bell-shaped  capitals  are  covered  with 
finely  carved  conventional  vine-leaves  arranged  in  two  rows 
round  the  bells.  As  in  the  older  cloisters  one  long  abacus 
unites  the  two  capitals,  but  the  arches  are  different,  each  being 
moulded  as  one  deep  arch  instead  of  two  similar  arches  set 
side  by  side. 


I04        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    VI 


LATER    GOTHIC 


During  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years  of  the  fifteenth  century 
there  was  great  activity  in  building  throughout  almost  the 
whole  country,  hut  it  now  becomes  almost  impossible  to  take 
the  different  buildings  in  chronological  order,  because  at  this 
time  so  many  different  schools  began  to  struggle  for  supre- 
macy. There  was  first  the  Gothic  school  which,  though 
increasing  in  elaboration  of  detail,  went  on  in  some  places 
almost  uninfluenced  by  any  breath  of  the  renaissance,  as  for 
instance  in  the  porch  and  chancel  of  Braga  Cathedral,  not  built 
till  about  1532.  Elsewhere  this  Gothic  was  affected  partly  by 
Spanish  and  partly  by  Moorish  influence,  and  gradually  grew 
into  that  most  curious  and  characteristic  of  styles,  commonly 
called  Manoelino,  from  Dom  Manoel  under  whom  Portugal 
reached  the  summit  of  its  prosperity.  In  other  places,  again, 
Gothic  forms  and  renaissance  details  came  gradually  to  be 
used  together,  as  at  Belem. 

To  take  then  first  those  buildings  in  which  Gothic  detail 
was  but  little  influenced  by  the  approaching  renaissance. 
Gra^a,  One    of  the   earliest    of   these    is   the   west   front,   added 

Santarem.  towards  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  to  that  Augustinian 
church  of  the  Gra^a  at  Santarem  whose  roof  the  Devil  knocked 
down  in  1548.  Here  the  ends  of  the  side  aisles  are,  now  at 
any  rate,  quite  plain,  but  in  the  centre  there  is  a  very  elaborate 
doorway  with  a  large  rose-window  above.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  this  doorway  has  not  been  uninfluenced  by  Batalha. 
From  well-moulded  jambs,  each  of  which  has  four  shafts,  there 
springs  a  large  pointed  arch,  richly  fringed  with  cusping  on  its 
inner  side.  Two  of  its  many  mouldings  are  enriched  with 
smaller  cuspings,  and  one,  the  outermost,  with  a  line  of  wavy 
tracery,  while  the  whole  ends  in  a  crocketed  ogee.  Above 
the  arch  is   a  strip  of  shallow  panelling,  enclosed,  as   is  the 


LATER  GOTHIC  105 

whole  doorway,  in  a  square  moulded  frame.  May  it  not  be 
that  this  square  frame  is  due  to  the  almost  universal  Moorish 
habit  of  setting  an  archway  in  a  square  frame,  as  may  be  seen  at 
Cordoba  and  in  the  palace  windows  at  Cintra  ?  The  rest  of 
the  gable  is  perfectly  plain  but  for  the  round  window,  filled 
with  elaborate  spiral  flowing  tracery.  Here,  though  the 
details  are  more  French  than  national,  there  is  a  good  example 
of  the  excellent  result  so  often  reached  by  later  Portuguese — 
and  Spanish — builders,  who  concentrated  all  their  elaborate 
ornament  on  one  part  of  the  building  while  leaving  the  rest 
absolutely  plain — often  as  here  plastered  and  whitewashed. 

Not  long  after  this  front  was  built,  Dom  Manoel  in  1494.  saojoso  Bap- 
began  a  new  parish  church  at  Thomar,  that  of  Sao  Joao  '"■'^' 
Baptista.  The  plan  of  this  church  is  that  which  has  already 
become  so  familiar  :  a  nave  and  aisles  with  wooden  roof  and 
vaulted  chancel  and  chapels  to  the  east,  with  here,  the  addition 
of  a  tower  and  spire  to  the  north  of  the  west  front.  The 
inside  calls  for  little  notice  :  the  arches  are  pointed,  and  the 
capitals  carved  with  not  very  good  foliage,  but  the  west  front 
is  far  more  interesting.  As  at  the  Gra^a  it  is  plastered  and 
whitewashed,  but  ends  not  in  a  gable  but  in  a  straight  line  ot 
cresting  like  Batalha,  though  here  there  is  no  flat  terrace 
behind,  but  a  sloping  tile  roof.  At  the  bottom  is  a  large  ogee 
doorway  whose  tympanum  is  pierced  with  tracery  and  whose 
mouldings  are  covered  with  most  beautiful  and  deeply  undercut 
foliage.  The  outside  of  the  arch  is  crocketed,  and  ends  in  a 
tall  finial  thrust  through  the  horizontal  and  crested  moulding 
which,  as  at  the  Gra^a,  sets  the  whole  in  a  square  frame.  There 
are  also  doorways  in  the  same  style  half-way  along  the  north 
and  south  sides  of  the  church.  The  only  other  openings  on 
the  west  front  are  a  plain  untraceried  circle  above  the  door, 
and  a  simple  ogee-headed  window  at  the  end  of  each  aisle. 

The  tower,  which  is  not  whitewashed,  rises  as  a  plain 
unadorned  square  to  a  little  above  the  aisle  roof,  then  turns 
to  an  octagon  with,  at  the  top,  a  plain  belfry  window  on  each 
face.  Above  these  runs  a  corbelled  gallery  within  which 
springs  an  octagonal  spire  cut  into  three  by  two  bands  of 
ornament,  and  ending  in  a  large  armillary  sphere,  that 
emblem  of  all  the  discoveries  made  during  his  reign,  which 
Dom  Manoel  put  on  to  every  building  with  which  he  had 
anything  to  do. 

Inside  the  chapels  are  as  usual  overloaded  with  huge  rere- 


io6        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

doses  of  heavily  carved  and  gilt  wood,  but  the  original  pulpit 
still  survives,  a  most  beautiful  example  of  the  finest  late 
Gothic  carving.  It  consists  of  four  sides  of  an  octagon,  and 
stands  on  ribs  which  curve  outwards  from  a  central  shaft. 
Round  the  bottom  runs  a  band  of  foliage  most  marvellously 
undercut,  above  this  are  panels  separated  the  one  from  the 
other  by  slender  pinnacles,  and  tlie  whole  ends  in  a  cornice 
even  more  delicately  carved  than  is  the  base.  At  the  top  of 
each  panel  is  some  intricate  tabernacle  work,  below  which 
there  is  on  one  the  Cross  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  on  another 
the  royal  arms,  with  a  coronet  above  which  stands  out  quite 
clear  of  the  panel,  and  on  a  third  there  has  been  the  armillary 
sphere,  now  unfortunatelv  quite  broken  off.  But  even  more 
interesting  than  this  pulpit  itself  is  the  comparison  between 
its  details  and  those  of  the  nave  or  Coro  added  about  the 
same  time  to  the  Templar  church  on  the  hill  behind.  Here 
all  is  purely  Gothic,  there  there  is  a  mixture  of  Gothic  and 
renaissance  details,  and  towards  the  west  front  an  exuberance 
of  carving  which  cannot  be  called  either  Gothic  or  anything 
else,  so  strange  and  unusual  is  ir. 
Villa  do  Another  church  of  almost  exactly  the  same  date  is  that  of 

Sao  Joao  Baptista,  the  Matriz  of  Villa  do  Conde.  The  plan 
shows  a  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays,  large  transeptal  chapels, 
and  an  apsidal  chancel  projecting  beyond  the  two  square 
chapels  by  which  it  is  flanked.  As  usual  the  nave  and  aisles 
have  a  wooden  roof,  only  the  chancel  and  chapels  being  vaulted. 
There  is  also  a  later  tower  at  the  west  end  of  the  north  aisle, 
and  a  choir  gallery  across  the  west  end  of  the  church. 
Throughout  the  original  windows  are  very  narrow  and  round- 
headed,  and  there  is  in  the  north-western  bay  a  pointed  door, 
differing  only  from  those  ot  about  a  hundred  years  earlier  in 
having  twisted  shafts.  One  curious  feature  is  the  parapet  of 
the  central  aisle,  which  is  like  a  row  of  small  classical  pedestals, 
each  bearing  a  stumpy  obelisk.  By  far  the  finest  feature  of 
the  outside  is  the  great  west  door.  On  each  side  are  clusters 
of  square  pinnacles  ending  in  square  crocketed  spirelets,  and 
running  up  to  a  horizontal  moulding  which,  as  so  often,  gives 
the  whole  design  a  rectangular  form.  Within  comes  the 
doorway  itself ;  a  large  trefoiled  arch  of  many  mouldings  of 
which  the  outermost,  richly  crocketed,  turns  up  as  an  ogee, 
to  pierce  the  horizontal  line  above  with  its  finial.  Every 
moulding  is   filled   with  foliage,   most   elaborately   and   finely 


Conde. 


LATER  GOTHIC 


107 


cut,  considering  that  it  is  worked  in  granite.  Across  the 
trefoil  at  its  springing  there  runs  a  horizontal  moulding 
resting  on  the  flat  elliptical  arch  of  the  door  itself.  On  the 
tympanum  is  a  figure  of  St.  John  under  a  very  elaborate 
canopy  with,  on  his  right,  a  queer  carving  of  a  naked  man, 
and  on  his  left  a  dragon.  The  space  between  the  arch  and 
the  top  moulding  is  filled  with  intricate  but  shallow  panelling, 
among  which,  between  two  armillary  spheres,  are  set,  on  the 
right,  a  blank  shield  crowned — -probably  prepared  for  the 
royal  arms — -and  on  the  left  the  town  arms — a  galley  with  all 


SAO    JOAO  BAPTI5TA 
VILLA    DO   CONDE 


Si:-*  MARIA  DOS   ArSJ05 
CAMINHA 


sails  set.  Lastlv,  as  a  cresting  to  the  horizontal  moulding, 
there  is  a  row  of  urnlike  objects,  the  only  renaissance  features 
about  the  whole  door.     (Fig.  41.) 

Insii.le,  all  the  piers  are  octagonal  with  a  slender  shaft  at 
each  angle  ;  these  shafts  alone  having  small  capitals,  while 
their  bases  stand  on,  and  interpenetrate  with,  the  base  of  the 
whole  pier.  .Ml  the  arches  are  round — as  arc  those  leading 
to  the  chancel  and  transept  chapels — and  are  moulded  exactly 
as  are  the  piers.  All  the  vaults  have  a  network  of  well- 
moulded  ribs. 

The  tower  has  been  added   some  fifty  years  later  and   is 


loS         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

very  picturesque.  It  is  of  four  stories  :  of  these  the  lowest  has 
rusticated  masonry  ;  the  second,  on  its  western  face,  a  square- 
headed  window  opening  beneath  a  small  curly  and  broken 
pediment  on  to  a  balcony  with  very  fine  balusters  all  upheld 
by  three  large  corbels.  The  third  story  has  only  a  clock,  and 
the  fourth  two  plain  round-headed  belfry  windows  on  each 
face.  The  whole — above  a  shallow  cornice  which  is  no  bigger 
than  the  mouldings  dividing  the  different  stories — ends  in  a 
low  stone  dome,  with  a  bell  gable  in  front,  square  below,  and 
arched  above,  holding  two  bells. 
Azurara.  Scarcely  a  mile  away,  across  the  river  Ave,  lies  Azurara, 

which  was  made  a  separate  parish  in  1457  and  whose  church 
was  built  by  Dom  Manoel  in  1498. 

In  plan  it  is  almost  exactly  the  same  as  Villa  do  Conde, 
except  that  there  are  no  transept  chapels  nor  any  flanking 
the  chancel.  Outside  almost  the  only  difference  lies  in  the 
parapet  which  is  of  the  usual  shape  with  regular  merlons  ; 
and  in  the  west  door  which  is  an  interesting  example  of  the 
change  to  the  early  renaissance.  The  door  itself  is  round- 
headed,  and  has  Gothic  mouldings  separated  by  a  broad  band 
covered  with  shallow  renaissance  carving.  On  each  side  are 
twisted  shafts  which  run  up  some  way  above  the  door  to  a 
sort  of  horizontal  entablature,  whose  frieze  is  well  carved,  and 
which  is  cut  into  by  a  curious  ogee  moulding  springing  from 
the  door  arch.  Above  this  entablature  the  shafts  are  carried  up 
square  for  some  way,  and  end  in  Gothic  pinnacles.  Between 
them  is  a  niche  surmounted  by  a  large  half-Gothic  canopy  and 
united  to  the  side  shafts  by  a  broken  and  twisted  treelike 
moulding.  What  adds  to  the  strangeness  of  this  door  is 
that  the  blank  spaces  are  plastered  and  whitewashed,  while  all 
the  rest  of  the  church  is  of  grey  granite.  Higher  up  there  is 
a  round  window — heavily  moulded — and  the  whole  gable  ends 
in  a  queer  little  round  pediment  set  between  two  armillary 
spheres. 

Inside  the  piers  are  eight-sided  with  octagonal  bases  and 
caps,  and  with  a  band  of  ornament  half-way  up  the  shaft.  The 
arches  are  simply  chamfered  but  are  each  crossed  by  three 
carved  voussoirs. 

The  tower  is  exactly  like  that  at  Villa  do  Conde  except 
that  the  bottom  story  is  not  rusticated,  and  that  instead  of  a 
dome  there  is  an  octagonal  spire  covered  with  yellow"-  and 
white  tile?. 


24 


PIG.  41. 

Villa  no  Conde. 
Sao  Joao  Baitista. 


LATER  GOTHIC  109 

As  at  Azurara,  the  parish  church  of  Santa  Maria  dos  Anjos   Caminha. 
at  Caminha  is  in  plan  very  like  the  Matriz  at  Villa  do  Conde. 
Caminha  lies  on  the  Portuguese  side  of  the  estuary  of  the  Minho, 
close  to  its  mouth,  and  the  church  was  begun  in  1488,  but  was 
not  finished  till  the  next  century,  the  tower  indeed  not  being 
built  till  1556.     Like  the  others,  the  plan  shows  a  nave  and 
rather  narrow  aisles  of  five  bays,  and  two  square  vaulted  chapels 
with  an  apsidal  chancel    between  to  the    east.      Three    large 
vaulted  chapels  and  the  tower  have  been  added,  opening  trom 
the  north  aisle.      Probably  the  oldest  part  is  the  chancel  with 
its  flanking  chapels,  which  are  very  much  more  elaborate  than 
any    portion    of   the    churches  already  described.     There  are 
at  the  angles  deep  square  buttresses  which  end   in  groups  ot 
square    spire-capped   pinnacles  all  elaborately  crocketed,  and 
not    at    all    unlike    those  at  Batalha.     Between  these,  in   the 
chancel  are  narrow  round-headed   windows,  whose  mouldings 
are   enriched   with  large   four-leaved   flowers,  and  on  all  the 
walls  from  buttress  to  buttress  there  runs  a  rich  projecting 
cornice  crowned  by  a  wonderfully  pierced  and  crested  parapet ; 
also  not  unlike  those  at  Batalha,  but  more  wonderful  in  that  it 
is  made  of  granite  instead  of  fine  limestone.     The  rest  of  the 
outside  is  much  plainer,  except  for  the  two  doorways,  and  two 
tall  buttresses  at  the  west  end.     These  two  doorways — which 
are  among  the  most  interesting  in  the  country — must  be  a  good 
deal  later  than  the  rest  of  the  church,  indeed  could  not  have  been 
designed  till  after  the  work  of  that  foreign  school  of  renaissance 
carvers    at   Coimbra  had    become  well  known,  and   so  really 
belong  to  a  later  chapter. 

Inside  the  columns  are  round,  with  caps  and  bases  partly 
round  and  partly  eight-sided,  the  hollow  octagons  inter- 
penetrating with  the  circular  mouldings.  The  arches  of  the 
arcade  are  also  round,  though  those  of  the  chancel  and  eastern 
chapels  are  pointed.  Attached  to  one  of  the  piers  is  a  small 
eight-sided  pulpit,  at  whose  angles  are  Gothic  pinnacles,  but 
whose  sides  and  base  are  covered  with  cherubs'  heads,  vases, 
and  foliage  of  early  renaissance. 

But  the  chief  glory  of  the  interior  are  the  splendid  tiles 
with  which  its  walls  are  entirely  covered,  and  still  more  the 
wonderful  wooden  roof,  one  of  the  finest  examples  of  Moorish 
carpentry  to  be  found  anywhere,  and  which,  like  the  doorways, 
can  now  only  be  merely  mentioned. 

The    tower,    added    by    Diogo   Eannes  in    1556,  is  quite 


no        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

plain  with  one  belfrv  opening  in  each  face  close  to  the  top 
and  just  below  the  low  parapet  which,  resting  on  corbels,  ends 
in  a  row  of  curious  half-classic  battlements.' 
Fumhai  This  plan   was  not  confined  only  to  parish  churches,  for 

about  1 5 14  we  find  it  used  by  Dom  Manoel  at  Funchal  for 
the  cathedral  of  the  newly  founded  diocese  of  Madeira.  The 
only  difference  of  importance  is  that  there  is  a  well-developed 
transept  entered  by  arches  of  the  same  height  as  that  of  the 
chancel.  Here  the  piers  arc  clustered,  and  with  rather  poorly 
carved  capitals,  the  arches  pointed  and  moulded,  but  rather 
thin.  As  in  the  other  churches  of  this  date,  the  round- 
headed  clerestory  windows  come  over  the  piers,  not  over  the 
arches.  The  chancel,  which  is  rather  deeper  than  usual,  is 
entered  by  a  wide  foliated  arch,  and  like  the  apsidal  chapels  is 
vaulted.  As  at  Caminha,  the  nave  roof  is  of  Moorish  design, 
but  of  even  greater  interest  are  the  reredos  and  the  choir- 
stalls.  This  reredos  is  three  divisions  in  height  and  five  in 
width — each  division,  except  the  two  lower  in  the  centre 
where  there  is  a  niche  for  the  image  of  the  Virgin,  containing 
a  large  picture. 

The  divisions  are  separated  perpendicularly  by  a  series  of 
Gothic  pinnacles,  and  horizontally  by  a  band  of  Gothic  taber- 
nacle work  at  the  bottom,  and  above  by  beautifully  carved 
early  renaissance  friezes.  The  whole  ends  in  a  projecting 
canopy,  divided  into  five  bays,  each  bay  enriched  with  vaulting 
ribs,  and  in  front  with  very  delicately  carved  hanging  tracery. 
Above  the  horizontal  cornice  is  a  most  elaborate  cresting  of 
interlacing  trefoils  and  leaves  having  in  the  middle  the  royal 
arms  with  on  each  side  an  armillary  sphere.  Some  of  the 
detail  of  the  cresting  is  not  all  unlike  that  of  the  great  reredos 
in  the  Se  Velha  at  Coimbra,  and  like  it  has  a  Flemish  look, 
so  that  it  may  have  been  made  perhaps,  if  not  by  Master 
Vlimer,  who  finished  his  work  at  Coimbra  in  1508,  at  any  rate 
by  one  of  his  pupils.  The  stalls,  which  at  the  back  are 
separated  by  Gothic  pilasters  and  pinnacles,  have  also  a  con- 
tinuous canopy,  and  a  high  and  splendid  cresting,  which 
though  Gothic  in  general  appearance,  is  quite  renaissance  in 
detail. 

Outside,  the    smaller  eastern    chapels    have    an    elaborate 
cresting,  and  tall  twisted  pinnacles.      The  large  plain   tower 

1  Besides  the  church  there  is  in  Caminha  a  street  in  which  most  of  the  houses 
have  charmirg  doors  and  windows  of  about  the  same  date  as  the  church. 


LATER  GOTHIC  iii 

which  rises  east  of  the  north  transept  has  a  top  crowned  with 
battlements,  within  which  stands  a  square  tile-covered  spire. 

Before  going  on  to  discuss  the  long-continued  influence  of 
the  Moors,  three  buildings  in  which  Gothic  finally  came  to  an 
end  must  be  discussed.  These  are  the  west  front  of  Lamego, 
the  cathedral  of  Vizeu,  and  the  porch  and  chancel  of  the  Se  at 
Braga.  Except  for  its  romanesque  tower  and  its  west  front 
the  cathedral  of  Lamego  has  been  entirely  rebuilt  ;  and  of  the  Se,  Lamego. 
west  front  only  the  lower  part  remains  uninjured.  Ihis  front 
is  divided  by  rather  elaborate  buttresses  into  three  nearly 
equal  parts — for  the  side  aisles  are  nearly  as  wide  as  the  central. 
In  each  of  these  is  a  large  pointed  doorway,  that  in  the 
centre  being  at  once  wider  and  considerably  higher  than  those 
of  the  aisles.  The  central  door  has  six  moulded  shafts  on 
either  side,  all  with  elaborately  carved  capitals  and  with  deeply 
undercut  foliage  in  the  hollows  between,  this  foliage  being 
carried  round  the  whole  arch  between  the  mouldings.  Above 
the  top  of  the  arch  runs  a  band  of  flat,  early  renaissance 
carving  with  a  rich  Gothic  cresting  above. 

The  side-doors  are  e.xactly  similar,  except  that  they  have 
fewer  shafts,  four  instead  of  six,  and  that  in  the  hollows 
between  the  mouldings  the  carving  is  early  renaissance  in 
character  and  is  also  flatter  than  in  the  central  door.  Above 
runs  the  same  band  of  carving — but  lower  down — and  a 
similar  but  simpler  cresting. 

Unlike  Lamego,  while  the  cathedral  of  Vizeu  has  been  Se,  vizeu. 
but  little  altered  within,  scarcely  any  of  the  original  work  is 
to  be  seen  outside.  The  present  cathedral  was  built  bv  Bishop 
Dom  Diego  Ortiz  de  Vilhegas  about  the  year  15 13,  and  his 
arms  as  well  as  those  of  Dom  Manoel  and  of  two  of  his  sons 
are  found  on  the  vault.  The  church  is  not  large,  having  a 
nave  and  aisles  of  four  bays  measuring  about  105  feet  by  62  ; 
square  transept  chapels,  and  a  seventeenth-century  chancel 
with  flanking  chapels.  To  the  west  are  two  towers,  built 
between  the  years  1641  and  1 671,  and  on  the  south  a  very 
fine  renaissance  cloister  of  two  stories,  the  lower  having  been 
built,  it  is  said,  in  1524,'  and  the  upper  about  1730.  A  choir 
gallery  too,  with  an  elaborate  Gothic  vault  below  and  a  fine 
renaissance  balustrade,  crosses  the  whole  west  end  and  extends 
over  the  porch  between  the  two  western  towers.  But  if  the 
cathedral   in  its  plan  follows  the  ordinary  type,  in  design  and 

'    152+  seems  too  early  by  some  torty  years. 


112        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

in  construction  it  is  quite  unique.  Instead  of  there  being  a 
wooden  roof  as  is  usual  in  churches  of  this  period,  the  whole  is 
vaulted,  and  that  too  in  a  very  unusual  and  original  manner. 
Throughout  the  piers  consist  of  twelve  rounded  shafts  set 
together.  Of  these  the  five  towards  the  central  aisle  are 
several  feet  higher  than  the  other  seven  from  which  spring  the 
aisle  arches  as  well  as  the  ribs  of  the  aisle  vault.  Consequently 
the  vault  of  the  central  aisle  is  considerably  lower  at  the  sides 
than  it  is  in  the  middle,  and  in  this  ingenious  way  its  thrust  is 
counteracted  by  the  vaults  of  the  side  aisles  ;  and  at  the  same 
time  these  side  vaults  are  not  highly  stilted  as  they  would  of 
necessity  have  been,  had  the  three  aisles  been  of  exactly  the 
same  height.  All  the  ribs  are  of  considerable  projection  and 
well  moulded,  and  of  all,  except  the  diagonal  ribs,  the  lowest 
moulding  is  twisted  like  a  rope.  This  rope-moulding  is 
repeated  on  all  the  ridge  ribs,  and  in  each  it  is  tied  in  a  knot 
half-way  along,  a  knot  which  is  so  much  admired  that  the 
whole  vault  is  called  'a  abobada  dos  nos '  or  vault  of  the 
knots. 

The  capitals  are  more  curious  than  beautiful;  the  lower 
have  clumsy,  early-looking  foliage  and  a  large  and  curious 
abacus.  First  each  capital  has  a  square  abacus  of  some  depth, 
then  comes  a  large  flat  circle,  one  for  each  three  caps,  and  at 
the  top  a  star-shaped  moulding  of  hollow  curves,  the  points 
projecting  beyond  the  middle  of  the  square  abaci  below.  The 
higher  capitals  are  better.  They  are  carved  with,  more 
elaborate  foliage  and  gilt,  and  the  abaci  follow  more  exactly 
the  line  of  the  caps  below  and  are  carved  and  yilded  in  the 
same  way.      (Fig.  42.) 

Perhaps,  however,  the  chief  interest  of  the  cathedral  is 
found  in  the  sacristy,  a  fine  large  room  opening  from  the 
north  transept  chapel.  On  its  tiled  walls  there  hang  several 
large  and  some  smaller  paintings,  of  which  the  finest  is  that  of 
St.  Peter.  Other  pictures  are  found  in  the  chapter-house, 
and  a  fine  one  of  the  crucifixion  in  the  Jesus  Chapel  below  it  ; 
but  this  is  not  the  place  to  enter  into  the  very  difficult  question 
of  Portuguese  painting,  a  question  on  which  popular  tradition 
throws  only  a  misleading  light  by  attributing  everything  to 
a  more  or  less  mythical  painter,  Grao  Vasco,  and  on  which  all 
authorities  differ,  agreeing  only  in  considering  this  St.  Peter 
one  of  the  finest  paintings  in  the  country. 
Se,  Braga.  Perhaps  the  chancel  of  the  cathedral  at  Braga  ought  rather 


25 


LATER  GOTHIC  113 

to  be  left  to  a  chapter  dealing  with  what  is  usually  called  the 
Manoelino  style — that  strange  last  development  of  Gothic 
which  is  found  only  in  Portugal — but  it  is  in  many  respects  so 
like  the  choir  chapels  of  the  church  at  Caminha,  and  has  so 
little  of  the  usual  Manoelino  peculiarities,  that  it  were  better  to 
describe  it  now.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  chancel, 
there  is  no  doubt  about  the  large  western  porch,  which  is  quite 
free  of  any  Manoelino  fantasies. 

Both  porch   and  chancel  were  built  by  Archbishop  Dom 
Diego   de   Souza   about  the   year    1530 — a   most   remarkable 
date  when    the   purely  Gothic   work    here  is  compared   with 
buildings   further  south,  where   Manoelino  had   already  been 
succeeded  by   various  forms  of  the  classic  renaissance.     The 
porch  stretches  right  across  the  west  end  of  the  church,  and 
is  of  three  bays.      That  in  the  centre,  considerably  wider  than 
those  at  the  side,  is  entered  from  the  west  by  a  round-headed 
arch,  while  the  arches  of  the  others  are  pointed.     The  bays 
are  separated  by  buttresses  of  considerable  projection,  and  all 
the   arches,   which   have    good   late   mouldings,   are   enriched 
with  a  fine  feathering  of  cusps,  which  stands  out  well  against 
the    dark    interior.      Unfortunately    the    original    parapet     is 
gone,  only  the  elaborate  canopies  of  the  niches,  of  which  there 
are  two  to  each  bay,  rise  above  the   level  of  the   flat  paved 
roof.      Inside  there  is  a  good  vault  with  many  well-moulded 
ribs,  but  the  finest  feature  of  it  all  is  the  wrought-iron  railing 
which  crosses  each  opening.     This,  almost  the  only  piece  of 
wrought-iron  work  worthy  of  notice   in  the  whole  country, 
is  very  like  contemporary  screens    in   Spain.      It  is  made  of 
upright  bars,  some  larger,  twisted  from  top  to   bottom,  some 
smaller  twisted  at  the  top,  and  plain  below,  alternating  with 
others  plain  above  and   twisted   below.     At   the   top   runs   a 
frieze  of  most  elaborate  hammered  and  pierced  work — early 
renaissance  in  detail  in  the  centre,  Gothic   in   the  side  arches, 
above  which   comes  in  the  centre  a  wonderful  cresting.     In 
the  middle,  over  the  gate  which  rises  as  high  as  the  top  of  the 
cresting,  is  a  large  trefoil  made  of  a  flat  hammered  band  inter- 
twined with  a  similar  band  after  the  manner  of  a  Manoelino 
doorway.'     (Fig.  43.) 

Of  the  chancel  little  has  been  left  inside  but  the  vault  and 
the   tombs   of  Dona  Theresa  (the  first  independent  ruler  ot 

'  The  rest  of  the  west  front  was  rebuilt  and  the   inside  altered  by  Archbishop 
Dom  Jose  de  Braganza,  a  son  of  Dom  Pedro  ii.,  about  two  hundred  yeirs  ago. 

H 


114        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Portugal)  and  of  her  husband  Count  Henry  of  Burgundy — 
very  poor  work  of  about  the  same  date  as  the  chancel.  The 
outside,  however,  has  been  unaltered.  Below  it  is  square  in 
plan,  becoming  at  about  twenty  feet  from  the  ground  a  half- 
octagon  having  the  eastern  a  good  deal  wider  than  the 
diagonal  sides.  On  the  angles  of  the  lower  square  stand  tall 
clustered  buttresses,  rising  independently  of  the  wall  as  far  as 
the  projecting  cornice,  across  which  their  highest  pinnacles 
cut,  and  united  to  the  chancel  at  about  a  third  of  the  height, 
by  small  but  elaborate  flying  buttresses.  On  the  eastern  face 
there  is  a  simple  pointed  window,  and  there  is  nothing  else  to 
relieve  the  perfectly  plain  walls  below  except  two  string 
courses,  and  the  elaborate  side  buttresses  with  their  tall 
pinnacles  and  twisted  shafts.  But  if  the  walling  is  plain  the 
cornice  is  most  elaborate.  It  is  of  great  depth  and  of  consider- 
able projection,  the  hollows  of  the  mouldings  being  filled  with 
square  flowers  below  and  intricate  carving  above.  On  this 
stands  a  high  parapet  of  traceried  quartrefoils,  bearing  a 
horizontal  moulding  from  which  springs  an  elaborate  cresting  ; 
all  being  almost  exactly  like  the  cornice  and  parapet  at 
Caminha,  but  larger  and  richer,  and  like  it,  a  marvellous 
example  of  carving  in  granite.  At  the  angles  are  tall 
pinnacles,  and  the  pinnacles  of  the  corner  buttresses  are  united 
to  the  parapet  by  a  curious  contorted  moulding. 

Opposite  the  east  end  of  the  cathedral  there  stands  a 
small  tower  built  in  1 5 1 2  by  Archdeacon  Joao  de  Coimbra  as 
a  chapel.  It  is  of  two  stories,  with  a  vaulted  chape!  below 
and  a  belfrey  above,  lit  by  round-headed  windows,  only  one  ot 
which  retains  its  tracery.  Just  above  the  string  which  divides 
the  two  stories  are  statues^  under  canopies,  one  projecting  on 
a  corbel  from  each  corner,  and  one  from  the  middle,  while 
above  a  cornice,  on  which  stand  short  pinnacles,  six  to  each 
Concei^ao,  side,  the  tower  ends  in  a  low  square  tile  roof.  The  chapel  on 
Braga.  jj^g  ground  floor  is  entered  by  a  porch,  whose  flat  lintel  rests 

on  moulded  piers  at  the  angles  and  on  two  tall  round  columns 
in  the  centre,  while  its  three  openings  are  filled  with  plain  iron 
screens,  the  upper  part  of  which  blossoms  out  into  large  iron 
flowers  and  leaves.  Inside  there  is  on  the  east  wall  a  reredos 
of  early    renaissance    date,    and  on    the    south   a  large   half- 

1  A  chapel  was  added  at  the  bark,  and  at  a  higher  level  some  time  during  the 
seventeenth  century  to  cover  in  one  ot  the  statues,  that  of  St.  Anthony  of  Padua, 
"ho  was  then  becoming  very  popular. 


LATER  GOTHIC  115 

classical  arch  flanked  by  pilasters  under  which  there  is  a  life- 
size  group  of  the  Entombment  made  seemingly  of  terra  cotta 
and  painted. 

So,  rather  later  than  in  most  other  lands,  and  many  years 
after  the  renaissance  had  made  itself  felt  in  other  parts  of  the 
country,  Gothic  comes  to  an  end,  curiously  enough  not  far 
from  where  the  oldest  Christian  buildings  are  found. 


ii6        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    VII 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF  THE   MOORS 


It  is  now  time  to  turn  back  for  a  century  and  a  lialf  and  to 
speaic  of  the  traces  left  by  the  Moors  of  their  long  occupation 
of  the  country.  Although  they  held  what  is  now  the 
northern  half  of  Portugal  for  over  a  hundred  years,  and  part 
of  the  south  for  about  five  hundred,  there  is  hardly  a  single 
building  anywhere  of  which  we  can  be  sure  that  it  was  built  by 
them  before  the  Christian  reconquest  of  the  country.  Perhaps 
almost  the  only  exceptions  are  the  fortifications  at  Cintra, 
known  as  the  Castello  dos  Mouros,  the  city  walls  at  Silves, 
and  possibly  the  church  at  Mertola.  In  Spain  very  many  of 
their  buildings  still  exist,  such  as  the  small  mosque,  now  the 
church  of  Christo  de  la  Luz,  and  the  city  walls  at  Toledo,  and 
of  course  the  mosque  at  Cordoba  and  the  Alcazar  at  Seville, 
not  to  speak  of  the  Alhambra.  Yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that,  while  Portugal  reached  its  furthest  limits  by  the  capture 
of  the  Algarve  under  Affonso  in.  about  the  middle  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  in  Spain  the  progress  was  slower.  Toledo 
indeed  fell  in  1085,  but  Cordoba  and  Seville  were  only 
taken  a  few  years  before  the  capture  of  the  Algarve,  and 
Granada  was  able  to  hold  out  till  1492.  Besides,  in  what  is 
now  Portugal  there  had  been  no  great  capital  like  Cordoba. 
And  yet,  though  this  is  so,  hardly  a  town  or  a  village  exists 
in  which  some  slight  trace  of  their  art  cannot  be  found,  even 
if  it  be  but  a  tile-Hning  to  the  walls  of  church  or  house.  In 
such  towns  as  Toledo,  Moorish  builders  were  employed  not 
only  in  the  many  parish  churches  but  even  in  the  cathedral, 
and  in  Portugal  we  find  Moors  at  Thomar  even  as  late  as  the 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  such  names  as  Omar, 
Mafamedi,  Bugimaa,  and  Bebedim  occur  in  the  list  of  workmen. 
It  is  chiefly  in  three  directions  that  Moorish  influence 
made  itself  felt,  in  actual  design,  in  carpentry,  and  in  tiling. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  MOORS     117 

and  of  these  the  last  two,  and  especially  tiling,  are   the  most 
general,  and  long  survived  the  disappearance  of  Arab  detail. 

Some  eighteen  miles  from  Lisbon,  several  sharp  granite  Cintra. 
peaks  rise  high  above  an  undulating  tableland.  Two  of  these 
are  encircled  by  the  old  Moorish  fortification  which  climbs  up 
and  down  over  huge  granite  boulders,  and  on  a  projecting  spur 
near  their  foot,  and  to  the  north,  there  stands  the  old  palace  of 
Cintra.  As  long  as  the  Walis  ruled  at  Lisbon,  it  was  to  Cintra 
that  they  came  in  summer  for  hunting  and  cool  air,  and  some 
part  at  least  of  their  palace  seems  to  have  survived  till  to-day. 

Cintra  was  first  taken  by  Alfonso  vi.  of  Castile  and  Leon 
in  1093 — to  be  soon  lost  and  retaken  by  Count  Henry  of 
Burgundy  sixteen  years  later,  but  was  not  permanently  held  by 
the  Christians  till  AfFonso  Henriques  expelled  the  Moors  in 
1 1 47.  The  Palace  of  the  Walis  was  soon  granted  by  him  to 
Gualdim  Paes,  the  famous  grand  master  of  the  Templars,  and 
was  held  by  his  successors  till  it  was  given  to  Dom  Diniz's 
queen,  St.  Isabel.  She  died  in  1336,  when  the  palace  returned 
to  the  Order  of  Christ — which  had  meanwhile  been  formed 
out  of  the  suppressed  Order  of  the  Temple — only  to  be 
granted  to  Dona  Beatriz,  the  wife  of  D.  AfFonso  iv.,  in  ex- 
change for  her  possessions  at  Ega  and  at  Torre  de  Murta. 
Dom  Joilo  I.  granted  the  palace  in  1385  to  Dom  Henrique  de 
Vilhena,  but  he  soon  siding  with  the  Spaniards,  for  he  was  ot 
Spanish  birth,  his  possessions  were  confiscated  and  Cintra 
returned  to  the  Crown.  Some  of  the  previous  kings  may  have 
done  something  to  the  palace,  but  it  was  King  Joao  who  first 
made  it  one  of  the  chief  royal  residences,  and  who  built  a  very 
large  part  of  it. 

A  few  of  the  walls  have  been  examined  by  taking  off  the 
plaster,  and  have  been  found  to  be  built  in  the  usual  Arab 
manner,  courses  of  rubble  bonded  at  intervals  with  bands  of 
thin  bricks  two  or  three  courses  deep.  Such  are  the  back 
wall  of  the  entrance  hall  and  a  thick  wall  near  the  kitchen. 
Outside  all  the  walls  are  plastered,  all  the  older  windows,  of 
one  or  two  lights,  are  enclosed  in  square  frames — for  the  later 
windows  of  Dom  Manoel's  time  are  far  more  elaborate  and 
fantastic — and  most  of  the  walls  end  in  typical  Moorish  battle- 
ments. High  above  the  dark  tile  roofs  there  tower  the  two 
strange  kitchen  chimneys,  huge  conical  spires  ending  in  round 
funnels,  now  all  plastered,  but  once  covered  with  a  pattern  of 
green  and  white  tiles. 


ii8 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


The  whole  is  so  extremely  complicated  that  without  a  plan 
it  would  be  almost  useless  to  attempt  a  description.     Speaking 


1 .  Entrance  Court . 

2.  Sola  dos  Cysnes. 

3.  Central  Pateo. 

4.  Sola  das  Pe^as. 

5.  -       „    SereJas 
5°    "      do  Ctme/hc. 


Sala  deJantar. 

Servery. 

Sala  dos  Arabes  . 

Chapel . 

Kitchen. 

Sala  dos  Brazoes . 

12.  Pateo  de  Diana . 

13.  Wing  of  Dom  Manoel . 


PL/\N    OF    PACO,    CIN'TR.\ 


roughly,  all  that  lies  to  the  west  of  the  Porte  Cochere  which 
leads  from  the  entrance  court  through  to  the  kitchen  court  and 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  MOORS     119 

stables  beyond  is,  with  certain  alterations  and  additions,  the 
work  of  Dom  Joao,  and  all  that  lies  to  the  east  is  the  work  of 
Dom  Manoel,  added  during  the  first  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  Entering  through  a  pointed  gateway,  one  finds  one- 
self in  a  long  and  irregular  courtyard,  having  on  the  right 
hand  a  long  low  building  in  which  live  the  various  lesser 
palace  officials,  and  on  the  left,  first  a  comparatively  modern 
projecting  building  in  which  live  the  ladies-in-waiting,  then 
somewhat  further  back  the  rooms  of  the  controller  of  the 
palace  and  his  office.  From  the  front  wall  of  this  office,  which 
itself  juts  out  some  feet  into  the  courtyard,  there  runs  east- 
wards a  high  balustraded  terrace  reaching  as  far  as  another 
slightly  projecting  wing,  and  approached  by  a  great  flight  of 
steps  at  its  western  end.  Not  far  beyond  the  east  end  of  the 
terrace  an  inclined  road  leads  to  the  Porte  Cochere,  and  beyond 
it  are  the  large  additions  made  by  Dom  Manoel.     (Fig.  44.) 

On  this  terrace  stands  the  main  front  of  the  palace.  Below 
are  four  large  pointed  arches,  and  above  five  beautiful  windows 
lighting  the  great  Sala  dos  Cysnes  or  Swan  Hall.  Originally 
these  four  arches  were  open  and  led  into  a  large  vaulted  hall  ; 
now  they  are  all  built  up — perhaps  by  Dona  Maria  i.  after  the 
great  earthquake — three  having  small  two-light  windows,  and 
one  a  large  door,  the  chief  entrance  to  the  palace.  In  the  back 
wall  of  this  hall  may  still  be  seen  three  windows  wnich  must  have 
existed  before  it  was  built,  for  what  is  now  their  inner  side  was 
evidently  at  first  their  outer  ;  and  this  wall  is  one  of  those 
found  to  be  built  in  the  Arab  manner,  so  that  clearly  Dom 
Joao's  hall  was  built  in  front  of  a  part  of  the  Walis'  palace, 
a  part  which  has  quite  disappeared  except  for  this  wall. 

From  the  east  end  of  this  lower  hall  a  straight  stair,  which 
looks  as  if  it  had  once  been  an  outside  stair,  leads  up  to  a  wind- 
ing stair  by  which  another  hall  is  reached,  whose  floor  lies  at  a 
level  of  about  26  feet  above  the  terrace.'  From  this  hall, 
which  may  be  of  later  date  than  Dom  Joao's  time,  a  door  leads 
down  to  the  central  pateo  or  courtyard,  or  else  going  up  a  few 
steps  the  way  goes  through  a  smaller  square  room,  once  an 
open  verandah,  through  a  wide  doorway  inserted  by  Dom 
Manoel  into  the  great  Swan  Hall.  This  hall,  the  Lirgest  room 
in  the  palace,  measuring  about  80  feet  long  by  25  wide,  is  so 
called  from  the  swans  painted  in  the  eight-sided  panels  of  its 
wonderful  root.      The  story  is  that  while  the   palace  was  still 

'  This  winding  stair  was  built  by  Dom  ManofI  :  if,  some  Mairj  at  Thomar. 


I20        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

building  ambassadors  came  to  the  king  from  the  duke  of 
Burgundy  asking  for  the  hand  of  his  daughter  Isabel.  Among 
other  presents  they  brought  some  swans,  which  so  pleased  the 
young  princess  that  she  made  them  collars  of  red  velvet  and 
persuaded  her  father  to  build  for  them  a  long  narrow  tank  in 
the  central  court  just  under  the  north  windows  of  this  hall. 
Here  she  used  to  teed  them  till  she  went  away  to  Flanders,  and 
from  love  of  his  daughter  King  Joao  had  the  swans  with  their 
collars  painted  on  the  ceiling  ot  the  hall.  The  swans  may  still 
be  seen,  but  not  those  painted  for  Dom  Joao,  for  all  the  mould- 
ings clearly  show  that  the  present  ceiling  was  reconstructed 
some  centuries  later.  The  hall  is  lit  by  five  windows  looking 
south  across  the  entrance  court  to  the  Moorish  castle  on  the 
hill  beyond,  and  by  three  looking  over  the  swan  tank  into  the 
central  pateo. 

These  windows,  and  indeed  all  those  in  Dom  Joao's  part 
of  the  palace,  are  very  like  each  other.  They  are  nearly  all 
of  two  lights — never  of  more — and  are  made  of  white  marble. 
In  every  case  there  is  a  square-headed  moulded  frame  enclos- 
ing the  whole  window,  the  outer  mouldings  of  this  frame 
resting  on  small  semicircular  corbels,  and  having  Gothic  bases. 
Inside  this  framework  stand  three  slender  shafts,  with  simple 
bases  and  carved  capitals.  These  capitals  are  not  at  all  unlike 
French  capitals  of  the  thirteenth  century,  but  are  really  of 
a  common  Moorish  pattern  often  found  elsewhere,  as  in 
the  Alhambra.  On  them,  moulded  at  the  ends,  but  not  in 
front  or  behind,  rest  abaci,  from  which  spring  stilted  arches. 

(Fig-  45-) 

Each  arch   is  delicately  moulded   and  elaborately  cusped, 

but,  though  in  some  cases — for  the  shape  varies  in  almost 
every  window — each  individual  cusp  may  have  the  look  of 
a  Gothic  trefoil,  the  arrangement  is  not  Gothic  at  all.  There 
are  far  more  than  are  ever  found  in  a  Gothic  window,  some- 
times as  many  as  eleven,  and  they  usually  begin  at  the  bottom 
vi'ith  a  whole  instead  of  a  half  cusp.  From  the  centre  of 
each  abacus,  cutting  across  the  arch  mouldings,  another 
moulding  runs  up,  which  being  returned  across  the  top 
encloses  the  upper  part  of  each  light  in  a  smaller  square 
frame.  It  is  this  square  frame  which  more  than  anything  else 
gives  these  windows  their  Eastern  look,  and  it  has  been 
shown  how  often,  and  indeed  almost  universally  a  square 
framing  was  put  round  doorways  all  through  the  last  Gothic 


26 


i  U 

u   ... 


'i  < 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  MOORS    121 

period.  In  only  one  instance  are  the  shafts  anything  but 
plain,  and  that  is  in  the  central  window  overlooking  the 
entrance  court,  where  they  are  elaborately  twisted,  and  where 
also  they  start  at  the  level  of  the  floor  within  instead  of  stand- 
ing on  a  low  parapet. 

In  the  room  itself  the  walls  up  to  a  certain  height  are 
covered  with  tiles,  diamonds  of  white  and  a  beautiful  olive 
green  which  are  much  later  than  Dom  Joao's  time.  There 
is  also  near  the  west  end  of  the  north  side  a  large  fireplace 
projecting  slightly  from  the  wall  ;  at  either  end  stands  a 
shaft  with  cap  and  base  like  those  of  the  windows,  bearing 
a  long  flat  moulded  lintel,  while  on  the  hearth  there  rest 
two  very  fine  wrought-iron  Gothic  fire-dogs. 

East  of  the  fireplace  a  door  having  a  wide  flat  ogee  head 
leads  into  a  small  porch  built  in  the  corner  of  the  pateo  to 
protect  the  passage  to  the  Sala  das  Pegas,  the  first  of  the 
rooms  to  the  south  of  this  pateo. 

In  the  angle  formed  by  the  end  wall  of  the  Sala  dos  Cysnes 
and  the  side  of  the  Sala  das  Pegas  there  is  a  small  low  room 
now  called  the  Sala  de  Dom  Sebastiao  or  do  Conselho.  It  is 
entered  from  the  west  end  of  the  Swan  Hall  through  a  door, 
which  was  at  first  a  window  just  like  all  the  rest.  This  Hall 
of  Dom  Sebastifio  or  of  the  Council  is  so  called  from  the 
tradition  that  it  was  there  that  in  1578  that  unhappy  king 
held  the  council  in  which  it  was  decided  to  invade  Morocco, 
an  expedition  which  cost  the  king  his  life  and  his  country 
her  independence.  In  reality  the  final  solemn  council  was 
held  in  Lisbon,  but  some  informal  meeting  may  well  have 
been  held  there.  Now  the  room  is  low  and  rather  dark, 
being  lit  only  by  two  small  windows  opening  above  the 
roof  of  the  controller's  ofiice.  It  is  divided  into  two  unequal 
parts  by  an  arcade  of  three  arches,  the  smaller  part  between 
the  arches  and  the  south  wall  being  raised  a  step  above  the 
rest.  When  first  built  by  Dom  Jofio  this  raised  part  formed 
u  covered  verandah,  the  rest  being,  till  about  the  time  of 
Maria  i.,  open  to  the  sky  and  forming  a  charming  and  cool 
retreat  during  the  heat  of  summer.  The  floor  is  of  tiles 
and  marble,  and  all  along  the  south  wall  runs  a  bench  entirely 
covered  with  beautiful  tiles.  At  the  eastern  end  is  a  large 
seat,  rather  higher  than  the  bench  and  provided  with  arms, 
doubtless  for  the  king,  and  tiled  like  the  rest. 

Passing  again  from  the  Swan  Hall  the  way  leads  through 


122        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

the  porch  into  the  Sala  das  Pegas  or  of  the  magpies.  The 
door  from  the  porch  to  the  room  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
parts  of  Dom  Jofio's  work.  It  is  framed  as  are  the  windows, 
and  has  shafts,  capitals,  abaci,  and  bases  just  like  those 
already  described  ;  but  the  arch  is  different.  It  is  beauti- 
fully moulded,  but  is — if  one  may  so  speak — made  up  of 
nine  reversed  cusps,  whose  convex  sides  torm  the  arch  : 
the  inner  square  moulding  too  is  enriched  with  ball  ornament. 
Inside  the  walls  are  covered  to  half  their  height  with  exquisite 
tiles  of  Moorish  pattern,  blue,  green  and  brown  on  a  white 
ground. 

On  the  north  wall  is  a  great  white  marble  chimney-piece, 
once  a  present  from  Pope  Leo  x.  to  Dom  Manoel  and 
brought  by  the  great  Marques  de  Ponibal  from  the  ruined 
palace  of  Almeirim  opposite  Santarem.  Two  other  doors, 
with  simple  pointed  heads,  lead  one  into  the  dining-room, 
and  one  into  the  Sala  das  Sereias.  The  Sala  das  Pegas, 
like  the  Swan  Hall,  is  called  after  its  ceiling,  for  on  it  are 
painted  in  136  triangular  compartments,  136  magpies,  each 
holding  in  one  foot  a  red  rose  and  in  its  beak  a  scroll 
inscribed  '  Por  Bem.'  Possibly  this  ceiling,  which  on  each 
side  slopes  up  to  a  flat  parallelogram,  is  more  like  that 
painted  for  Dom  Joao  than  is  that  of  the  Swan  Hall,  but 
even  here  some  of  the  mouldings  are  clearly  renaissance,  and 
the  painting  has  been  touched  up,  but  anyhow  it  was  already 
called  Camera  das  Pegas  in  the  time  of  Dom  Duarte  ;  further, 
tradition  tells  that  the  magpies  were  painted  there  by  Dom 
Joao's  orders,  and  why.  It  seems  that  once  during  the  hour 
of  the  midday  siesta  the  king,  wandering  about  his  unfinished 
house,  found  in  this  room  one  of  the  maids  of  honour.  Her 
he  kissed,  when  another  maid  immediately  went  and  told 
the  queen,  Philippa  of  Lancaster.  She  was  angry,  but  Dom 
Joao  only  said  '  Por  bem,'  meaning  much  what  his  queen's 
grandfather  had  meant  when  he  said  '  Honi  soit  qui  mal  y 
pense,'  and  to  remind  the  maids  of  honour,  whose  waiting- 
room  this  was,  that  they  must  not  tell  tales,  he  had  the 
magpies  painted  on  the  ceiling. 

The  two  windows,  one  looking  west  and  one  into  the 
pateo,  are  exactly  like  those  already  described. 

From  the  Sala  das  Pegas  one  door  leads  up  a  few  steps 
into  the  Sala  das  Sereias,  and  another  to  the  dining-room. 
This  Sala  das  Sereias,  so  called  from  the  mermaids  painted  on 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  MOORS     123 

the  ceiling,  is  a  small  room  some  eighteen  feet  square.  It  is 
lit  by  a  two-light  window  opening  towards  the  courtyard, 
a  window  just  like  those  of  the  Sala  das  Pegas  and  of  the  Sala 
dos  Cysnes.  Some  of  its  walls,  especially  that  between  it  and 
the  Sala  das  Pegas,  are  very  thick  and  seem  to  be  older  than 
the  time  of  Dom  Joao.  As  usual,  the  walls  are  partly  covered 
with  beautiful  tiles,  mostly  embossed  with  green  vine-leaves, 
but  round  the  door  leading  to  the  long  narrow  room,  used  as 
a  servery,  is  an  interlacing  pattern  of  green  and  blue  tiles, 
while  the  spandrils  between  this  and  the  pointed  doorhead 
are  filled  with  a  true  Arabesque  pattern,  dark  on  a  light 
ground,  which  is  said  to  belong  to  the  Palace  of  the  Walls. 
There  are  altogether  four  doors,  one  leading  to  the  servery, 
one  to  the  Sala  das  Pegas,  one  to  a  spiral  stair  in  the  corner 
of  the  pateo,  and  one  to  the  dining-room. 

This  dining-room  projects  somewhat  to  the  west  so  as  to 
leave  space  for  a  window  looking  south  to  the  mountains,  and 
one  looking  north  across  a  small  court,  as  well  as  one  looking 
west.  Of  these,  the  two  which  look  south  and  west  are  like 
each  other,  and  like  the  other  of  Dom  Joao's  time  except  that 
the  arches  are  not  cusped  ;  that  the  outer  frame  is  omitted  and 
that  the  abaci  are  moulded  in  front  as  well  as  at  the  ends  ;  but 
the  third  window  looking  north  is  rather  different.  The 
framing  has  regular  late  Gothic  bases,  the  capitals  of  the  shafts 
are  quite  unlike  the  rest,  having  one  large  curly  leaf  at  each 
angle,  and  the  moulding  running  up  the  centre  between  the 
arches — which  are  not  cusped — is  plaited  instead  of  being 
plain.  Altogether  it  looks  as  if  it  were  later  than  Dom  Joao's 
time,  for  it  is  the  only  window  where  the  capitals  are  not  of 
the  usual  Arab  form,  and  they  are  not  at  all  like  some  in  the 
castle  of  Sempre  Noiva  built  about  the  begiiining  of  the 
sixteenth  century. 

The  wall-tiles  of  the  dining-room  are  like  those  of  the 
Sala  das  Sercias,  but  end  in  a  splendid  cresting.  The  ceiling 
is  modern  and  uninteresting. 

Next  to  the  north  comes  the  servery,  a  room  without 
interest  but  for  its  window  which  looks  west,  and  is  like  the 
two  older  dining-room  windows. 

Returning  to  the  Sala  das  Sereias,  a  spiral  stair  leads  down 
to  the  central  pateo,  which  can  also  be  reached  from  the  porch 
in  the  south-west  corner.  All  along  the  south  side  runs  the 
tank   made   by  Dom   jofio   for   his   daughter's  swans,  and  on 


124       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

three  sides  are  beautiful  white  marble  windows.  At  the  east 
end  of  the  north  side  three  open  arches  lead  to  the  bathroom. 
As  is  the  case  with  the  windows,  the  three  arches  arc  enclosed 
in  a  square  frame.  The  capitals,  however,  arc  different,  having 
an  eight-sided  bell  on  which  rests  a  square  block  with  a  bud 
carved  at  each  angle,  and  above  an  abacus,  moulded  all  round. 
The  arches  are  cusped  like  the  windows,  but  are  stilted  and 
segmental.  Inside  is  a  recess  framed  in  an  arch  of  Dom 
Manoel's  time,  and  from  all  over  the  tiled  walls  and  the 
ceiling  jets  ot  water  squirt  out,  so  that  the  whole  becomes  a 
great  shower-bath,  delightful  and  cooling  on  a  hot  day  but 
rather  public.  In  the  middle  of  the  pateo  there  stands  a 
curious  column — not  at  all  unlike  the  'pelourinho  ' '  of  Cintra 
— which  stands  in  a  basin  just  before  the  entrance  gate.  This 
column  is  formed  of  three  twisted  shafts  on  whose  capitals  sit 
a  group  of  hoys  holding  three  shields  charged  with  the  royal 
arms.  All  round  the  court  is  a  dado  of  white  and  green  tiles 
arranged  in  an  Arab  pattern. 

In  the  north-west  corner  and  reached  by  the  same  spiral 
stair,  but  at  a  higher  level  than  the  Sala  das  Sereias,  is  the 
Sala  dos  Arabes,  so  called  because  it  is  commonly  believed  to 
be  a  part  of  the  original  building.  The  walls  may  be  so,  but 
of  the  rest,  nothing,  but  perhaps  the  shallow  round  fountain 
basin  in  the  middle  and  the  square  of  tiles  which  surrounds  it, 
now  so  worn  that  little  of  their  glazed  surface  is  left.  The 
walls  half-way  up  are  lined  with  tiles,  squares  and  parallelo- 
grams, blue,  white  and  green.  The  doors  are  framed  in 
different  tiles,  and  all  are  finished  with  an  elaborate  cresting. 
The  most  interesting  thing  in  the  room  is  the  circular  basin  in 
the  middle — a  basin  which  gives  it  a  truly  Eastern  look.  Inside 
a  round  shallow  hollow  there  stands  a  many-sided  block  of 
marble  about  six  inches  high.  The  sides  are  concave  as  in  a 
small  section  of  a  Doric  column,  and  within  it  is  hollowed  into 
a  beautiful  cup,  shaped  somewhat  like  a  flower  of  many  petals. 
In  the  middle  there  now  is  a  strange  object  of  gilt  metal 
through  which  the  water  once  poured.  On  a  short  stem  stands 
a  carefully  modelled  dish  on  which  rest  first  leaves,  like 
long  acanthus  leaves,  then  between  them  birds  on  whose  backs 
sit  small  figures  of  boys.  Between  the  boys  and  above  the 
leaves  are  more  figures  exactly  like  seated  Indian  gods,  and 
the   whole   ends   in  a  cone.     It   is    so   completely   Indian    in 

'  .'\  'pelniirinlio'  is  a  market  cross. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  MOORS     125 

appearance  that  there  can  be  little  doubt  but  that  it  is  really  of 
Indian  origin,  and  perhaps  it  is  not  too  much  to  see  in  it  part 
of  the  spoils  brought  to  Dom  Manoel  by  Vasco  da  Gama  after 
he  had  in  1498  made  his  way  round  Africa  to  Calicut  and 
back. 

Returning  to  the  Sala  das  Sereias  and  passing  through  the 
servery  and  another  room  an  open  court  is  reached  called  the 
Pateo  de  Diana,  from  a  fountain  over  which  Diana  presides, 
and  on  to  which  one  of  the  dining-room  windows  looks.  A 
beautifully  tiled  stair — these  tiles  are  embossed  like  those  of 
the  dining-room,  but  besides  vine-leaves  some  have  on  them 
bunches  of  grapes — goes  down  from  the  Court  of  Diana  to  the 
Court  of  the  Lion,  the  Pateo  do  Leao,  where  a  lion  spouts  into 
a  long  tank.  But  the  chief  beauty  of  these  two  courts  is  a 
small  window  which  overlooks  them.  This  window  is  only  of 
one  light,  and  like  the  dining-room  window  near  it  its  framing 
has  Gothic  bases.  The  capitals  are  smaller  than  in  the  other 
windows,  and  the  framing  partly  covers  the  outer  moulding  of 
the  window  arch,  making  it  look  like  a  segment  of  a  circle. 
But  the  cusps  are  the  most  curious  part.  They  form  four 
more  or  less  trefoiled  spaces  with  wavy  outlines,  and  two  of 
them — not  the  remaining  one  at  the  top — end  in  large  well- 
carved  vine-leaves,  very  like  those  at  the  ends  of  the  cusps  on 
the  arches  in  the  Capella  do  Fundador  at  Batalha.  To  add  to 
the  charm  of  the  window,  the  space  between  the  top  of  the  arch 
and  the  framing  is  filled  in  with  those  beautiful  tiles  embossed 
with  vine-leaves. 

Going  up  again  to  the  Sala  dos  Arabes,  a  door  in  the 
northern  wall  leads  to  a  passage  running  northwards  to  the 
chapel.  About  half-way  along  the  passage  another  branches 
ofF  to  the  right  towards  the  great  kitchen. 

The  chapel  stands  at  the  northern  edge  of  the  palace 
buildings,  having  beyond  it  a  terrace  called  the  Terreiro  da 
Meca  or  of  Mecca  ;  partly  from  this  name,  and  partly  from 
the  tiles  which  still  cover  the  middle  of  the  floor  it  is  believed 
that  the  chapel  stands  exactly  on  the  site  of  the  Walls'  private 
mosque,  with  perhaps  the  chancel  added. 

The  middle  of  the  nave — the  chapel  consists  of  a  nave 
and  chancel,  two  small  transeptal  recesses,  and  two  galleries 
one  above  the  other  at  the  west  end — is  paved  with  tiles  once 
glazed  and  of  varying  colours,  but  now  nearly  all  worn  down 
till  the   natural  red    shows   through.       The   pattern   has    been 


126        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

elaborate  ;  a  broad  border  of  diagonal  checks  surrounding  a 
narrow  oblong  in  which  the  checks  are  crossed  by  darker  lines 
so  as  to  form  octagons,  and  between  the  outer  border  and  the 
octagons  a  band  of  lighter  ground  down  which  in  the  middle 
runs  a  coloured  line  having  on  each  side  cones  of  the  common 
Arab  pattern  exactly  like  the  palace  battlements. 

Now  the  walls  are  bare  and  white,  but  were  once  covered 
with  frescoes  of  the  fifteenth  century  ;  the  reredos  is  a  clumsy 
addition  ot  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  cornice  and  the  long  pilasters  at  the  entrance  to  the 
chancel  seem  to  have  been  added  at  the  same  time,  but  the 
windows  and  ceiling  are  still  those  of  Dom  Joao's  time.  The 
windows — there  are  now  three,  a  fourth  in  the  chancel  having 
been  turned  into  a  royal  pew — are  of  two  or  three  lights, 
have  commonplace  tracery,  and  are  only  interesting  as  being 
one  of  the  few  wholly  Gothic  features  in  the  palace. 

Far  more  interesting  is  the  ceiling,  which  is  entirely  Arab 
in  construction  and  in  design.  In  the  nave  it  is  an  irregular 
polygon  in  section,  and  in  the  chancel  is  nearly  a  semicircle, 
having  nine  equal  sides.  The  whole  of  the  boarded  surface  is 
entirely  covered  with  an  intricate  design  formed  of  strips  of 
wood  crossing  each  other  in  every  direction  so  as  to  form 
stars,  triangles,  octagons,  and  figures  of  every  conceivable 
shape.  The  whole  still  retains  its  original  colouring.  At  the 
centres  of  the  main  figures  are  gilt  bosses — the  one  over  the 
high  altar  being  a  shield  with  the  royal  arms — the  wooden 
strips  are  black  with  a  white  groove  down  the  centre  of  each, 
and  the  ground  is  either  dark  red  or  light  blue.     (Fig.  46.) 

The  whole  is  of  great  interest  not  only  tor  its  own  sake, 
but  because  it  is  the  only  ceiling  in  the  palace  which  has 
remained  unchanged  since  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  because  it  is,  as  it  were,  the  parent  of  the  splendid  roofs  in 
the  Sala  dos  Cysnes  and  of  the  still  more  wonderful  one  in 
the  Sala  dos  Escudos. 

The  kitchen  lies  at  the  back  of  the  chapel  and  at  right 
angles  to  it.  It  is  a  building  about  58  feet  long  by  25  wide, 
and  is  divided  into  two  equal  parts  by  a  large  arch.  Each  of 
these  two  parts  is  covered  by  a  huge  conical  chimney  so  that 
the  inside  is  more  like  the  nave  of  St.  Ours  at  Leches  than 
anything  else,  while  outside  these  chimneys  rise  high  above  all 
the  rest  of  the  palace.  It  is  lit  by  small  two-light  Gothic 
windows,  and  has  lately  been  lined  with  white  tiles.     Now  the 


27 


no.  46. 

Palace  Chai'kl  Roof. 

ClMKA. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  MOORS     127 

chimneys  serve  only  as  ventilators,  as  ordinary  iron  ranges  have 
been  put  in.  There  seems  to  be  nothing  in  the  country  at  all 
like  these  chimneys — for  the  kitchen  at  Alcoba^a,  although  it 
has  a  stream  running  through  it,  is  but  a  poor  affair  compared 
with  this  one,  nor  is  its  chimney  in  any  way  remarkable 
outside.' 

The  rest  of  the  palace  towards  the  west,  between  the  west 
end  of  the  chapel  and  the  great  square  tower  in  which  is  the 
Sala  dos  Fscudos,  was  probably  also  built  about  the  time  of 
Dom  Joao  i.,  but  except  for  a  few  windows  there  is  little  of 
interest  left  which  belongs  to  his  time. 

The  great  tower  of  the  Sala  dos  Escudos  was  built  by 
Dom  Manoel  on  the  top  of  an  older  building  then  called  the 
Casa  da  Meca,  in  which  Affonso  v.  was  born  in  1432 — the 
year  before  his  grandfather  Dom  Joao  died — and  where  he 
himself  died  fortv-nine  years  later.  In  another  room  on  a 
higher  floor— where  his  feet,  as  he  walked  up  and  down  day 
after  day,  have  quite  worn  away  the  tiles — Affonso  vi.  was 
imprisoned.  Affonso  had  by  his  wildness  proved  himself 
quite  unable  to  govern,  and  had  also  made  himself  hated  by 
his  queen,  a  French  princess.  She  fell  in  love  with  his 
brother,  so  Affonso  was  deposed,  divorced,  and  banished  to 
the  Azores.  After  some  years  it  was  found  that  he  was  there 
trying  to  form  a  party,  so  he  was  brought  to  Cintra  and 
imprisoned  in  this  room  from  1674  till  his  death  in  1683. 
These  worn-out  tiles  are  worthy  of  notice  for  their  own  sake 
since  tiles  with  Moorish  patterns,  as  are  these  here  and  those 
in  the  chapel,  are  very  seldom  used  for  flooring,  and  they  are 
probably  among  the  oldest  in  the  palace. 

Such  was  the  palace  from  the  time  of  Joao  i.  to  that  of  Castles, 
Dom  Manoel,  a  building  thoroughly  Eastern  in  plan  as  in  ^^Barcdlos. 
detail,  and  absolutely  unlike  such  contemporary  buildings  as 
the  palaces  of  the  dukes  of  Braganza  at  Guimarfies  or  at 
Barcellos,  or  the  castle  at  Villa  da  Feira  between  Oporto  and 
Aveiro.  The  Braganza  palaces  are  both  in  ruins,  but  their 
details  are  all  such  as  might  be  found  almost  anywhere  in 
Christian  Europe.  Large  pointed  doors,  traceried  windows 
and  tall  chimneys — these  last  round  and  of  brick — differ  only 
from  similar  features  found  elsewhere,  as  one  dialect  may 
differ  from  another,  whereas  Cintra  is,  as  it  were,  built  in  a 

'  The   kitchens  in   the  houses  at   Marrakesh   and   elsewhere    in   Morocco  have 
somewhat  similar  chimneys.     See  B.  Meakin,  The  Land  of  the  Moors. 


128        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Villa  da  Fiira.  totally  difFerent  language.  The  castle  at  Villa  da  Feira  is 
even  more  unlike  anything  at  Cintra.  A  huge  keep  of 
granite,  the  square  turrets  projecting  slightly  from  the  corners 
give  it  the  look  of  a  Norman  castle,  for  the  curious  spires  of 
brick  now  on  those  turrets  were  added  later,  perhaps  under 
Dom  Manoel.  Inside  there  is  now  but  one  vast  hall  with 
pointed  barrel  roof,  for  all  the  wooden  floors  are  gone,  leaving 
only  the  beam  holes  in  the  walls,  the  Gothic  fireplaces,  and 
the  small  windows  to  show  where  they  once  were. 

It  is  then  no  wonder  that  Cintra  has  been  called  the 
Alhambra  of  Portugal,  and  it  is  curious  that  the  same  names 
are  found  given  to  different  parts  of  the  two  buildings.  The 
Alhambra  has  a  Mirador  de  Lindaraxa,  Cintra  a  Jardim  de 
Lindaraya  ;  the  Alhambra  a  Torre  de  las  dos  Hermanas, 
Cintra  a  Sala  das  Irmas  or  of  the  Sisters — the  part  under 
the  Sala  dos  Escudos  where  Affonso  v.  was  born  ;  while  both 
at  the  Alhambra  and  here  there  is  a  garden  called  de  las  or 
das  Damas. 


OTHER  MOORISH  BUILDINGS         129 


CHAPTER   VIII 

OTHER    MOORISH     BUILDINGS 

The  old  palace  at  Cintra  is  perhaps  the  only  complete  build- 
ing to  the  north  of  the  Tagus  designed  and  carried  out  by 
Moofish  workmen  scarcely,  if  at  all,  influenced  by  what  the 
conquering  Christians  were  doing  round  them.  Further  south 
in  the  province  of  Alemtejo  Moorish  buildings  are  more 
common,  and  there  are  many  in  which,  though  the  design  and 
plan  as  well  as  most  of  the  detail  may  be  Western,  yet  there 
is  something,  the  whitewashed  walls,  the  round  conical 
pinnacles,  or  the  flat  roofs  which  give  them  an  Eastern 
look. 

And  this  is  natural.  Alemtejo  was  conquered  after  the 
country  north  of  the  Tagus  had  been  for  some  time  Christian, 
and  no  large  immigration  of  Christians  ever  came  to  take  the 
place  of  the  Moors,  so  that  those  few  who  remained  con- 
tinued for  long  in  their  own  Eastern  ways  of  building  and  of 
agriculture. 

It  is  especially  in  and  about  the  town  of  Evora  that  this  is 
seen,  and  that  too  although  the  cathedral  built  at  the  end  of 
the  twelfth  century  is,  except  for  a  few  unimportant  details,  a 
Western  building. 

But  more  completely  Eastern  than  any  one  building  at  Alvito. 
Evora  is  the  castle  at  Alvito,  a  small  town  some  thirty  or 
forty  miles  to  the  south-west.  The  town  stands  at  the  end 
of  a  long  low  hill  and  looks  south  over  an  endless  plain  across 
to  Beja,  one  of  the  most  extensive  and,  in  its  way,  beautiful 
views  in  the  country. 

At  one  end  of  the  town  on  the  slope  of  the  hill  stands  the 
castle,  and  not  far  ofl^  in  one  of  the  streets  is  the  town  hall 
whose  tower  is  too  characteristic  of  the  Alemtejo  not  to  be 
noticed.  The  building  is  whitewashed  and  perfectly  plain, 
with  ordinary  square  windows.      An  outside  stair  leads  to  the 

I 


130        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

upper  story,  and  behind  it  rises  the  tower.  It,  like  the 
building,  is  absolutely  plain  with  semicircular  openings 
near  the  top  irregularly  divided  by  a  square  pier.  Close  above 
these  openings  is  a  simple  cornice  on  which  stand  rather  high 
and  narrow  battlements  ;  within  them  rises  a  short  eight-sided 
spire,  and  at  each  corner  a  short  round  turret  capped  by 
a  conical  roof.  The  whole  from  top  to  bottom  is  plastered 
and  whitewashed,  and  it  is  this  glaring  whiteness  more 
than  anything  else  which  gives  to  the  whole  so  Eastern  a 
look. 

As  to  the  castle,  Haupt  in  his  most  interesting  book. 
Die  Baiikunst  der  Renaissance  in  Portugal,  says  that,  though  he 
had  never  seen  it,  yet  from  descriptions  of  its  plan  he  had 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  \Vi^s  the  castle  which,  according 
to  Vasari,  was  built  by  Andrea  da  Sansovino  for  Dom  Joao  11. 
Now  it  is  well  known  that  Sansovino  was  for  nine  years  in 
Portugal  and  did  much  work  there,  but  none  of  it  can  now 
be  found  except  perhaps  a  beautiful  Italian  door  in  the  palace 
at  Cintra  ;  Vasari  also  states  that  he  did  some  work  in 
the  heavy  and  native  style  which  the  king  liked.  Is  it 
possible  that  the  castle  of  Alvito  is  one  of  his  works  in  this 
native  style  ? 

Vasari  says  that  Sansovino  built  for  Dom  Joao  a  beautiful 
palace  with  four  towers,  and  that  part  of  it  was  decorated  by 
him  with  paintings,  and  it  was  because  Haupt  believed  that 
this  castle  was  built  round  an  arcaded  court — a  regular 
Italian  feature,  but  one  quite  unknown  in  Portugal — that  he 
thought  it  must  be  Sansovino's  lost  palace. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  court  is  not  arcaded— there  is 
only  a  row  of  rough  plastered  arches  along  one  side  ;  there 
are  five  and  not  four  towers  ;  there  is  no  trace  now  of  any  fine 
painted  decoration  inside  ;  and,  in  short,  it  is  inconceivable 
that,  even  to  please  a  king,  an  architect  of  the  Italian  renais- 
sance could  ever  have  designed  such  a  building. 

The  plan  of  the  castle  is  roughly  square  with  a  round 
tower  at  three  of  the  corners,  and  at  the  fourth  or  southern 
corner  a  much  larger  tower,  rounded  in  front  and  projecting 
further  from  the  walls.  The  main  front  is  turned  to  the  south- 
west, and  on  that  side,  as  well  as  on  the  south-eastern,  are 
the  habitable  parts  of  the  castle.  Farm  buildings  run  along 
inside  and  outside  the  north-western,  while  the  north-eastern 
side  is  bounded  only  by  a  high  wall. 


OTHER  MOORISH   BUILDINGS         131 

Half-way  along  the  main  front  is  the  entrance  gate,  a  plain 
pointed  arch  surmounted  by  two  shields,  that  on  the  right 
charged  with  the  royal  arms,  and  that  on  the  left  with  those 
of  the  Barao  d'Alvito,  to  whose  descendant,  the  Marques 
d'Alvito,  the  castle  still  belongs.  There  is  also  an  inscription 
stating  that  the  castle,  begun  in  1494  by  the  orders  of  Dom 
Joao  II.  and  finished  in  the  time  of  Dom  Manoel,  was  built 
by  Dom  Diogo  Lobo,  Barao  d'Alvito.^ 

In  the  court  a  stair,  carried  on  arches,  goes  up  to  the  third 
floor  where  are  the  chief  rooms  in  the  house.  None  of  them, 
which  open  one  from  the  other  or  from  a  passage  leading  to 
the  chapel  in  the  westernmost  corner,  are  in  any  way  remark- 
able except  for  their  windows.  The  ceilings  of  the  principal 
rooms  are  of  wood  and  panelled,  but  are  clearly  of  much  later 
date  than  the  building  and  are  not  to  be  compared  with  those 
at  Cintra.  Most  of  the  original  windows — for  those  on  the 
main  front  have  been  replaced  by  plain  square  openings — are 
even  more  Eastern  than  those  at  Cintra.  They  are  nearly  all 
of  two  lights — there  is  one  of  a  single  light  in  the  passage 
— but  are  without  the  square  framing.  Each  window  has 
three  very  slender  white  marble  shafts,  with  capitals  and  with 
abaci  moulded  on  each  side.  On  some  of  the  capitals  are 
carved  twisted  ropes,  while  others,  as  in  a  window  in  the 
large  southern  tower,  are  like  those  at  Cintra.  As  the 
shafts  stand  a  little  way  back  from  the  face  of  the  wall  the 
arches  are  of  two  orders,  of  which  only  the  inner  comes  down 
to  the  central  shaft.     (Fig.  47.) 

These  arches,  all  horseshoe  in  shape,  are  built  of  red  brick 
with  very  wide  mortar  joints,  and  each  brick,  in  both  orders, 
is  beautifully  moulded  or  cut  at  the  ends  so  as  to  form  a  series 
of  small  trefoiled  cusps,  each  arch  having  as  many  as  twenty- 
seven  or  more.  The  whole  building  is  plastered  and  washed 
yellow,  so  that  the  contrast  between  the  bare  walls  and  the 
elaborate  red  arches  and  white  shafts  is  singularly  pleasing. 
All  the  outer  walls  are  fortified,  but  the  space  between  each 
embrasure  is  far  longer  than  usual  ;  the  four  corner  towers 
rise  a  gootl  deal  above  the  rest  of  the  buildings,  but  in  none, 
except  the  southern,  are  there  windows  above  the  main  roof.  It 
has  one,  shaped  like  the  rest,  but  now  all  plastered  and  framed 

'  '  Esta  fortalcza  se  come^ou  a  xiij  dagosto  ile  mil  cccc.l.  ft  liij  por  mldado  dri  Key 
do  Joam  o  Kgundo  nosso  s3r  c  acaboiisc  rm  lp6  del  Key  dom  Manoel  o  priinelro 
tiuHso  SfTor  Tela  per  seus  inldados  dom  Uiogo  Lobo  baram  dalvito  ' 


32 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Evora. 


in  an  ogee  moulding.  Half-way  along  the  north-west  wall, 
outside  it,  stands  the  keep,  which  curiously  is  not  Arab  at  all. 
It  is  a  large  square  tower  of  no  great  height,  absolutely  plain, 
and  built  of  unplastered  stone  or  marble.  It  has  scarcely  any 
windows,  and  walls  of  great  thickness  which,  like  those  of  the 
smaller  round  towers,  have  a  slight  batter.  It  seems  to  be 
older  than  the  rest,  and  now  its  chief  ornament  is  a  large  fig- 
tree  growing  near  the  top  on  the  south  side.' 

Of  all  the  towns  in  the  Alemtejo  Evora  is  the  one  where 
Eastern  influence  is  most  strongly  marked.  Indeed  the 
Roman  temple  and  the  cathedral  are  perhaps  the  only  old 
buildings  which  seem  to  be  distinctly  Western,  and  even  the 
cathedral  has  some  trace  of  the  East  in  its  two  western  spires, 
Pa^os  Reaes.  one  found  and  tiled,  and  the  other  eight-sided  and  plastered. 
For  long  Evora  was  one  of  the  chief  towns  of  the  kingdom, 
and  was  one  of  those  oftenest  visited  by  the  kings.  Their 
palace  stood  close  to  the  church  of  Sao  Francisco,  and  must 
once  have  been  a  beautiful  building. 

Unfortunately  most  of  it  has  disappeared,  and  what  is  left, 
a  large  hall  partly  of  the  time  of  Dom  Manoel,  has  been  so 
horribly  restored  In  order  to  turn  it  into  a  museum  as  to  have 
lost  all  character. 

A  porch  still  stands  at  the  south  end,  but  scraped  and 
pointed  out  of  all  beauty.  It  has  in  front  four  square  stone 
piers  bearing  large  horseshoe  brick  arches,  and  these  arches  are 
moulded  and  cusped  exactly  like  those  at  Alvito. 

There  are  no  other  examples  of  Moorish  brickwork  in  the 
town,  but  there  is  more  than  one  marble  window  resembling 
those  at  Alvito  in  shape.  Of  these  the  most  charming  are 
found  in  the  garden  of  a  house  belonging  to  a  '  morgado '  or 
entailed  estate  called  Cordovis.  These  windows  form  two  sides 
of  a  small  square  summer-house  ;  their  shafts  have  capitals  like 
those  of  the  dining-room  windows  at  Cintra,  and  the  horse- 
shoe arches  are,  as  usual,  cusped.  A  new  feature,  showing 
how  the  pure  Arab  details  were  being  gradually  combined  with 
Gothic,  is  an  ogee  moulding  which,  uniting  the  two  arches, 
ends  in  a  large  Gothic  finial  ;  other  mouldings  run  up  the 
cornice  at  the  angles,  and  the  whole,  crowned  with  battlements, 
ends  in  a  short  round  whitewashed  spire. 

Some  miles  from  Evora  among  the  mountains,  Affonso  of 

'  The  house  of  the  duke  of  Cadaval  called  '  Agua  de  Peixes,"  not  very  far  off, 
has  several  windows  in  the  same  Moori:-h  style. 


Morgado  de 
Cordovis. 


28 


o 
o 

p 


O 


o 

fc:  3 


13 


OTHER  MOORISH  BUILDINGS        133 

Portugal,  archbishop  of  Evora,  built  himself  a  small  country  SempreNoiv 
house  which  he  called  Sempre  Noiva,  or  '  Ever  New,'  about 
the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century.  It  is  now  a  ruin 
having  lost  all  its  woodwork,  but  the  walls  are  still  well  pre- 
served. The  plan  is  simple  ;  a  rectangle  with  a  chapel  pro- 
jecting from  the  eastern  side,  and  a  small  wing  from  the  west 
end  of  the  south  side.  All  the  ground  floor  is  vaulted,  as  is 
the  chapel,  but  the  main  rooms  on  the  first  floor  had  wooden 
roofs,  except  the  one  next  the  chapel  which  forms  the  middle 
floor  of  a  three-storied  tower,  which,  rising  above  the  rest  of  the 
building,  has  a  battlemented  flat  roof  reached  by  a  spiral  stair. 
This  stair,  like  the  round  buttresses  of  the  chapel,  is  capped 
by  a  high  conical  plastered  roof.  As  usual  the  whole,  except 
the  windows  and  the  angles,  is  plastered  and  has  a  sgraffito 
frieze  running  round  under  the  cornice.  There  is  a  large 
porch  on  the  north  side  covering  a  stair  leading  to  the  upper 
floor,  where  most  of  the  windows  are  of  two  lights  and  very 
like  those  of  the  pavilion  at  Evora.  Two  like  them  have  the 
ogee  moulding,  and  at  the  sides  a  rounded  moulding  carried 
on  corbels  and  finished  above  the  window  with  a  carved  finial. 
The  capitals  are  again  carved  with  leaves,  but  the  horseshoe 
arches  have  no  cusps,  and  the  mouldings,  like  the  capitals,  are 
entirely  Gothic  ;  the  union  between  the  two  styles,  Gothic  and 
Arab,  was  already  becoming  closer. 

Naturally  Moorish  details  are  more  often  found  in  secular 
than  in  religious  buildings ;  yet  there  are  churches  where 
such  details  exist  even  if  the  general  plan  and  design  is 
Christian. 

Just  to  the  north  of  the  cathredral  of  Evora,  Rodrigo  saojoso 
Afl^onso  de  Mello,  count  of  01iven(;a,  in  1485  founded  a  Evo?a^'''"'' 
monastery  for  the  Loyos,  or  Canons  Secular  of  St.  John  the 
Evangelist.  The  church  itself  is  in  no  way  notable  ;  the 
large  west  door  opening  under  a  flat  arched  porch  is  one  of 
these  with  plain  moulded  arches  and  simple  shafts  which  are  so 
common  over  all  the  country,  and  is  only  interesting  for  its 
late  date.  At  the  left  side  is  a  small  monument  to  the 
founder's  memory  ;  on  a  corbel  stands  a  short  column  bearing 
an  inscribed  slab,  and  above  the  slab  is  a  shield  under  a  carved 
curtain.  Inside  are  some  tombs — two  of  them  being  Flemish 
brasses — and  great  tile  pictures  covering  the  walls.  These 
give  the  lite  of  Sao  Lorenzo  Guistiniani,  patriarch  of  Venice, 
and  canon  of  San  Giorgio  in  Alga,  where  the  founder  of  the 


134        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Loyos  had  been  kindly  received  and  whence  he  drew  the  rules 
of  his  order,  and  are  interesting  as  being  signed  and  dated 
'  Antonius  ab  oliva  fecit  1 7  1 1 .' 

The  cloisters  are  also  Gothic  with  vine-covered  capitals,  but 
the  entrance  to  the  chapter-house  and  refectory  is  quite 
different.  In  general  design  it  is  like  the  windows  at  Sempre 
Noiva,  two  horseshoe  arches  springing  from  the  capitals  of 
thin  marble  shafts  and  an  ogee  moulding  above.  The  three 
shafts  are  twisted,  the  capitals  are  very  strange  ;  they  are  round 
with  several  mouldings,  some  fluted,  some  carved  with  leaves, 
some  like  pieces  of  rope  :  the  moulded  abaci  also  have  four 
curious  corbels  on  two  sides.  The  capitals  are  carried  across 
the  jambs  and  the  outer  moulding,  which  is  of  granite,  as  is 
the  whole  except  the  three  shafts  and  their  caps,  and  between 
the  shafts  and  this  moulding  there  is  a  broad  band  of  carved 
foliage.  The  ogee  and  the  side  finials  or  pinnacles,  which  are 
of  the  same  section  as  the  outer  moulding  from  which  they 
spring,  are  made  of  a  bundle  of  small  rolls  held  together  by 
a  broad  twisted  ribbon.  Lastly,  between  the  arches  and  the 
ogee  there  is  a  flat  marble  disk  on  which  is  carved  a  curious 
representation  of  a  stockaded  enclosure,  supposed  to  be 
memorial  of  the  gallant  attack  made  by  Afirinso  de  Mello  on 
Azila  in  Morocco.'  The  whole  is  a  very  curious  piece  of 
work,  the  capitals  and  bases  being,  with  the  exception  of  some 
details  at  Thomar  and  at  Batalha,  the  most  strange  of  the 
details  of  that  period,  though,  were  the  small  corbels  left  out, 
they  would  differ  but  little  from  other  Manoelino  capitals, 
while  the  bases  may  be  only  an  attempt  of  a  Moorish  work- 
man to  copy  the  interpenetration  of  late  Gothic.  (Fig.  48.) 
SSo  Francisco,  Not  much  need  be  said  here  of  the  church  of  Sao  Francisco 
Evora.  or  of  the  chapel  of  Sao  Braz,  both  begun  at  about  the  same 

time.  Sao  Francisco  was  long  in  building,  for  it  was  begun 
by  Affonso  v.  in  1460  and  not  finished  till  1501.  It  is  a  large 
church  close  to  the  ruins  of  the  palace  at  Evora,  and  has  a 
wide  nave  without  aisles,  six  chapels  on  each  side,  larger 
transept  chapels,  and  a  chancel  narrower  than  the  nave.  It  is, 
like  most  of  Evora,  built  of  granite,  has  a  pointed  barrel  vault 
cut  into  by  small  groins  at  the  sides  and  scarcely  any  windows, 
for  the  outer  walls  of  the  side  chapels  are  carried  up  so  as  to 
leave  a  narrow  space  between  them  and  the  nave  wall.  This 
was  probably  done  to  support  the  main  vault,  but  the  result  is 

'   Vllhena  Barbosa,  Monumentos  de  Portugal,  p.  3:4. 


OTHER  MOORISH  BUILDINGS         135 

that  almost  the  only  window  is  a  large  one  over  the  west 
porch.  It  is  this  porch  that  most  strongly  shows  the  hand  of 
Moorish  workmen.  It  is  five  bays  long  and  one  deep,  and 
most  of  the  five  arches  in  front,  separated  hy  Gothic  buttresses 
and  springing  from  late  Gothic  capitals,  are  horseshoe  in 
shape.  The  white  marble  doorway  has  two  arches  springing 
from  a  thin  central  shaft,  which  like  the  arches  and  the  two 
heavy  mouldings,  which  forming  the  outer  part  of  the  jambs  are 
curved  over  them,  is  made  of  a  number  of  small  rounds  partly 
straight  and  partly  twisted.  At  the  corners  of  the  church  are 
large  round  spiral  pinnacles  with  a  continuous  row  of  battle- 
ments between  ;  these  battlements  interspersed  with  round 
pinnacles  are  even  set  all  along  the  ridge  of  the  vault.  The 
reredos  and  the  stalls  made  by  Olivel  of  Ghent  in  1508  are 
gone  ;  so  are  Francisco  Henriques'  stained  windows,  but  there 
are  still  some  good  tiles,  and  in  a  large  square  opening  looking 
into  the  chancel  there  is  a  shaft  with  a  beautiful  early 
renaissance  capital. 

Sao  Braz  stands  outside  the  town  near  the  railway  station.  Sao  Braz, 
It  was  built  as  a  pilgrimage  chapel  soon  after  1482,  when  the 
saint  had  been  invoked  to  stay  a  terrible  plague.  It  is  not 
large,  has  an  aisleless  nave  of  four  bays,  a  large  porch  with 
three  wide  pointed  arches  at  the  west,  and  a  sort  of  domed 
chancel.  Most  of  the  details  are  indeed  Gothic,  but  there  is 
little  detail,  and  the  whole  is  entirely  Eastern  in  aspect.  It  is 
all  plastered,  the  buttresses  are  great  rounded  projections 
capped  with  conical  plastered  roofs  ;  there  are  battlements  on 
the  west  gable  and  on  the  three  sides  of  the  porch,  which  also 
has  great  round  conical-topped  buttresses  or  turrets  at  the 
angles. 

Inside  there  are  still  fine  tiles,  but  the  sgraffito  frieze  has 
nearly  disappeared  from  the  outer  cornice. 

There  is  also  an  interesting  church  somewhat  in  the  same 
style  as  Sao  Braz,  but  with  aisles  and  brick  flying  buttresses 
at  Vianna  d'Alemtcjo  near  Alvito. 


Evora. 


136        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    IX 


MOORISH    CARPENTRY 


If  it  was  only  in  the  south  that  Moorish  masons  built  in 
stone  or  brick,  their  carpenters  had  a  much  wider  range. 
The  wooden  ceilings  of  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  may  show  no  Eastern  detail,  yet  in  the  method  of 
their  construction  they  are  all  ultimately  descended  from 
Moorish  models.  Such  ceilings  are  found  all  over  the  country, 
but  curiously  enough  the  finest  examples  of  truly  Eastern  work 
are  found  in  the  far  north  at  Caminha  and  in  the  island  of 
Madeira  at  Funchal. 

Aguas  Santas.  The  old  romanesque  church  at  Aguas  Santas  near  Oporto 
has  a  roof,  simple  and  unadorned,  the  tie-beams  of  which  are 
coupled  in  the  Moorish  manner.  The  two  beams  about  a 
foot  apart  are  joined  in  the  centre  by  four  short  pieces  of 
wood  set  diagonally  so  as  to  form  a  kind  of  knot.  This  is 
very  common  in  Moorish  roofs,  and  may  be  seen  at  Seville 
and  elsewhere.  The  rest  of  the  roof  is  boarded  inside,  boards 
being  also  fastened  to  the  underside  of  the  collar  beams. 

Azurara.  At  Azurara  the  ties  are  single,  but  the  whole  is  boarded  as 

at  Aguas  Santas,  and  this  is  also  the  case  at  Villa  do  Conde 
and  elsewhere. 

In  the  palace  chapel  at  Cintra,  already  described,  the 
boarding  is  covered  with  a  pattern  of  interlacing  strips,  but 
later  on  panelling  was  used,  usually  with  simple  mouldings. 
Such  is  the  roof  in  the  nave  of  the  church  of  Nossa  Senhora 
do  Clival  at  Thomar,  probably  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  in  many  houses,  as  for  instance  in  the  largest  hall  in  the 
castle  at  Alvito.  From  such  simple  panelled  ceilings  the 
splendid  elaboration  of  those  in  the  palace  at  Cintra  was 
derived. 

Caminha.  The  roofs  at  Caminha  and  at  Funchal  are  rather  different. 

At  Caminha  the  roof  is  divided  into  bays  of  such  a  size  that 


MOORISH  CARPENTRY  137 

each  oi  the  three  divisions,  the  two  sloping  sides  and  the  flat 
centre  under  the  collar  ties,  is  cut  into  squares.  In  the 
sloping  sides  these  squares  are  divided  from  each  other  by  a 
strip  of  boarding  covering  the  space  occupied  by  three  rafters. 
On  this  boarding  are  two  bands  of  ornament  separated  by  a 
carved  chain,  while  one  band,  with  the  chain,  is  returned 
round  the  top  and  bottom  of  the  square.  Between  each  strip 
of  boarding  are  six  exposed  rafters,  and  these  are  united 
alternately  by  small  knots  in  the  middle  and  at  the  ends,  and 
by  larger  and  more  elaborate  knots  at  the  ends.  In  the  flat 
centre  under  the  collar  ties  each  square  is  again  surrounded  by 
the  band  of  ornament  and  by  the  chains,  but  here  band  and 
chain  are  also  carried  across  the  corners,  leaving  a  large 
octagon  in  the  centre  with  four  triangles  in  the  angles.  Each 
octagon  has  a  plain  border  about  a  foot  wide,  and  within  it 
a  plain  moulding  surrounding  an  eight-sided  hollow  space. 
All  these  spaces  are  of  some  depth  ;  each  has  in  the  centre 
a  pendant,  and  in  each  the  opening  is  fringed  with  tracery  or 
foliation.  In  some  are  elaborate  Gothic  cuspings,  in  others 
long  carved  leaves  curved  at  the  ends ;  and  in  one  which 
happens  to  come  exactly  over  an  iron  tie-rod — for  the  rods 
are  placed  quite  irregularly — the  pendant  is  much  longer  and 
is  joined  to  the  tie  by  a  small  iron  bar.  At  the  sides  the  roof 
starts  from  a  cornice  of  some  depth  whose  mouldings  and 
ornamentation  are  more  classic  than  Gothic.     (Fig.  49.) 

In  the  side  aisles  the  cornice  is  similar,  but  of  greater 
projection,  and  the  rafters  are  joined  to  each  other  in  much 
the  same  way,  but  more  simply. 

At   Funchal   the   roof  is   on  a  larger  scale  :    there   is   no  Funchal 
division   into   squares,   but   the   rafters  are   knotted   together 
with  much  greater  elaboration,  and   the  flat  part  is  like  the 
chapel  roof  at  Cintra,  entirely  covered  with  interlacing  strips 
forming  an  intricate  pattern  round  hollow  octagons. 

The  simple  boarditig  of  the  earlier  roofs  may  well  have  Sala  dos 
led  to  the  two  wonderful  ceilings  at  Cintra,  those  in  the  Sala  J-,)-^""- 
dos  Cysnes,  and  in  the  Sala  dos  Brazoes  or  dos  Escudos,  but 
the  idea  of  the  many  octagons  in  the  Sala  dos  Cysnes  may 
have  come  from  some  such  roof  as  that  at  Caminha,  when 
the  octagons  are  so  important  a  feature  of  the  design.  In 
that  hall  swans  may  have  first  been  painted  for  Dom  Joao, 
but  the  roof  has  clearly  been  remade  since  then,  possibly 
under  Dom   Manoel.     The  gilt  ornament  on  the  mouldings 


138        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

seem  even  later,  but  may  of  course  have  been  added  after- 
wards, though  it  is  not  very  unlike  some  of  the  carving  on 
the  roof  at  Caminha,  an  undoubted  work  of  Dom  Manoel's 
time. 

This  great  roof  in  the  Swan  Hall  has  a  deep  and  project- 
ing classical  cornice  ;  it  is  divided  into  three  equal  parts,  two 
sloping  and  one  flat,  with  the  slopes  returned  at  the  ends. 
The  whole  is  made  up  of  twenty-three  large  octagons  and  of 
four  other  rather  distorted  ones  in  the  corners,  all  surrounded 
with  elaborate  mouldings,  carved  and  gilt  like  the  cornice. 
From  the  square  or  three-sided  spaces  left  between  the 
octagons  there  project  from  among  acanthus  leaves  richly 
carved  and  gilt  pendants. 

In  each  of  the  twenty-seven  octagons  there  is  painted  on 
a  flat-boarded  ground  a  large  swan,  each  wearing  on  its  neck 
the  red  velvet  and  gold  collar  made  by  Dona  Isabel  for  the 
real  swans  in  the  tank  outside.  These  paintings,  which  are 
very  well  done,  certainly  seem  to  belong  to  the  seventeenth 
century,  for  the  trees  and  water  are  not  at  all  like  the  work 
of  an  artist  of  Dom  Manoel's  time.  (Fig.  50.) 
Salados  Even  more  remarkable  is  the  roof  of  the  Sala  dos  Brazoes 

Esciidos  OP  (ios  Escudos — that  is  '  of  the  shields ' — also  built  by  Dom 
Manoel,  and  also  retouched  at  the  same  time  as  that  in  the 
Sala  dos  Cysnes.  This  other  hall  is  a  large  room  over  forty 
feet  square.  The  cornice  begins  about  twelve  feet  from  the 
ground,  the  walls  being  covered  with  hunting  scenes  on  blue 
and  white  tiles  of  about  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
The  cornice,  about  three  feet  deep  and  of  considerable  pro- 
jection, is,  like  all  the  mouldings,  painted  blue  and  enriched 
with  elaborate  gilt  carving.  On  the  frieze  is  the  following 
inscription  in  large  gilt  letters  : 

Pois  com  esforijos  Icais 
Services  foram  ganhadas 
Com  estas  e  outras  tais 
Dcvcm  de  ser  comscrvadas.^ 

The  inscription  is  interrupted  by  brackets,  round  which  the 
cornice  is  returned,  and  on  which  rest  round  arches  thrown 
across  the  four  corners,  bringing  the  whole  to  an  equal-sided 

1  Though  the  grammar  seems  a  little  doubtful  this  seems  to  mean 
Since  these  by  service  were 
And  loyal  efforts  gained, 
By  these  and  others  like  to  them 
Thev  oMScht  to  be  maintaineil. 


Cintra. 


29 


3         i^ 

OS     Jr 


—    73 


•o 


MOORISH  CARPENTRY 


139 


octagon.  These  triangular  spaces  are  roofed  with  elaborate 
wooden  vaults,  with  carved  and  gilt  ribs  leaving  spaces 
painted  blue  and  covered  with  gilt  ornament.  Above  the 
cornice  the  panelling  rises  perpendicularly  for  about  eleven 
feet  ;  there  beina  on  each  cardinal  side  eight  panels,  in  two 


CINTRA 


TfV>-B'B''B.'B©''ei'!l.  . 


SalEi   rtffls     Jft»'«7 


rows  of  four,  one  above  the  other,  :ind  over  each  arch  four 
more — forty-eight  panels  in  all.  Above  this  begins  an  octa- 
gonal dome  with  elaborately  carved  and  gilt  mouldings,  like 
those  round  the  panels,  in  each  angle  and  round  the  large 
octagon  which  comes  in  the  middle  of  each  side.  The  next 
stage  is  similar,  but  set  at  a  different  angle,  and  with  smaller 


I40        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

and  unequal-sided  octagons,  while  the  dome  ends  in  one  large 
flat  eight-sided  panel  forty-five  feet  above  the  floor.  All  the 
space  between  the  mouldings  and  the  octagons  is  filled  with 
most  elaborate  gilt  carving  on  a  blue  ground.  Nor  does  the 
decoration  stop  here,  for  the  whole  is  a  veritable  Heralds' 
College  for  all  the  noblest  families  of  Portugal  in  the  early 
years  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  large  flat  panel  at  the 
top  is  filled  with  the  royal  arms  carved  and  painted,  with  a 
crown  above  and  rich  gilt  mantling  all  round.  In  the  eight 
panels  below  are  the  arms  of  Dom  Manoel's  eight  children, 
and  in  the  eight  large  octagons  lower  down  are  painted  large 
stags  with  scrolls  between  their  horns  ;  lastly,  in  each  of  the 
forty-eight  panels  at  the  bottom,  and  of  the  six  spaces  which 
occur  under  each  of  the  vaults  in  the  four  corners;  in  each 
of  these  seventy-two  panels  or  spaces  there  is  painted  a  stag. 
Every  stag  has  round  its  neck  a  shield  charged  with  the  arms 
of  a  noble  family,  between  its  horns  a  crest,  and  behind  it  a 
scroll  on  which  is  written  the  name  of  the  family.' 

The  whole  of  this  is  of  wood,  and  for  beauty  and  origin- 
ality of  design,  as  well  as  for  richness  of  colour,  cannot  be 
surpassed  anywhere.  In  any  northern  countrv  the  seven 
small  windows  would  not  let  in  enough  light,  and  the  whole 
dome  would  be  in  darkness,  but  the  sky  and  air  of  Portugal 
are  clear  enough  for  every  detail  to  be  seen,  and  for  the  gold 
on  every  moulding  and  piece  of  carving  to  gleam  brightly 
from  the  blue  background. 

None  of  the  ceilings  of  later  date  are  in  any  way  to  be 
compared  in  beauty  or  richness  with  those  of  these  two  halls, 
for  in  all  others  the  mouldings  are  shallower  and  the  panels 
flatter. 
Coimbra  In  Coimbra  there  are  two,  both  good  examples  of  a  simpler 

form  of  such  ceilings.  They  are,  one  in  the  Misericordia — 
the  headquarters  of  a  corporation  which  owns  and  looks  after 
all  the  hospitals,  asylums  and  orphanages  in  the  town — and 
one  in  the  great  hall  of  the  University.  The  Misericordia, 
built  by  bishop  Aflx)nso  de  Castello  Branco  about  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  has  a  good  cloister  of  the  later  renaissance, 
and  opening  off  it  two  rooms  of  considerable  size  with  panelled 

'  One  blank  space  in  one  of  the  corners  is  pointed  out  as  having  contained  the 
arms  of  the  Duqiie  d'Aveiro  beheaded  for  conspiracy  in  175S.  In  reality  it  was 
painted  with  the  arms  of  the  Coelhos,  but  the  old  boarding  tell  out  and  has  never 
been  replaced. 


Misericordia. 


■MOORISH   CARPENTRY  141 

ceilings,  of  which  only  one  has  its  original  painting.  A 
cornice  of  some  size,  with  brackets  projecting  from  the  frieze 
to  carry  the  upper  mouldings,  goes  round  the  room,  and  is 
carried  across  the  corners  so  that  at  the  ends  of  the  room  the 
ceiling  has  one  longer  and  two  quite  short  sides.  The  lower 
sloping  part  of  the  ceiling  all  round  is  divided  into  square 
panels  with  three-sided  panels  next  the  squares  on  the  short 
canted  sides  ;  the  upper  slope  is  divided  in  exactly  the  same 
way  so  that  the  flat  centre-piece  consists  of  three  squares  set 
diagonally  and  of  four  triangles.  All  the  panels  are  painted 
with  a  variety  of  emblems,  but  the  colours  are  dark  and  the 
ceiling  now  looks  rather  dingy. 

The  great  hall  of  the  University  built  by  the  rector,  Sala  dos 
Manoel  de  Saldanha,  in  1655  is  a  very  much  larger  and  finer  t:apellos 
room.  A  raised  seat  runs  round  the  whole  room,  the  lower 
part  of  the  walls  are  covered  with  tiles,  and  the  upper  with 
red  silk  brocade  on  which  hang  portraits  of  all  the  kings  of 
Portugal,  many  doubtless  as  authentic  as  the  early  kings  of 
Scotland  at  Holyrood.  Here  only  the  upper  part  of  the 
cornice  is  carried  across  the  corners,  and  the  three  sides  at 
either  end  are  equal,  each  being  two  panels  wide. 

As  in  the  Misericordia  the  section  of  the  roof  is  five-sided, 
each  two  panels  wide.  All  the  panels  are  square  except  at 
the  half-octagonal  ends  where  they  diminish  in  breadth 
towards  the  top  :  they  are  separated  by  a  large  cable  moulding 
and  are  painted  alternately  red  and  blue  with  an  elaborate 
design  in  darker  colour  on  each.     (Fig.  51.) 

The  effect  is  surprisingly  good,  tor  each  panel  with  its 
beautiful  design  of  curling  and  twisting  acanthus,  of  birds,  of 
mermaids  and  of  vases  has  almost  the  look  of  beautiful  old 
brocade,  for  the  blues  and  reds  have  grown  sott  with  age. 

Before  finally  leaving  wood  ceilings  it  were  better  to  speak 
of  another  form  or  style  which  was  sometimes  used  for  their 
decoration  although  they  are  even  freer  from  Moorish  detail 
than  are  those  at  Coimbra,  though  probably  like  them 
ultimately  derived  from  the  same  source.  One  of  the  finest 
of  these  ceilings  is  found  in  the  upper  Nuns'  Choir  in  the 
church  of  Santa  Clara  at  Villa  do  Conde.  The  church  con-  Santa  Clara, 
sists  of  a  short  nave  with  transepts  and  chancel  all  roofed  ^'"•■» ''" 
With  panelled  wooden  ceilings,  painted  grey  as  is  orten  the 
case,  and  in  no  way  remarkable.  The  church  was  founded  in 
131 8,  but  the  ceilings  and  stalls  ot   both  Nuns'  Choirs,  which, 


Aveiro. 


142       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

one  above  the  other  take  up  much  the  greater  part  of  the 
nave,  cannot  be  earlier  than  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  Like  the  other  ceilings  it  is  polygonal  in  section, 
but  unlike  all  Moorish  ones  is  not  returned  round  the  ends. 
Above  a  finely  carved  cornice  with  elaborate  frieze,  the  whole 
ceiling  is  divided  into  deeply  set  panels,  large  and  small 
squares  with  narrow  rectangles  between  :  all  alike  covered 
with  elaborate  carving,  as  are  also  the  mouldings  and  the  flat 
surfaces  of  the  dividing  bands.  Here  the  wood  is  left  in  its 
Convent,  natural  colour,  but  in  the  nave  of  the  church  of  a  large  con- 
vent at  Aveiro,  where  the  general  design  of  the  ceiling  is 
almost  the  same,  pictures  are  painted  in  the  larger  panels, 
and  all  the  rest  is  heavily  gilt,  making  the  whole  most 
gorgeous. 

As  time  went  on  wooden  roofs  became  less  common,  stone 
barrel  vaults  taking  their  place,  but  where  they  were  used  they 
were  designed  with  a  mass  of  meaningless  ornament,  lavished 
over  the  whole  surface,  which  was  usually  gilt.  One  of  the 
most  remarkable  examples  of  such  a  roof  is  found  in  the 
chancel  of  that  same  church  at  Aveiro.  It  is  semicircular  in 
shape  and  is  all  covered  with  greater  and  smaller  carved  and 
gilt  circles,  from  the  smallest  of  which  in  the  middle  large 
pendants  hang  down. 

These  circles  are  so  arranged  as  to  make  the  roof  almost  like 
that  of  Henry  vii.  Chapel,  though  the  two  really  only  resemble 
each  other  in  their  extreme  richness  and  elaboration.  This 
same  extravagance  of  gilding  and  of  carving  also  overtook 
altar  and  reredos.  Now  almost  every  church  is  full  of  huge 
masses  of  gilt  wood,  in  which  hardly  one  square  inch  has  been 
left  uncarved  ;  sometimes,  if  there  is  nothing  else,  and  the 
whole  church — walls  and  ceiling  alike — -is  a  mass  of  gilding 
and  painting,  the  effect  is  not  bad,  but  sometimes  the  contrast 
is  terrible  between  the  plain  grey  walls  of  some  old  and  simple 
building  and  the  exuberance  behind  the  high  altar. 


so 


COIMIIRA. 

ll.M.i.  01-  UxivERsnv. 


EARLY  MANOELINO  143 


CHAPTER    X 

EARLY   MANOELINO 

Affonso  v.,  the  African,  had  died  and  been  succeeded  by  his 
son  Joao  11.  in  1487.  Joao  tried,  not  without  success,  to  play 
the  part  of  Louis  xi.  of  France  and  by  a  judicious  choice  of 
victims  (he  had  the  duke  of  Braganza,  the  richest  noble  in 
the  country,  arrested  by  a  Cortes  at  Evora  and  executed,  and 
he  murdered  his  cousin  the  duke  of  Vizeu  with  his  own 
hand)  he  destroyed  the  power  of  the  feudal  nobility.  En- 
riched by  the  confiscation  of  his  victims'  possessions,  the  king 
was  enabled  to  do  without  the  help  of  the  Cortes,  and  so  to 
establish  himself  as  a  despotic  ruler.  Yet  he  governed  for  the 
benefit  of  the  people  at  large,  and  reversing  the  policy  of  his 
father  Affonso  directed  the  energies  of  his  people  towards 
maritime  commerce  and  exploration  instead  of  wasting  them 
in  quarrelling  with  Castile  or  in  attempting  the  conquest  of 
Morocco.  It  was  he  who,  following  the  example  of  his  grand- 
uncle  Prince  Henry,  sent  out  ship  after  ship  to  find  a  way  to 
India  round  the  continent  of  Africa.  Much  had  already  been 
done,  for  in  1471  Fernando  Po  had  reached  the  mouth  of  the 
Niger,  and  all  the  coast  southward  from  Morocco  was  well 
known  and  visited  annually,  for  slaves  used  to  cultivate  the 
vast  estates  in  the  Alemtejo  ;  but  it  was  not  till  1484  that 
Diogo  Cao,  sent  out  by  the  king,  discovered  the  mouth  of  the 
Congo,  or  till  i486  that  Bartholomeu  Diaz  doubled  the  Cabo 
Tormentoso,  an  ill-omened  name  which  Dom  Joao  changed 
to  Good  Hope. 

Dom  Joao  11.  did  not  live  to  greet  Vasco  da  Gama  on  his 
return  from  India,  for  he  died  in  1495,  ^"^  ^^  ^^^  already 
done  so  much  that  Dom  Manoel  had  only  to  reap  the  reward 
of  his  predecessor's  labours.  The  one  great  mistake  he  made 
was  that  in  1493  he  dismissed  Columbus  as  a  dreamer,  and 
so  left   the  glory  of  the   discovery  of  America   to   Ferdinand 


144       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

and  Isabella.  Besides  doing  so  much  for  the  trade  of  his 
country,  Dom  Joao  did  what  he  could  to  promote  literature 
and  art.  Andrea  da  Sansovino  worked  for  him  for  nine  years 
from  1 49 1  to  1499,  and  although  scarcely  anything  done  by  him 
can  now  be  found,  he  here  too  set  an  example  to  Dom  Manoel, 
who  summoned  so  many  foreign  artists  to  the  country  and 
who  sent  so  many  of  his  own  people  to  study  in  Italy  and 
in  Flanders. 

Four  years  before  Dom  Joao  died,  his  only  son  AfFonso, 
riding  down  from  Almerim  to  the  Tagus  to  meet  his  father, 
who  had  been  bathing,  fell  from  his  horse  and  was  killed.  In 
1495  he  himself  died,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  cousin, 
Manoel  the  Fortunate.  Dom  Manoel  indeed  deserved  the 
name  of  '  Venturoso.'  He  succeeded  his  cousin  just  in  time 
to  see  Vasco  da  Gama  start  on  his  great  voyage  which  ended 
in  1497  at  Calicut.  Three  years  later  Pedro  Alvares  Cabral 
landed  in  Brazil,  and  before  the  king  died,  Goa — the  great 
Portuguese  capital  of  the  East — had  become  the  centre  of  a 
vast  trade  with  India,  Ormuz  '  in  the  Persian  Gulf  of  trade 
with  Persia,  while  all  the  spices  -  of  the  East  flowed  into  Lisbon 
and  even  Pekin  ^  had  been  reached. 

From  all  these  lands,  from  Africa,  from  Brazil,  and  from 
the  East,  endless  wealth  poured  into  Lisbon,  nearly  all  of  it 
into  the  royal  treasury,  so  that  Dom  Manoel  became  the 
richest  sovereign  of  his  time. 

In  some  other  ways  he  was  less  happy.  To  please  the 
Catholic  Kings,  for  he  wished  to  marry  their  daughter  Isabel, 
widow  of  the  young  Prince  AfFonso,  he  expelled  the  Jews  and 
many  Moors  from  the  country.  As  they  went  they  cursed 
him  and  his  house,  and  Miguel,  the  only  child  born  to  him 
and  Queen  Isabel,  and  heir  not  only  to  Portugal  but  to  all  the 
Spains,  died  when  a  baby.  Isabel  had  died  at  her  son's  birth, 
and  Manoel,  still  anxious  that  the  whole  peninsula  should  be 
united  under  his  descendants,  married  her  sister  Maria.  His 
wish  was  realised — but  not  as  he  had  hoped — for  his  daughter 
Isabel  married  her  cousin  Charles  v.  and  so  was  the  mother  of 
Philip  II.,  who,  when  Cardinal  King  Henry  died  in  1580,  was 
strong  enough  to  usurp  the  throne  of  Portugal. 

Being  so  immensely  rich,  Dom  Manoel  was  able  to  cover 

1  Affonso  de  Albuquerque  took  Onnuz  in  i  509  and  Goa  next  year. 

2  Sumatra  was  visited  in  1509. 

3  Fernao  Peres  de  Andrade  established  himself  at  Canton  in   151 7  and  reached 
Pekin  in  1521. 


EARLY  MANOELINO  145 

the  whole  land  with  buildings.  Damiiio  de  Goes,  who  died  in 
1570,  gives  a  list  of  sixty-two  works  paid  for  by  him.  These 
include  cathedrals,  monasteries,  churches,  palaces,  town  walls, 
fortifications,  bridges,  arsenals,  and  the  draining  of  marshes, 
and  this  long  list  does  not  take  in  nearly  all  that  Dom  Manoel 
is  known  to  have  built. 

Nearly  all  these  churches  and  palaces  were  built  or  added 
to  in  that  peculiar  style  now  called  Manoelino.  Some  have 
seen  in  Manoelino  only  a  development  of  the  latest  phase  of 
Spanish  Gothic,  but  that  is  not  likely,  for  in  Spain  that  latest 
phase  lasted  for  but  a  short  time,  and  the  two  were  really 
almost  contemporaneous. 

Manoelino  does  not  always  show  the  same  characteristics. 
Sometimes  it  is  exuberant  Gothic  mixed  with  something  else, 
something  peculiar,  and  this  phase  seems  to  have  grown  out 
of  a  union  of  late  Gothic  and  Moorish.  Sometimes  it  is 
frankly  naturalistic,  and  this  seems  to  have  been  developed 
out  of  the  first  ;  and  sometimes  Gothic  and  renaissance  are 
used  together.  In  this  phase,  the  composition  is  still  always 
Gothic,  though  the  details  may  be  renaissance.  At  times,  of 
course,  all  phases  are  found  together,  but  those  which  most 
distinctly  deserve  the  name,  Manoelino,  are  the  first  and 
second. 

The  shape  of  the  arches,  whether  of  window  or  of  door,  is 
one  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of  Manoelino.  After 
it  had  been  well  established  they  were  rarely  pointed.  Some 
are  round,  some  trefoils  ;  some  have  a  long  line  of  wavy 
curves,  others  a  line  of  sharp  angles  and  curves  together.'  In 
others,  like  the  door  to  the  Sala  das  Pegas  at  Cintra,  and  so 
probably  derived  from  Moorish  sources,  the  arch  is  made  of 
three  or  more  convex  curves,  and  in  others  again  the  arch  is 
half  of  a  straight-sided  polygon,  while  in  many  of  the  more 
elaborate  all  or  many  of  these  may  be  used  together  to  make 
one  complicated  whole  of  interlacing  mouldings  and  hanging 
cusps. 

The  capitals  too  are  different  trom  any  that  have  come 
before.  Some  are  round,  but  they  are  more  commonly  eight- 
sided,  or  have  at  least  an  eight-sided  abacus,  often  with  the 
sides  hollow  forming  a  star.  If  ornamented  \\ith  leaves,  the 
leaves  do  not  grow  out  of  the  bell  but  are  laid  round  it  like  a 

'  Compare  the  elaborate   outlines  of  some   Arab  arches  at  the  Alhambra  or  in 
Morocco. 


146        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

wreath.  But  leaf  carving  is  not  common  ;  usually  the  caps 
are  merely  moulded,  one  or  two  of  the  mouldings  being  often 
like  a  rope  ;  or  branches  may  be  set  round  them  sometimes 
bound  together  with  a  broad  ribbon  like  a  bent  faggot.  The 
bases  too  are  usually  octagonal  with  an  ogee  section. 

Another  feature  common  to  ail  phases  is  the  use  of  round 
mouldings,  either  one  by  itself — often  forming  a  kind  of 
twisting  broken  hood-mould — or  of  several  together,  when 
they  usually  form  a  spiral.  Such  a  round  moulding  has  already 
been  seen  forming  an  ogee  over  the  windows  at  Sempre  Noiva 
and  over  the  chapter-house  door  at  S;lo  Joao  Evangelista, 
Evora,  and  there  are  at  Evora  two  windows  side  by  side,  in 
one  of  which  this  round  moulding  forms  a  simple  ogee,  while 
in  the  other  it  forms  a  series  of  reversed  curves  after  the  true 
Manoelino  manner. 
House  of  They  are  in  the  house  of  Garcia  de  Resende,  a  man  of 
Resende,   rnanv  accomplishments  whose  services  were  much  valued  both 

£vor3 

by  Dom  Jofio  and  by  Dom  Manoel.  He  seems  too  to  have  been 
an  architect  of  some  distinction,  if,  as  is  said,  he  designed  the 
Torre  de  Sao  Vicente  at  Belem. 

This  second  window  in  his  house  is  one  of  the  best 
examples  of  the  complete  union  between  Gothic  and  Moorish. 
It  has  three  shafts,  one  (in  the  centre)  with  a  iVIoorish  capital, 
and  two  whose  caps  are  bound  round  with  a  piece  of  rope. 
The  semicircular  arches  consist  of  one  round  moulding  with 
round  cusps.  A  hollow  mould  runs  down  the  two  jambs  and 
over  the  two  arches,  turning  up  as  an  ogee  at  the  top.  Beyond 
this  hollow  are  two  tail  round  shafts  ending  in  large  croclceted 
finials,  while  tied  to  them  with  carved  cords  is  a  curious  hood- 
mould,  forming  three  reversed  cusps  ending  in  large  finials, 
one  in  the  centre  and  one  over  each  of  the  arches,  and  at  the 
two  ends  curling  across  the  hollow  like  a  cut-off  branch. 

Here  then  we  have  an  example  not  only  of  the  use  of  the 
round  moulding,  but  also  of  naturalistic  treatment  which  was 
afterwards  sometimes  carried  to  excess. 

Probably  this  window  may  be  rather  later  in  date  than 
at  least  the  foundation  of  the  churches  of  Nossa  Senhora 
do  Popolo  at  Caldas  da  Rainha  or  of  the  Jesus  Convent  at 
Setubal  ;  but  it  is  in  itself  so  good  an  example  of  the  change 
from  the  simple  ogee  to  the  round  broken  moulding  and  of 
the  use  of  naturalistic  features,  that  it  has  been  taken  first. 

In  1485   Queen  Leonor,  wife  of  Dom  Joao  11.,  began  a 


EARLY  MANOELINO  147 

hospital  for  poor  bathers  at  the  place  now  called  after  her,  CaUiasda 
Caldas  da  Rainha,  or  Queen's  hot  baths.  Beside  the  hospital  Kamha. 
was  built  a  small  church,  now  a  good  deal  altered,  with  simple 
round-headed  windows,  and  a  curious  cresting.  Attached 
to  it  is  a  tower,  interesting  as  being  the  only  Manoelino 
church  tower  now  existing.  The  lower  part  is  square  and 
plain,  but  the  upper  is  very  curious.  On  one  side  are  two 
belfry  windows,  with  depressed  trefoil  heads — that  is  the 
top  of  the  trefoil  has  a  double  curve,  exactly  like  the  end 
of  a  clover  leaf.  On  the  outer  side  of  each  window  is  a 
twisted  shaft  with  another  between  them,  and  from  the  top 
of  these  shafts  grow  round  branches  forming  an  arch  over 
each  window,  and  twining  up  above  them  in  interlacing 
curves.  The  window  on  the  east  side  has  a  very  fantastic 
head  of  broken  curves  and  straight  lines.  A  short  way 
above  the  windows  the  square  is  changed  to  an  octagon  by 
curved  offsets.  There  are  clock  faces  under  small  gables  on 
each  cardinal  side,  and  at  the  top  of  it  all  rises  a  short  eight- 
sided  spire. 

Probably  this  was  the  last  part  of  the  church  to  be  built, 
and  so  would  not  be  finished  till  about  the  year  1502,  when 
the  whole  was  dedicated. 

More  interesting  than  this  is  the  Jesus  College  at  Setubal.  Jesus,  Setubal. 
Founded  by  Justa  Rodrigues,  Dom  Manoel's  nurse,  in  1487 
or  1 48 8  and  designed  bv  one  Boutaca  or  Boitaca,^  it  was 
probably  finished  sooner  than  the  church  at  Caldas,  and  is  the 
best  example  in  the  country  of  a  late  Gothic  church  modified 
by  the  addition  of  certain  Manoelino  details.  Unfortunately 
it  was  a  good  deal  injured  by  the  great  earthquake  in  1755, 
when  it  lost  all  pinnacles  and  parapets.  The  church  consists 
of  a  nave  and  aisles  of  three  and  a  half  bays  and  of  a  square 
chancel.  Inside,  the  side  aisles  are  vaulted  with  a  half  barrel 
and  the  central  with  a  simple  vault  having  large  plain 
chamfered  ribs.  The  columns,  trefoils  in  section,  are  twisted, 
and  have  simple  moulded  caps.  The  chancel  which  is  higher 
than  the  nave  is  entered  by  a  large  pointed  arch,  which  like 
its  jambs  has  one  of  its  mouldings  twisted.  The  chancel 
vault  has  many  ribs,  most  of  which  are  also  twisted.  All 
the  piers  and  jambs  as  well  as  the  windows  are  built  of 
Arrabida  marble,  a  red  breccia  found  in  the  mountains  to  the 

'  Some  have  siipposrd   that   Houtaca  was  a  t'orclgiicr,  but  tliere  is  a  place  called 
Boutaca  near  Ralaiha,  so  he  probably  came  from  there. 


hB 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Beja, 
Concei^ao. 


Castle. 


Pa^o,  Cintra. 


west  of  Setubal  ;  the  rest  is  all  whitewashed  except  the  arches 
and  vaulting  ribs  which  are  painted  in  imitation  of  the  marble 
piers. 

Outside,  the  main  door,  also  of  Arrabida  marble,  is 
large  and  pointed,  with  many  mouldings  and  two  empty 
niches  on  each  side.  It  has  little  trace  of  Manoelino  except 
in  the  bent  curves  of  the  upturned  drip-mould,  and  in  the 
broken  lines  of  the  two  smaller  doors  which  open  under  the 
plain  tympanum.  The  nave  window  is  of  two  lights  with 
simple  tracery,  but  in  the  chancel,  which  was  ready  by  1495, 
the  window  shows  more  Manoelino  tendencies.  It  is  of  three 
lights,  with  flowing  tracery  at  the  head,  and  with  small  cusped 
and  crocketed  arches  thrown  across  each  light  at  varying 
levels.  There  are  niches  on  the  jambs,  and  the  outer  mould- 
ing is  carried  round  the  window  head  in  broken  curves,  after 
the  manner  of  Resende's  house  at  Evora.  Though  the  chancel 
is  square  inside,  the  corners  outside  are  cut  off  bv  a  very 
broad  chamfer,  and  a  very  curious  ogee  curve  unites  the  two. 

The  cloisters  to  the  north  are  more  usual.  The  arches 
are  round  or  slightly  pointed,  and  like  the  short  round 
columns  with  their  moulded  eight-sided  caps  and  sides,  are  of 
Arrabida  marble.  Half-way  along  each  walk  two  of  the 
columns  are  set  more  closely  together,  and  between  them  is 
a  small  round  arch,  with  below  it  a  Manoelino  trefoil  ; 
there  is  too  in  the  north-west  corner  a  lavatory  with  a  good 
flat  vault. 

At  Beja  the  church  ot  the  Concei^ao,  founded  by  Dom 
Manoel's  father,  has  been  very  much  pulled  about,  but  the 
cornice  and  parapet  with  Gothic  details,  rope  mouldings,  and 
twisted  pinnacles  still  show  that  it  also  was  built  when  the 
new  Manoelino  style  was  first  coming  into  use. 

In  the  ruins  of  the  Castle  there  is  a  very  picturesque 
window  where  two  horseshoe  arches  are  set  so  close  together 
that  the  arches  meet  in  such  a  way  that  the  cusps  at  their 
meeting  form  a  pendant,  while  another  window  in  the  Rua 
dos  Mercadores,  though  very  like  the  one  in  Resende's  house 
in  Evora,  is  more  naturalistic.  The  outer  shafts  of  the 
jambs  are  carved  like  tree  trunks,  and  the  hood  moulding 
like  a  thick  branch  is  bent  and  interlaced  with  other  branches. 

The  additions  made  to  the  palace  at  Cintra  by  Dom 
Manoel  are  a  complete  treasury  of  Manoelino  detail  in  its 
earlier  phases. 


EARLY  MANOELINO  149 

The  works  were  already  begun  in  1508,  and  in  January 
of  the  previous  year  Andre  Gonsalves,  who  was  in  charge, 
bought  two  notebooks  for  240  reis  in  which  to  set  down 
expenses,  as  well  as  paper  for  his  office  and  four  bottles  of 
ink.  From  these  books  we  learn  what  wages  the  different 
workmen  received.  Pero  de  Carnide,  the  head  mason,  got 
50  reis  or  about  twopence-halfpenny  a  day,  and  his  helper 
only  35  reis.  The  chief  carpenter,  Johan  Cordeiro,  had 
60  reis  a  day,  and  so  had  Gonc^alo  Gomes,  the  head  painter. 
All  the  workmen  are  recorded  from  Pero  de  Torres,  who  was 
paid  3500  reis,  about  14  shillings,  for  each  of  the  windows  he 
carved  and  set  up,  down  to  the  man  who  got  35  reis  a 
day  for  digging  holes  for  planting  orange -trees  and  for 
clearing  out  the  place  where  the  rabbits  were  kept.  Andre 
Gonsalves  also  speaks  of  a  Boitaca,  master  mason.  He  was 
doubtless  the  Boitaca  or  Boutaca  of  the  Jesus  Church  at 
Setubal  and  afterwards  at  Belem,  though  none  of  his  work 
at  Setubal  in  any  way  resembles  anything  he  may  have  done 
here. 

The  carriage  entry  which  runs  under  the  palace  between 
Dom  Manoel's  addition  and  the  earlier  part  of  the  palace, 
has  in  it  some  very  characteristic  capitals,  two  which  support 
the  entrance  arch,  while  one  belongs  to  the  central  column  of 
an  arcade  which  forms  a  sort  of  aisle  on  the  west  side.  They 
are  all  round,  though  one  belongs  to  an  octagonal  shaft. 
They  have  no  abacus  proper,  but  instead  two  branches  are 
bent  round,  bound  together  by  a  wide  ribbon.  Below  these 
branches  are  several  short  pieces  of  rope  turned  in  just  above 
the  neck-mould,  and  between  them  carved  balls,  something 
like  two  artichokes  stuck  together  face  to  face. 

On  the  east  side  of  the  entry  a  large  doorway  leads  into 
the  newer  part  of  the  palace,  in  which  are  now  the  queen- 
dowager's  private  rooms.  This  doorhead  is  most  typical 
of  the  style.  In  the  centre  two  flat  convex  curves  meet  at 
an  obtuse  angle.  At  the  end  of  about  two  feet  on  either 
side  of  the  centre  the  moulding  forming  these  curves  is  bent 
sharply  down  for  a  few  inches  to  a  point,  and  is  then  united 
to  the  jambs  bv  a  curve  rather  longer  than  a  semicircle. 
Outside  the  round  moulding  forming  these  curves  and  bends 
is  a  hollow  following  the  same  lines  and  filled  with  branch- 
work,  curved,  twisted,  and  intertwined.  Outside  the  hollow 
are   shafts,   resting   on    octagonal    and    interpenetrating    bases. 


I50        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

These  shafts  are  half-octagon  in  section  with  hollow — not  as 
usual  rounded — sides,  ornamented  with  four-leafed  flowers, 
and  are  twisted.  1  heir  capitals  are  formed  by  three  carved 
wreaths,  from  which  the  shafts  rise  to  curious  halt-Gothic 
pinnacles  ;  they  are  also  curved  over  to  form  a  hood-mould. 
Above  the  central  curves  this  moulding  is  broken  and  turned 
up  to  end  in  most  curious  cone-shaped  horns,  while  from  the 
middle  there  grows  a  large  and  elaborate  finial. 

In  the  front  of  the  new  part  overlooking  the  entrance 
court  there  are  six  windows,  three  in  each  floor.  They  are 
all,  except  for  a  slight  variation  in  detail,  exactly  alike,  and 
are  evidently  derived  from  the  Moorish  windows  in  the  other 
parts  of  the  palace.  Like  them  each  has  two  round-headed 
lights,  and  a  framing  standing  on  corbelled-out  bases  at  the 
sides.  The  capitals  are  various,  most  are  mere  wreaths  of 
foliage,  but  one  belonging  to  the  centre  shaft  of  the  middle 
window  on  the  lower  floor  lias  twisted  round  it  two  branches 
out  of  which  grow  the  cusps.  While  at  the  sides  there  is  no 
distinct  abacus,  in  the  centre  it  is  always  square  and  moulded. 
The  cusps  end  in  knobs  like  thistle-heads,  and  are  themselves 
rather  branchlike.  In  the  hollow  between  the  shafts  and  the 
framing  there  are  sometimes  square  or  round  flowers,  some- 
times twisting  branches.  Branches  too  form  the  framing  of 
all,  they  are  intertwined  up  the  sides,  and  form  above  the 
arches  a  straight-topped  mass  of  interlacing  twigs,  out  of 
which  grow  three  large  finials. 

Originally  the  three  windows  of  the  upper  floor  belonged 
to  a  large  hall  whose  ceiling  was  like  that  of  the  Sala  dos 
Cysnes.  Unfortunately  the  ceiling  was  destroyed,  and  the 
hall  cut  up  into  small  rooms  some  time  ago.      (Fig.  52.) 

Inside  are  several  Manoelino  doorways.  One  at  the  end 
of  a  passage  has  a  half-octagonal  head,  with  curved  sides. 
Beyond  a  hollow  moulding  enriched  with  square  flowers  are 
thick  twisted  shafts,  which  are  carried  up  to  form  a  hood- 
mould  following  the  curves  of  the  opening  below,  and  having 
at  each  angle  a  large  radiating  finial. 

Besides  these  additions  Dom  Manoel  made  not  a  few 
changes  in  the  older  part  of  the  palace.  The  main  door 
leading  into  the  Sala  dos  Cysnes  is  of  his  time,  as  is  too  a 
window  in  the  upper  passage  leading  to  the  chapel  gallery. 
Though  the  walls  of  the  Sala  das  Duas  Irmas  are  probably 
older,  he  altered  it  inside  and  built  the  two  rows  of  columns 


EARLY  MANOELINO  151 

and  arches  which  support  the  floor  of  the  Sala  dos  Brazoes 
above.  The  arches  are  round  and  unmoulded.  The  thin 
columns  are  also  round,  but  the  bases  are  eight-sided  ;  so  are 
the  capitals,  but  with  a  round  abacus  of  boughs  and  twisted 
ribbons.  The  great  hall  above  is  also  Dom  Manoel's  work, 
though  the  ceiling  may  probably  have  been  retouched  since. 
His  also  are  the  two-light  windows,  with  slender  shafts  and 
heads  more  or  less  trefoil  in  shape,  but  with  many  small 
convex  curves  in  the  middle.  The  lower  part  of  the  outer 
cornice  too  is  interesting,  and  made  of  brick  plastered.  At 
the  bottom  is  a  large  rope  moulding,  then  three  courses  of 
tilelike  bricks  set  diagonally.  Above  them  is  a  broad  frieze 
divided  into  squares  by  a  round  moulding  ;  there  are  two 
rows  of  these  squares,  and  in  each  is  an  opening  with  a  tri- 
angular head  like  a  pigeon-hole,  which  has  given  rise  to  the 
belief  that  it  was  added  by  the  Marquez  de  Pombal  after  the 
great  earthquake.  Pombal  means  '  dovecot,'  and  so  it  is 
supposed  that  the  marquis  added  a  pigeon-house  wherever 
he  could.  He  may  have  built  the  upper  part  of  the  cornice, 
which  might  belong  to  the  eighteenth  century,  but  the  lower 
part  is  certainly  older. 

The  white  marble  door  leading  to  the  Sala  dos  Brazoes 
from  the  upper  passage  is  part  of  Dom  Manoel's  work.  It 
has  a  flat  ogee  head  with  round  projections  which  give  it  a 
roughly  trefoil  shape,  and  is  framed  in  rope  mouldings  of 
great  size,  which  end  above  in  three  curious  finials. 

There  are  not  very  many  churches  built  entirely  in  this 
style,  though  to  many  a  door  or  a  window  may  have  been 
added  or  even  a  tiave,  as  was  done  to  the  church  of  the  Order 
of  Christ  at  Thomar  and  perhaps  to  the  cathedral  of  Guarda. 
Santa  Cruz  at  Coimbra  is  entirely  Manoelino,  but  is  too  large 
and  too  full  of  the  work  of  the  foreigners  who  brought  in  the 
most  beautiful  features  of  the  French  renaissance  to  be  spoken 
of  now.  Another  is  the  church  at  GoUegil,  not  far  from  the  collega. 
Tagus  and  about  half-way  between  Santarem  and  Thomar. 
It  is  a  small  church,  with  nave  and  aisles  of  five  bays  and  a 
square  chancel.  The  piers  consist  of  four  half-round  shafts 
round  a  square.  In  front  the  capitals  are  round  next  the 
neck  moulding  and  square  next  the  moulded  abacus,  while  at 
the  sides  they  become  eight-sided.  The  arches  are  of  two 
orders  and  only  chamfered.  The  bases  are  curious,  as  each 
part   belonging  to  a  diflerent  member  of  the  pier  begins  at 


152        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

a  different  level.  That  of  the  shaft  at  the  side  begins  highest, 
and  of  the  shaft  in  front  lowest,  and  both  becoming  eight- 
sided,  envelop  the  base  of  the  square  centre.  These  eight- 
sided  bases  interpenetrate  with  the  mouldings  of  a  lower 
round  base,  and  all  stand  on  a  large  splayed  octagon,  formed 
from  a  square  by  curious  ogee  curves  at  the  corners.  The 
nave  is  roofed  in  wood,  but  the  chancel  is  vaulted,  having 
ribs  enriched  like  the  chancel  arch  with  cable  moulding.  The 
west  front  has  a  plain  tower  at  the  end  of  the  south  aisle, 
buttresses  with  Gothic  pinnacles,  a  large  door  below  and  a 
round  window  above.  The  doorhead  is  a  depressed  trefoil, 
or  quatrefoil,  as  the  central  leaf  is  of  two  curves.  Between 
the  inner  and  outer  round  moulding  is  as  usual  a  hollow  filled 
with  branches.  The  outer  moulding,  on  its  upper  side,  throws 
out  the  most  fantastic  curves  and  cusps,  which  with  their 
finials  nearly  encircle  two  little  round  windows,  and  then  in 
wilder  curves  push  up  through  the  square  framing  at  the  top 
to  a  finial  just  below  the  window.  At  the  sides  two  large 
twisted  shafts  standing  on  very  elaborate  bases  end  in  twisted 
pinnacles.  The  round  window  is  surrounded  by  large  rope 
moulding,  out  of  which  grow  two  little  arms,  to  support 
armillary  spheres. 
Se,  Elvas.  Dom  Manoel  also  built  the  cathedral  at  Elvas,  but  it  has 

been  very  much  pulled  about.  Only  the  nave — in  part  at 
least — and  an  earlier  west  tower  survive.  Outside  the 
buttresses  are  square  below  and  three-cornered  above  ;  all  the 
walls  are  battlemented  ;  the  aisle  windows  are  tall  and  round- 
headed.  On  the  north  side  a  good  trefoil-headed  door  leads 
to  the  interior,  where  the  arches  are  round,  the  piers  clustered 
with  cable-moulded  capitals  and  starry  eight-sided  abaci. 
There  is  a  good  vault  springing  from  corbels,  but  the  clerestory 
windows  have  been  replaced  by  large  semicircles. 
Marvilla,  All  the  body  of  the  church  of  Santa   Maria  da  Marvilla  at 

Santaiem.  Santarem  is  built  in  the  style  of  Dom  Joao  iii.,  that  is,  the 
nave  arcade  has  tall  Ionic  columns  and  round  arches.  The 
rebuilding  of  the  church  was  ordered  by  Dom  Manoel,  but  the 
style  called  after  him  is  only  found  in  the  chancel  and  in  the 
west  door.  The  chancel,  square  and  vaulted,  is  entered  by  a 
wide  and  high  arch,  consisting,  like  the  door  to  the  Sala  das 
Pegas  at  Cintra,  of  a  series  of  moulded  convex  curves.  The 
west  door  is  not  unlike  that  at  GoUega.  It  has  a  trefoiled 
head  ;  with  a  round  moulding  at   the   angle  resting    on   the 


31 


I'Al  ACK,    CiNTRA. 

Parts   xthh  n  iiv   !).   Mamiki.. 


EARLY  MANOELINO  153 

capitals  of  thin  shafts.  Beyond  a  broad  hollow  over  which 
straggles  a  very  realistic  and  thick-stemmed  plant  is  a  large 
round  moulding  springing  from  larger  shafts  and  concentric 
with  the  inner.  As  at  Gollega  from  the  outer  side  of  this 
moulding  large  cusps  project,  one  on  each  side,  while  in 
the  middle  it  rises  up  in  two  curves  forming  an  irregular 
pentagon  with  curved  sides.  Each  outward  projection  of  this 
round  moulding  ends  in  a  large  finial,  so  that  there  are  five  in 
all,  one  to  each  cusp  and  three  to  the  pentagon.  Beyond  this 
moulding  a  plain  flat  band  runs  up  the  jambs  and  round  the 
top  cutting  across  the  base  of  the  cusps  and  of  the  pentagon. 
The  bases  of  the  shafts  rest  on  a  moulded  plinth  and  are  eight- 
sided,  as  are  the  capitals  round  which  run  small  wreaths  of 
leaves.  Here  the  upright  shafts  at  the  sides  are  not  twisted 
but  run  up  in  three  divisions  to  Gothic  pinnacles.      (Fig.  53.) 

Almost  exactly  the  same  is  a  door  in  the  Franciscan  nunnery  Madrt- 
called  Madre  de  Deus,  founded  to  the  east  of  Lisbon  in  1509  '''•  Dcus. 
by  Dona  Leonor,  the  widow  of  Dom  Joao  11.  and  sister  of 
Dom  Manoel.  The  only  difl^erence  is  that  the  shafts  at  the 
sides  are  both  twisted,  that  the  pentagon  at  the  top  is  a  good 
deal  larger  and  has  in  it  the  royal  arms,  and  that  at  the  sides 
are  shields,  one  on  the  right  with  the  arms  of  Lisbon- — the  ship 
guided  by  ravens  in  which  St.  Vincent's  body  floated  from  the 
east  of  Spain  to  the  cape  called  after  him — and  one  on  the  left 
with  a  pelican  vulning  her  breast.' 

The  proportions  of  this  door  are  rather  better  than  those 
of  the  door  at  Santarem,  and  it  looks  less  clumsy,  but  it  is 
impossible  to  admire  either  the  design  or  the  execution.  The 
fat  round  outer  moulding  with  its  projecting  curves  and  cusps 
is  very  unpleasing,  the  shafts  at  the  sides  are  singularly 
purposeless,  and  the  carving  is  coarse.  At  Gollega  the  design 
was  even  more  outrageous,  but  there  it  was  pulled  together 
ajid  made  into  a  not  displeasing  whole  by  the  square  framing. 

What  has  been  since  1540  the  university  at  Coimbra  was  ^'^lvcr^ity 
crieinally  the  royal  palace,  and  the  master  of  the  works  there  '. '^l^f ' 
till  the  time  of  his  death  in  1524  was  Marcos  Pires,  who  also 
planned  and  carried  out  most  of  the  great  church  of  Santa 
Cruz.  Probably  the  university  chapel  is  his  work,  for  the 
windows  are  not  at  all  unlike  those  at  Santa  Cruz.  The  door 
in    many   ways   resembles  the    three    last  described,  but    the 

'  Once  the  Mailrc  de  Dciis  was  aiiorncil  with  several  ilclla  Robbia  plac<|iies.    They 
are  now  all  gone. 


154        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

detail  is  smaller  and  all  the  proportions  better.  The  door 
is  double  with  a  triple  shaft  in  the  middle  ;  the  two  openings 
have  very  flat  trefoil  heads  with  a  small  ogee  curve  to  the 
central  leaf.  The  jambs  have  on  each  side  two  slender  shafts 
between  which  there  is  a  delicate  twisted  branch,  and  beyond 
them  is  a  band  of  finely  carved  foliage  and  then  another  shaft. 
From  these  side  shafts  there  springs  a  large  trefoil,  encompas- 
sing both  openings.  It  is  croclceted  on  the  outside  and  has 
the  two  usual  ogee  cusps  or  projections  on  the  outer  side  ;  but, 
instead  of  a  large  curved  pentagon  in  the  middle,  the  mould- 
ings of  the  projections  and  of  the  trefoil  then  intertwine  and 
rise  up  to  some  height  forming  a  kind  of  wide-spreading  cross 
with  hollow  curves  between  the  arms.  The  arms  of  the  cross 
end  in  finials,  as  do  the  ogee  projections  ;  there  is  a  shield  on 
each  side  below  the  cross  arms,  another  crowned  and  charged 
with  the  royal  arms  above  the  central  shaft,  and  on  one  side 
of  it  the  Cross  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  and  on  the  other  an 
armillary  sphere.  On  either  side,  as  usual,  on  an  octagonal 
base  are  tall  twisted  shafts,  with  a  crown  round  the  base  of 
the  twisted  pinnacles  which  rise  just  to  the  level  of  the  spread- 
ing arms  of  the  cross.  Like  the  door  at  Santarem  the  whole 
would  be  sprawling  and  ill-composed  but  that  here  the  white- 
wash of  the  wall  comes  down  only  to  the  arms  of  the  cross,  so 
as  to  give  it — built  as  it  is  of  grey  limestone — a  simple  square 
outline,  broken  only  by  the  upper  arm  and  finial  of  the  cross. 
The  heads  of  the  two  windows,  one  on  either  side  of  the 
door,  are  half-irregidar  octagons  with  convex  sides.  They  are 
surrounded  by  a  broad  hollow  splay  framed  by  thin  shafts 
resting  on  corbels  and  bearing  a  head,  a  flat  ogee  in  shape,  but 
broken  by  two  hanging  points  ;  one  of  the  most  common 
shapes  for  a  Manoelino  window.      (Fig.  54.) 

One  more  doorway  before  ending  this  chapter,  already  too 
long. 
Sao  Juliao,  The  parish  church  of  Sao  Juliao  at  Setubal  was  built  during 

Setubal.  (hg  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century,  but  was  so  shattered 
by  the  great  earthquake  of  1755  ^^^^  °"b'  '^'"'°  °^  ^^^  door- 
ways survive  of  the  original  building.  The  western  is  not  of 
much  interest,  but  that  on  the  north — probably  the  work  of 
Joao  Fenacho  who  is  mentioned  as  being  a  well-known  carver 
working  at  Setubal  in  1513 — is  one  of  the  most  elaborate 
doorways  of  that  period. 

The  northern  side  of  the  church  is  now  a  featureless  ex- 


sz 


wttVv 


.IL 


it       3     in 


^5 


EARLY  MANOELINO  155 

panse  of  whitewashed  plaster,  scarcely  relieved  by  a  few 
simple  square  windows  up  near  the  cornice  ;  but  near  the  west 
end,  in  almost  incongruous  contrast,  the  plainness  of  the  plaster 
is  emphasised  by  the  exuberant  mouldings  and  carving  of  the 
door.  Though  in  some  features  related  to  the  doors  at 
Santarem  or  the  Madre  de  Deus  the  door  here  is  much  more 
elaborate  and  even  barbaric,  but  at  the  same  time,  being  con- 
tained within  a  simple  gable-shaped  moulding  under  a  plain 
round  arch,  with  no  sprawling  projections,  the  whole  design — 
as  is  the  case  with  the  university  chapel  at  Coimbra — is  much 
more  pleasing,  and  if  the  large  outer  twisted  shafts  with  their 
ogee  trefoiled  head  had  been  omitted,  would  even  have  been 
really  beautiful. 

The  opening  of  the  door  itself  has  a  trefoiled  head,  whose 
hollow  moulding  is  enriched  with  small  well-carved  roses  and 
flowers.  This  trefoiled  head  opens  under  a  round  arch, 
springing  from  delicate  round  shafts,  shafts  and  arch-mould 
being  alike  enriched  with  several  finely  carved  rings,  while 
from  ring  to  ring  the  rounded  surface  is  beautifully  wrought 
with  wonderful  minutely  carved  spirals.  The  bases  and  caps 
of  these,  as  of  the  other  larger  shafts,  are  of  the  usual 
Manoelino  type,  round  with  a  hollow  eight-sided  abacus. 
Beyond  these  shafts  and  their  arch,  rather  larger  shafts,  ringed 
in  the  same  way  and  carved  with  a  delicate  diaper,  support  a 
larger  arch,  half-octagonal  in  shape  and  with  convex  sides,  all 
ornamented  like  its  supports,  while  all  round  this  and  outside 
it  there  runs  a  broad  band  of  foliage,  half  Gothic,  half 
renaissance  in  character.  Beyond  these  again  are  the  larye 
shafts  with  their  ogee  trefoiled  arch,  which  though  they  spoil 
the  beauty  of  the  design,  at  the  same  time  do  more  than  all  the 
rest  to  give  that  strange  character  which  it  possesses.  These 
shafts  are  much  larger  than  the  others,  indeed  they  are  made 
up  of  several  round  mouldings  twisted  together  each  of  the 
same  size  as  the  shaft  next  them.  Base  and  capital  are  of 
course  also  much  larger,  and  there  is  only  one  ring  ornament, 
above  which  the  twisting  is  reversed.  All  the  mouldings  are 
carved,  some  with  spirals,  some  with  bundles  of  leaves  bound 
round  by  a  rope,  with  bunches  of  grape-like  fruit  between. 
The  twisted  mouldings  are  carried  up  beyond  the  capitals  to 
form  a  huge  trefoil  turning  up  at  the  top  to  a  large  and  rather 
clumsy  finial.  In  this  case  the  upright  shafts  at  the  sides  are 
not  twisted   as  in  the  other  doors  ;  they  are  square  in  plan, 


156        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

interrupted  by  a  moulding  at  the  level  of  the  capitals,  below 
which  they  are  carved  on  each  face  with  large  square  flowers, 
while  above  they  have  a  round  moulding  at  the  angles.  At 
the  top  are  plain  Gothic  pinnacles  ;  behind  which  rises  the 
enclosing  arch,  due  doubtless  to  the  restoration  after  the  earth- 
quake. The  gable-shaped  moulding  runs  from  the  base  of 
these  pinnacles  to  the  top  of  the  ogee,  and  forms  the  boundary 
between  the  stonework  and  the  plaster. 

Such  then  is  the  Manoelino  in  its  earlier  forms,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was  gradually  evolved  from  a  union 
of  late  Gothic  and  IMoorish,  owing  some  peculiarities  such  as 
twisted  shafts,  rounded  mouldings,  and  coupled  windows  to 
Moorish,  and  to  Gothic  others  such  as  its  flowery  finials.  The 
curious  outlines  of  its  openings  may  have  been  derived,  the 
simpler  from  Gothic,  the  more  complex  from  Moorish.  Steps 
are  wanting  to  show  whence  came  the  sudden  growth  ot 
naturalism,  but  it  too  probably  came  from  late  Gothic,  which 
had  already  provided  crockets,  finials  and  carved  bands  of 
foliage  so  that  it  needed  but  little  change  to  connect  these  into 
one  growing  plant.  Sometimes  these  Manoelino  designs,  as 
in  the  palace  at  Cintra,  are  really  beautiful  when  the  parts  are 
small  and  do  not  straggle  all  over  the  surface,  but  sometimes 
as  in  the  Marvilla  door  at  Santarem,  or  in  that  of  the  convent 
of  the  Madre  de  Deus  at  Lisbon,  the  mouldings  are  so  clumsy 
and  the  design  so  sprawling  and  ill-connected,  that  they  can 
only  be  looked  on  as  curiosities  of  architectural  aberration. 


THOMAR 


^57 


CHAPTER    XI 

THOMAR    AND    THE    CONQUEST    OF     INDIA 

Vasco  da  Gama  set  sail  from  Lisbon  in  July  1497  with 
a  small  fleet  to  try  and  make  his  way  to  India  by  sea,  and  he 
arrived  at  Calicut  on  the  Malabar  coast  nearly  a  year  later,  in 
May  1598.  He  and  his  men  were  well  received  by  the 
zamorim  or  ruler  of  the  town — then  the  most  important  trade 
centre  in  India — and  were  much  helped  in  their  intercourse  by 
a  renegade  native  of  Seville  who  acted  as  interpreter.  After  a 
stay  of  about  two  months  he  started  for  home  with  his  ships 
laden  with  spices,  and  with  a  letter  to  Dom  Manoel  in  which 
the  zamorim  said  : — 

'  Vasco  da  Gama,  a  nobleman  of  thy  household,  has 
visited  my  kingdom,  and  has  given  me  great  pleasure.  In 
my  kingdom  is  abundance  of  cinnamon,  cloves,  ginger,  pepper, 
and  precious  stones  ;  what  I  seek  from  thy  country  is  gold, 
silver,  coral  and  scarlet.'  ' 

Arriving  at  Lisbon  in  July  1499,  Vasco  da  Gama  met  with 
a  splendid  reception  from  king  and  people  ;  was  given  20,oco 
gold  cruzados,  a  pension  of  500  cruzados  a  year,  and  the  title 
of  Dom  ;  while  provision  was  also  made  for  the  families  of 
those  who  had  perished  during  the  voyage  ;  for  out  of  one 
hundred  and  forty-eight  who  started  two  years  earlier  only 
ninety-six  lived  to  see  Lisbon  again. 

So  valuable  were  spices  in  those  davs  that  the  profit  to  the 
king  on  this  expedition,  after  all  expenses  had  been  paid  and 
all  losses  deducted,  was  reckoned  as  being  in  the  proportion  of 
sixty  to  one. 

No  wonder  then  that  another  expedition  was  immediately 
organised  by  Dom  Manoel.  This  armada — in  which  the 
largest  ship  was  of  no  more  than  four   hundred  tons — sailed 

'  Daiiver's  Fortu^ueie  in  In.lia,  vol   i. 


158        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

from  Lisbon  under  the  command  of  Pedro  Alvares  Cabral  on 
March  9,  1500.  Being  driven  out  of  his  course,  Cabral  after 
many  days  saw  a  high  mountain  which  he  took  to  be  an  island, 
but  sailing  on  found  that  it  was  part  of  a  great  continent.  He 
landed,  erected  a  cross,  and  took  possession  of  it  in  the  name 
of  his  king,  thus  securing  Brazil  for  Portugal.  One  ship  was 
sent  back  to  Lisbon  with  the  news,  and  the  rest  turned  east- 
wards to  make  for  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  Four  were 
sunk  by  a  great  gale,  but  the  rest  arrived  at  Calicut  on 
September  13th. 

Here  he  too  was  well  received  by  the  zamorim  and  built 
a  factory,  but  this  excited  the  anger  of  the  Arab  traders,  who 
burned  it,  killing  fifty  Portuguese.  Cabral  retorted  by 
burning  part  of  the  town  and  sailed  south  to  Cochin,  whose 
ruler,  a  vassal  of  the  zamorim,  was  glad  to  receive  the  strangers 
and  to  accept  their  help  against  his  superior.  Thence  he  soon 
sailed  homewards  with  the  three  ships  which  remained  out  of 
his  fleet  of  thirteen. 

In  I  502  Dom  Manoel  received  from  the  Pope  Alexander  vi. 
the  title  of  '  Lord  of  Navigation,  conquests  and  trade  of 
Ethiopia,  Arabia,  Persia,  and  India,'  and  sent  out  another 
great  expedition  under  Vasco  da  Gama,  who,  however,  with 
his  lieutenant,  Vicente  Sodre,  found  legitimate  trade  less 
profitable  than  the  capture  of  pilgrim  ships  going  to  and  from 
Mecca,  which  they  rifled  and  sank  with  all  on  board.  From 
the  first  thus  treated  they  took  12,000  ducats  in  money  and 
10,000  ducats'  worth  in  goods,  and  then  blew  up  the  ship  with 
240  men  besides  women  and  children. 

Reaching  Calicut,  the  town  was  again  bombarded  and 
sacked,  since  the  zamorim  would  not  or  could  not  expel  all  the 
Arab  merchants,  the  richest  of  his  people. 

Other  expeditions  followed  every  year  till  in  1 509  a  great 
Mohammedan  fleet  led  by  the  '  Mirocem,  the  Grand  Captain  of 
the  Sultan  of  Grand  Cairo  and  of  Babylon,'  was  defeated  off 
the  island  of  Diu,  and  next  year  the  second  viceroy,  Affonso 
de  Albuquerque,  moved  the  seat  of  the  government  from  Cochin 
to  Goa,  which,  captured  and  held  with  some  difficulty,  soon 
became  one  of  the  richest  and  most  splendid  cities  of  the  East. 

Ormuz  at  the  mouth  of  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  great 
depot  of  Persian  trade  had  been  captured  in  1509,  and  it  was 
not  long  before  the  Portuguese  had  penetrated  to  the  Straits 
of  Malacca  and  even  to  China  and  Japan. 


THOMAR  159 

So  within  twelve  years  from  the  time  of  Vasco  da  Gama's 
voyage  the  foundations  of  the  Portuguese  empire  in  the  East 
had  been  firmly  laid — an  empire  which,  however,  existed  merely 
as  a  great  trading  concern  in  which  Dom  Manoel  was  practi- 
cally sole  partner  and  so  soon  became  the  richest  sovereign  oi 
his  time. 

Seeing  therefore  how  close  the  intercourse  was  between 
Lisbon  and  India/  it  is  perhaps  no  wonder  that,  in  his  very 
interesting  book  on  the  Renaissance  Architecture  of  Portugal, 
Albrecht  Haupt,  struck  by  the  very  strange  forms  used  at 
Thomar  and  to  a  lesser  degree  in  the  later  additions  to  Batalha, 
propounded  a  theory  that  this  strangeness  was  directly  due  to 
the  importation  of  Indian  details.  That  the  discovery  of  a 
sea  route  to  India  had  a  great  influence  on  the  architecture  of 
Portugal  cannot  be  denied,  for  the  direct  result  of  this  dis- 
covery was  to  fill  the  coffers  of  a  splendour-loving  king  with 
what  was,  for  the  time,  untold  wealth,  and  so  to  enable  him  to 
cover  the  country  with  innumerable  buildings  ;  but  tempting 
as  it  would  be  to  accept  Haupt's  theory,  it  is  surely  more 
reasonable  to  look  nearer  home  for  the  origin  of  these 
peculiar  features,  and  to  see  in  them  only  the  culmination  of 
the  Manoclino  style  and  the  product  of  an  even  more 
exuberant  fancy  than  that  possessed  by  any  other  contemporary 
builder.  Of  course,  when  looking  for  parallels  with  such  a 
special  object  in  view  it  is  easy  enough  to  find  them,  and  to 
see  resemblances  between  the  cloister  windows  at  Batalha  and 
various  screens  or  panels  at  Ahmedabad  ;  and  when  we  find 
that  a  certain  Thomas  Fernandes"  had  been  sent  to  India  in 
1506  as  military  engineer  and  architect;  that  another 
Fernandes,  Diogo  of  Beja,  had  in  15 13  formed  part  of  an 
embassy  sent  to  Gujerat  and  so  probably  to  the  capital 
Ahmedabad  ;  and  that  Fernandes  was  also  the  name  of  the 
architects  of  Batalha,  it  becomes  difficult  not  to  connect  these 
separate  facts  together  and  to  jump  to  the  quite  unwarrantable 
conclusion  that  the  four  men  of  the  same  name  may  have  been 
related  and  that  one  of  them,  probably  Diogo,  had  given  his 

'  See  in  Olivcira  Martinis'  Hisloria  Jc  Portugal,  \o\.  ii.  ch.  i.,  the  account  of  the 
Embassy  sent  to  Pope  Leo  ix.  by  Doni  Manoel  in  151+.  No  such  procession  had 
been  seen  since  the  ilays  of  the  Rom:in  Empire.  There  were  besides  endless  wealth, 
leopards  from  India,  also  an  elephant  which,  on  reaching  the  Castle  of  S.  .Angelo,  tilled 
its  trunk  with  scented  water  and  '  aspcrged  '  first  the  Pope  and  then  the  people. 
These  with  a  horse  from  Ormuz  represented  the  East.  Unfortunately  the  representa- 
tive of  Africa,  a  rhinoceros,  died  on  the  way. 

'  Danver's  Portugueie  in  ItiMa,  vol,  i. 


i6o        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

kinsmen  sketches  or  descriptions  on  which  they  founded  their 
designs.^ 

With  regard  to  Thomar,  where  the  detail  is  even  more 
curious  and  Indian-looking,  the  temptation  to  look  for  Indian 
models  is  still  stronger,  owing  to  the  peculiar  position  which 
the  Order  of  Christ  at  Thomar  now  held,  for  the  knights  of 
that  order  had  for  some  time  possessed  complete  spiritual 
jurisdiction  over  India  and  all  other  foreign  conquests. 

This  being  so,  it  might  have  seemed  appropriate  enough 
for  Dom  Manoei  to  decorate  the  additions  he  made  to  the  old 
church  with  actual  Indian  detail,  as  his  builder  did  with  corals 
and  other  symbols  of  the  strange  discoveries  then  made.  The 
fact  also  that  on  the  stalls  at  Santa  Cruz  in  Coimbra  are  carved 
imaginary  scenes  from  India  and  from  Brazil  might  seem  to 
be  in  favour  of  the  Indian  theory,  but  the  towns  and  forests 
there  depicted  are  exactly  what  a  mediaeval  artist  would  invent 
for  himself,  and  are  not  at  all  like  what  they  were  supposed  to 
represent,  and  so,  if  they  are  to  be  used  in  the  argument  at  all, 
would  rather  go  to  show  how  little  was  actually  known  of  what 
India  was  like. 

There  seems  also  not  to  be  even  a  tradition  that  anything 
of  the  sort  was  done,  and  if  a  tradition  has  survived  about  the 
stalls  at  Coimbra,  surely,  had  there  been  one,  it  might  have 
survived  at  Thomar  as  well. 

At  the  same  time  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  bases  of  the 
jambs  inside  the  west  window  in  the  chapter-house  are  very 
unlike  anything  else,  and  are  to  a  Western  eye  like  Indian 
work.  However,  a  most  diligent  search  in  the  Victoria  and 
Albert  Museum  through  endless  photographs  of  Indian 
buildings  failed  to  find  anything  which  was  really  at  all  like 
them,  and  this  helped  to  confirm  the  belief  that  this  resemblance 
is  more  fancied  than  real  ;  besides,  the  other  strange  features, 
the  west  window  outside,  and  the  south  window,  now  a  door, 
are  surely  nothing  more  than  Manoelino  realism  gone  a 
little  mad. 

Thomar  has  already  been  seen  in  the  twelfth  century  when 
Dom  Gualdim  Paes  built  the  sixteen-sided  church  and  the 
castle,  and  when  he  and  his  Templars  withstood  the  Moorish 
invaders  with  such  success. 

As  time  went  on  the  Templars  in  other  lands  became  rich 

>  Unfortunately  Fernaniies  was  one  of  the  commonest  of  names.     In   his  list  of 
Portuguese  artists,  Count  Raczynski  mentions  an  enormous  number. 


THOiMAR  i6i 

and  powerful,  and  in  the  fourteenth  century  Philippe  le  Bel  of 
France  determined  to  put  an  end  to  them  as  an  order  and  to 
confiscate  their  goods.  So  in  1307  the  grand  master  was 
imprisoned,  and  five  years  later  the  Council  of  Vienne,  presided 
over  by  Clement  v. — a  Frenchman,  Bertrand  de  Goth — sup- 
pressed the  order.  Philippe  seized  their  property,  and  in 
1314  the  grand  master  was  burned. 

In  Portugal  their  services  against  the  Moors  were  still 
remembered,  and  although  by  this  time  no  part  of  Portugal 
was  under  Mohammedan  rule,  Granada  was  not  far  off,  and 
Morocco  was  still  to  some  extent  a  danger. 

Dom  Diniz  therefore  determined  not  to  exterminate  the 
Templars,  but  to  change  them  into  a  new  military  order,  so  in 
1 3 19  he  obtained  a  bull  from  John  xxii.  from  Avignon  con- 
stituting the  Order  of  Christ.  At  first  their  headquarters 
were  at  Castro-Marim  at  the  mouth  of  the  Guadiana,  but 
soon  they  returned  to  their  old  Templar  stronghold  at  Thomar 
and  were  re-granted  most  of  their  old  possessions. 

The  Order  of  Christ  soon  increased  in  power,  and  under 
the  administration  of  Prince  Henry,  141 7  to  1460,  took  a 
great  part  in  the  discoveries  and  explorations  which  were  to 
bring  such  wealth  and  glory  to  their  country.  In  1442, 
Eugenius  iv.  confirmed  the  spiritual  jurisdiction  of  the  order 
over  all  conquests  in  Africa,  and  Nicholas  v.  and  Calixtus  in. 
soon  extended  this  to  all  other  conquests  made,  or  to  be  made 
anywhere,  so  that  the  knights  had  spiritual  authority  over 
them  '  as  if  they  were  in  Thomar  itself.'  This  boon  was 
obtained  by  Dom  Affonso  v.  at  his  uncle  Prince  Henry's 
wish. 

When  Prince  Henrv  died  he  was  succeeded  as  duke  of 
Vizeu  and  as  governor  of  the  order  by  his  nephew  Fernando, 
the  second  son  of  Dom  Duarte.  Fernando  died  ten  years 
later  and  was  succeeded  by  his  elder  son  Diogo,  who  was 
murdered  fifteen  years  later  by  Dom  Joao  n.  in  1485.  Then 
the  title  passed  to  his  brother  Dom  Manoel,  and  with  it  the 
administration  of  the  order,  a  position  which  he  retained  when 
he  ascended  the  throne,  and  which  has  since  belonged  to  all 
his  successors. 

Prince  Henry  finding  that  the  old  Templar  church  with 
its  central  altar  was  unsuited  to  the  religious  services  of  the 
order,  built  a  chapel  or  small  chancel  out  from  one  of  the 
eastern   sides  and   dedicated  it   to  St.  Thomas   ot   Canterbury. 

1, 


i62        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

But  as  the  order  advanced  in  wealth  and  in  power  this  addition 
was  found  to  be  far  too  small,  and  in  a  general  chapter  held 
by  Dom  Manoel  in  1492  it  was  determined  to  build  a  new 
Coro  large  enough  to  hold  all  the  knights  and  leaving  the 
high  altar  in  its  old  place  in  the  centre  of  the  round  church. 

In  all  the  Templar  churches  in  England,  when  more  room 
was  wanted,  a  chancel  was  built  on  to  the  east,  so  that  the 
round  part,  instead  of  containing  the  altar,  has  now  become 
merely  a  nave  or  a  vestibule.  At  Thomar,  however,  probably 
because  it  was  already  common  to  put  the  stalls  in  a  gallery 
over  the  west  door,  it  was  determined  to  build  the  new  Coro 
to  the  west,  and  this  was  done  by  breaking  through  the  two 
westernmost  sides  of  the  sixteen-sided  building  and  inserting 
a  large  pointed  arch. 

Although  it  was  decided  to  build  in  1492,  little  or  nothing 
can  have  been  done  for  long,  if  it  is  true  that  Jofio  de  Castilho 
who  did  the  work  was  only  born  about  the  year  1490  ;  and 
that  he  did  it  is  certain,  as  he  says  himself  that  he  '  built  the 
Coro,  the  chapter-house — under  the  Coro — the  great  arch  of 
the  church,  and  the  principal  door.' 

Two  stone  carvers,  Alvaro  Rodrigues  and  Diogo  de 
Arruda,  were  working  there  in  15  12  and  15  13,  and  the  stalls 
were  begun  in  July  151 1,  so  that  some  progress  must  have 
been  made  by  them.  If  then  Joao  de  Castilho  did  the  work 
he  must  have  been  born  some  time  before  1490,  as  he  could 
hardly  have  been  entrusted  with  such  a  work  when  a  boy  ot 
scarcely  twenty. 

Joao  de  Castilho,  who  is  said  to  have  been  by  birth  a 
Biscayan,  soon  became  the  most  famous  architect  of  his  time. 
He  not  only  was  employed  on  this  Coro,  but  was  afterwards 
summoned  to  superintend  the  great  Jeronymite  monastery  of 
Belem,  which  he  finished.  Meanwhile  he  was  charged  by 
Joao  III.  with  the  building  of  the  vast  additions  made  necessary 
at  Thomar  when  in  1523  the  military  order  was  turned  into 
a  body  of  monks.  He  lived  long  enough  to  become  a 
complete  convert  to  the  renaissance,  for  at  Belem  the  Gothic 
framework  is  all  overlaid  with  renaissance  detail,  while  in  his 
latest  additions  at  Thomar  no  trace  of  Gothic  has  been  left. 
He  died  shortly  before  1553,  as  we  learn  from  a  document 
dated  January  ist  of  that  year,  which  states  that  his  daughter 
Maria  de  Castilho  then  began,  on  the  death  of  her  father,  to 
receive  a  pension  of  20,000  reis. 


THOMAR  163 

The  new  Coro  is  about  eighty-five  feet  long  inside  by 
thirty  wide,  and  is  of  three  bays.  Standing,  as  does  the 
Templars'  church,  on  the  highest  point  of  the  hill,  it  was, 
till  the  erection  of  the  surrounding  cloisters,  clear  of  any 
buildings.  Originally  the  round  church,  being  part  of  the 
fortifications,  could  only  be  entered  from  the  north,  but  the 
first  thing  done  by  Dom  Manoel  was  to  build  on  the  south 
side  a  large  platform  or  terrace  reached  from  the  garden  on 
the  east  by  a  great  staircase.  This  terrace  is  now  bounded 
on  the  west  by  the  Cloister  dos  Filippes,  on  the  south  by  a 
high  wall  and  by  the  chapter-house,  begun  by  Dom  Manoel 
but  never  finished,  and  on  the  north  by  the  round  church 
and  by  one  bay  of  the  Coro  ;  and  in  this  bay  is  now  the 
chief  entrance  to  the  church.  The  lower  part  of  the  two 
western  bays  is  occupied  by  the  chapter-house,  with  one  window 
looking  west  over  the  cloister  of  Santa  Barbara,  and  one 
south,  now  hidden  by  the  upper  Cloister  dos  Filippes  and  used 
as  a  door.     [See  plan  p.  225.] 

Inside,  the  part  over  the  chapter-house  is  raised  to  form 
the  choir,  and  there,  till  they  were  burned  in  i  8  10  by  the  French 
for  firewood,  stood  the  splendid  stalls  begun  in  July  1511  by 
Olivel  of  Ghent  who  had  already  made  stalls  for  Sfio  Francisco 
at  Evora.^  The  stalls  had  large  figures  carved  on  their  backs, 
a  continuous  canopy,  and  a  high  and  elaborate  cresting,  while 
in  the  centre  on  the  west  side  the  Master's  stall  ended  in 
a  spire  which  ran  up  with  numberless  pinnacles,  ribs  and 
finials  to  a  large  armillary  sphere  just  under  the  vaulting. - 
Now  the  inside  is  rather  bare,  with  no  ornament  beyond  the 
intricacy  of  the  finely  moulded  ribs  and  the  elaborate  corbels 
from  which  they  spring.  These  are  a  mass  of  carving, 
armillary  spheres,  acanthus  leaves,  shields  upheld  by  well- 
carved  figures,  crosses,  and  at  the  top  small  cherubs  holding 
the  royal  crown. 

The  inner  side  of  the  door  has  a  segmental  head  and 
on  either  jamb  are  tall  twisted  shafts.  A  moulded  string 
course  running  round  just  above  the  level  once  reached  bv 
the  top  of  the  stalls  turns  up  over  the  window  as  a  hood- 
mould. 

'  In  the  year  1512  Olivel  wa*  paid  2  5$;  00.  He  hail  previously  received  i2$ooo 
a  month.  He  died  soon  alter  and  his  widow  undertook  to  finish  his  work  with  the 
help  ol'  his  assistant  Muflcz. 

'  See  the  drawing  in  A  OrJtm  Je  C/irijto  by  Vieira  Guimaraes. 


1 64        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

At  the  same  time  much  was  done  to  enrich  the  old 
Templars'  church.  All  the  shafts  were  covered  with  gilt 
diaper  and  the  capitals  with  gold  ;  crockets  were  fixed  to 
the  outer  sides  of  the  pointed  arches  of  the  central  octagon, 
and  inside  it  were  placed  figures  of  saints  standing  on  Gothic 
corbels  under  canopies  of  beautiful  tabernacle  work.  Similar 
statues  stand  on  the  vaulting  shafts  of  the  outer  polygon 
and  between  them,  filling  in  the  spaces  below  the  round- 
headed  windows,  are  large  paintings  in  the  Flemish  style 
common  to  all  Portuguese  pictures  of  that  time — of  the 
Nativity,  ot  the  Visit  of  the  Magi,  of  the  Annunciation,  and 
of  the  Virgin  and  Child. 

To-day  the  only  part  of  the  south  side  visible  down  to 
the  ground  level  is  the  eastern  bay  in  which  opens  the  great 
door.  This  is  one  of  the  works  which  Joao  de  Castilho 
claims  as  his,  and  on  one  of  the  jambs  there  is  carved  a  strap, 
held  by  two  lion's  paws  on  which  are  some  letters  supposed 
to  be  his  signature,  and  some  figures  which  have  been  read 
as  15  15,  probably  wrongly,  for  there  seems  to  have  been  no 
renaissance  work  done  in  Portugal  except  by  Sansovino  till 
the  coming  of  Master  Nicolas  to  Belem  in  15 17  or  later.' 
If  it  is  15 1 5  and  gives  the  date,  it  must  mean  the  year  when 
the  mere  building  was  finished,  not  the  carving,  for  the 
renaissance  band  can  hardly  have  been  done  till  after  his 
return  from  Belem. 

The  doorway  is  one  of  great  beauty,  indeed  is  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  pieces  of  work  in  the  kingdom.  The 
opening  itself  is  round-headed  with  three  bands  of  carving 
running  all  round  it,  separated  by  slender  shafts  of  which 
the  outermost  up  to  the  springing  of  the  arch  is  a  beautiful 
spiral  with  four-leaved  flowers  in  the  hollows.  Of  the 
carved  bands  the  innermost  is  purely  renaissance,  with 
candelabra,  medallions,  griflins  and  leaves  all  most  beautifully 
cut  in  the  warm  yellow  limestone.  On  the  next  band  are 
large  curly  leaves  still  Gothic  in  style  and  much  undercut  ; 
and  in  the  last,  four-leaved  flowers  set  some  distance  one  from 
the  other. 

At  the  top,  the  drip-mould  grows  into  a  large  trefoil 
with  crockets  outside  and  an  armillary  sphere  within.  At 
the   sides   tall    thin    buttresses  end    high   above    the   door   in 

'  The  last  two  figures  look  like  15  but  the  first  two  are  scarcely  legible  ;  it   may 
not  be  a  date  at  all. 


THOMAR  165 

sharp  carved  pinnacles  and  bear  under  elaborate  canopies 
many  figures  of  saints.'  Two  other  pinnacles  rise  from  the 
top  of  the  arch,  and  between  them  are  more  saints.  In  the 
middle  stands  Our  Lady,  and  from  her  canopy  a  curious 
broken  and  curving  moulding  runs  across  the  other  pinnacles 
and  canopies  to  the  sides. 

But  that  which  gives  to  the  whole  design  its  chief  beauty 
is  the  deep  shadow  cast  by  the  large  arch  thrown  across  from 
one  main  buttress  to  the  other  just  under  the  parapet.  This 
arch,  moulded  and  enriched  with  four-leaved  flowers,  is 
fringed  with  elaborate  cusps,  irregular  in  size,  which  with 
rounded  mouldings  are  given  a  trefoil  shape  by  small  beauti- 
fully carved  crockets,      (fig.  55.) 

Except  the  two  round  buttresses  at  the  west  end  and  one 
on  the  north  side  which  has  Manoelino  pinnacles,  all  are  the 
same,  breaking  into  a  cluster  of  Gothic  pinnacles  rather  more 
than  half-way  up  and  ending  in  one  large  square  crocketed 
pinnacle  very  like  those  at  Batalha.  The  root  being  flat  and 
paved  there  is  no  gable  at  the  west  end  ;  there  is  a  band  of 
carving  for  cornice,  then  a  moulding,  and  above  it  a  parapet 
of  flattened  quatrefoils,  in  each  of  which  is  an  armillary  sphere, 
and  at  the  top  a  cresting,  alternately  of  cusped  openings  and 
crosses  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  most  of  which,  however,  have 
been  broken  away.  Of  the  windows  all  are  wide  and  pointed, 
without  tracery  and  deeply  splayed.  The  one  in  the  central 
bay  next  the  porch  has  niches  and  canopies  at  the  side  for 
statues  and  jambs  not  unlike  those  designed  some  years  after 
at  Belem.  There  is  also  a  certain  resemblance  between  the 
door  here  and  the  great  south  entrance  to  Belem,  though  this 
one  is  of  far  greater  beauty,  being  more  free  from  over- 
elaboration  and  greatly  helped  by  the  shadow  of  the  high  arch. 

So  far  the  design  has  shown  nothing  very  abnormal  ;  but 
for  one  or  two  renaissance  details  it  is  all  of  good  late  Gothic, 
with  scarcely  any  Manoelino  features.  It  is  also  more  pleasing 
than  any  other  contemporary  building  in  Portugal,  and  the 
detail,  though  very  rich,  is  more  restrained.  This  may  be 
due  to  the  nationality  of  Joao  de  Castilho,  for  some  of  the 
work  is  almost  Spanish,  for  example  the  buttresses,  the 
pinnacles,  and  the  door  with  its  trefoiled  drip-mould. 

'  All  the  Malucs  arc  raihcr  Northern  in  appearance,  not  unlike  those  on  the  royal 
lumbs  in  Santa  Cruz,  Coiinbra,  and  may  be  the  work  ot'  the  two  Flemings  mentioned 
among  those  employed  at  Thoniar,  Antonio  and  Gabrirl. 


i66        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

If,  however,  the  two  eastern  bays  are  good  late  Gothic, 
what  can  be  said  of  the  western  ?  Here  the  fancy  of  the 
designer  seems  to  have  run  quite  wild,  and  here  it  is  that  what 
have  been  considered  to  be  Indian  features  are  found. 

It  is  hard  to  believe  that  Joao  de  Castilho,  who  nowhere, 
except  perhaps  in  the  sacristy  door  at  Alcoba^a,  shows  any 
love  of  what  is  abnormal  and  outlandish,  should  have  designed 
these  extraordinary  details,  and  so  perhaps  the  local  tradition 
may  be  so  far  true,  according  to  which  the  architect  was  not 
Joao  but  one  Ayres  do  Quintal.  Nothing  else  seems  to  be 
known  of  Ayres — though  a  head  carved  under  the  west 
window  of  the  chapter-house  is  said  to  be  his — but  in  a 
country  so  long  illiterate  as  Portugal,  where  unwritten 
stories  have  been  handed  down  from  quite  distant  times, 
it  is  possible  that  oral  tradition  may  be  as  true  as  written 
records. 

Now  it  is  known  that  Joao  de  Castilho  was  working  at 
Alcoba9a  in  15  19.  In  1522  he  was  busy  at  Belem,  where  he 
may  have  been  since  1517,  when  for  the  first  time  some 
progress  seems  to  have  been  made  with  the  building  there. 
What  really  happened,  therefore,  may  be  that  when  he  left 
Thomar,  the  Coro  was  indeed  built,  and  the  eastern  buttresses 
finished,  but  that  the  carving  of  the  western  part  was  still 
uncut  and  so  may  have  been  the  work  of  Ayres  after 
Joao  was  himself  gone.^  This  is,  of  course,  only  a  con- 
jecture, for  Ayres  seems  to  be  mentioned  in  no  document, 
but  whoever  it  was  who  carved  these  buttresses  and  windows 
was  a  man  of  extraordinary  originality,  and  almost  mad 
fancy. 

To  turn  now  from  the  question  of  the  builder  to  the 
building  itself.  The  large  round  buttresses  at  the  west  end 
are  fluted  at  the  bottom  ;  at  about  half  their  height  comes 
a  band  of  carving  about  six  feet  deep  seeming  to  represent 
a  mass  of  large  ropes  ending  in  tasselled  fringes  or  possibly  of 
roots.  On  one  buttress  a  large  chain  binds  these  together, 
on  the  others  a  strap  and  buckle — probably  the  Order  of 
the  Garter  given  to  Dom  Manoel  by  Henry  vii.  Above  this 
five  large  knotty  tree-trunks  or  branches  of  coral  grow  up 
the  buttresses  uniting  in  rough  trefoiled  heads  at  the  top, 
and  having  statues  between  them — Dom  Affonso  Henriques, 

'  The  door — notwithstanding  the  supposed  date,  151  5 — wa';  probably  finished  by 
JoSo  after  1523. 


33 


52 


■J     o   Zu 


^    2  fc  2 
S   o   o 


o 


THOMAR  167 

Dom  Gualdim  Paes,  Dom  Diniz  and  Dom  Marioel — two  on 
each  buttress.  Then  the  buttress  becomes  eight-sided  and 
smaller,  and,  surrounded  by  five  thick  growths,  of  which 
not  a  square  inch  is  unworked  and  whose  pinnacles  are 
covered  with  carving,  rises  with  many  a  strange  moulding 
to  a  high  round  pinnacle  bearing  the  cross  of  the  order — 
a  sign,  if  one  may  take  the  coral  and  the  trees  to  be  sym- 
bolical of  the  distant  seas  crossed  and  of  the  new  lands 
visited,  of  the  supreme  control  exercised  by  the  order  over  all 
missions. 

Coral-like  mouldings  too  run  round  the  western  windows 
on  both  north  and  south  sides,  and  at  the  bottom  these  are 
bound  together  with  basket  work. 

Strange  as  are  the  details  of  these  buttresses,  still  more 
strange  are  the  windows  of  the  chapter-house.  Since  about  1560 
the  upper  cloister  of  the  Filippes  has  covered  the  south  side 
of  the  church  so  that  the  south  chapter-house  window,  which 
now  serves  as  a  door,  is  hidden  away  in  the  dark.  Still  there 
is  light  enough  to  see  that  in  naturalism  and  in  originality  it 
far  surpasses  anything  elsewhere,  except  the  west  window  of 
the  same  chapter-house.  Up  the  jambs  grow  branches  bound 
round  by  a  broad  ribbon.  From  the  spaces  between  the 
ribbons  there  sprout  out  on  either  side  thick  shoots  ending  in 
large  thistle  heads.  The  top  of  the  opening  Is  low,  of  com- 
plicated curves  and  fine  mouldings,  on  the  outermost  of  which 
are  cut  small  curly  leaves,  but  higher  up  the  branches  of 
the  jambs  with  their  thistle  heads  and  ribbons  with  knotted 
ropes  and  leaves  form  a  mass  of  inextricable  intricacy,  of 
which  little  can  be  seen  in  the  dark  except  the  royal 
arms. 

Inside  the  vault  is  Gothic  and  segmental,  but  the  west 
window  is  even  more  strange  than  the  southern  ;  its  inner 
arch  is  segmental  and  there  are  window  seats  in  the  thickness 
of  the  wall.  The  jambs  have  large  round  complicated  bases 
of  many  mouldings,  some  enriched  with  leaves,  some  with 
thistle  heads,  some  with  ribbons,  and  one  with  curious  pro- 
jections like  small  elephants'  trunks — in  short  very  much  what 
a  Western  mind  might  imagine  some  Hindu  capital,  reversed, 
to  be  like.  On  the  jamb  itself  and  round  the  head  are  three 
upright  mouldings  held  together  by  carved  basket  work  ot 
ct)rds,  and  bearing  at  intervals  thistle  heads  in  threes  ; 
beyond   is  another  band  of  leaf-covered  carving,  and  beyond 


i68        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

it  an  upright  strip  of  wavy  lines.'  The  opening  has  a  head 
like  that  ot  the  other  window  and  is  filled  with  a  bronze 
grille. 

Still  more  elaborate  and  extraordinary  is  the  outside 
of  this  window,  nor  would  it  be  possible  to  find  words  to 
describe  it. 

The  jambs  are  of  coral  branches,  with  large  round  shafts 
beyond,  entirely  leaf-covered  and  budding  into  thistle  heads. 
Ropes  bind  them  round  at  the  bottom  and  half-way  up  great 
branches  are  fastened  on  by  chains.  At  the  top  are  long 
finials  with  more  chains  holding  corals  on  which  rest  armillary 
spheres.  The  head  of  the  window  is  formed  of  twisted 
masses,  from  which  project  downwards  three  large  thistle 
heads.  Above  this  is  a  great  wreath  of  leaves,  hung  with  two 
large  loops  of  rope,  and  twisting  up  as  a  sort  of  cusped  ogee 
trefoil  to  the  royal  arms  and  a  large  cross  of  the  Order  of  Christ. 
A  square  frame  with  flamelike  border  rises  to  the  top  of  the 
side  finials  to  enclose  afield  cut  into  squares  by  narrow  grooves. 
Below  the  window  more  branches,  coral,  and  ropes  knot  each 
other  round  the  head  of  Ayres  just  below  the  rope  moulding 
which  runs  across  from  buttress  to  buttress.  Above  the  top 
of  the  opening  and  about  half-way  up  the  whole  composition 
there  is  an  of^'set,  and  on  it  rests  a  series  of  disks,  set  diagonally 
and  strung  on  another  rope.     (Fig.  56.) 

Although,  were  the  royal  arms  and  the  cross  removed,  the 
window  might  not  look  out  of  place  in  some  wild  Indian 
temple,  yet  it  is  much  more  likely  not  to  be  Indian,  but  that 
the  shafts  at  the  sides  are  but  the  shafts  seen  in  many  Manoel- 
ino  doors,  that  the  window  head  is  an  elaboration  of  other 
heads,"  that  the  coral  jambs  are  another  form  of  common 
naturalism,  and  that  the  great  wreath  is  only  the  hood-mould 
rendered  more  extravagant.  In  no  other  work  in  Portugal 
or  anywhere  in  the  West  are  these  features  carved  and  treated 
with  such  wild  elaboration,  nor  anywhere  else  is  there  seen  a 
base  like  that  of  the  jambs  inside,  but  surely  there  is  nothing 
which  a  man  of  imagination  could  not  have  evolved  from 
details  already  existing  in  the  country. 

'  Cf.  the  carving  on  the  jambs  of  the  Allah-iid-din  gate  at  Delhi. 

-  Such  heads  of  many  curves  may  have  been  derived  from  such  elaborate  Moorish 
arches  as  may  be  seen  in  the  Alhanibra,  or,  for  example,  in  the  Hasan  tower  at 
Rabat  in  Morocco,  and  it  is  worth  noticing  that  there  were  men  with  Moorish  names 
among  the  workmen  at  Thomar — Omar,  Mafamede,  Bugimaa,  and  Bebedim. 


,  THOMAR  169 

Above  the  window  the  details  are  less  strange.  A  little 
higher  than  the  cross  a  string  course  traverses  the  front  from 
north  to  south,  crested  with  pointed  cusps.  Higher  up  still, 
a  round  window,  set  far  back  in  a  deep  splay,  lights  the 
church  above.  Outside  the  sharp  projecting  outer  moulding 
of  this  window  are  rich  curling  leaves,  inside  a  rope,  while 
other  ropes  run  spirally  across  the  splay,  which  seems  to 
swell  like  a  sail,  and  was  perhaps  meant  to  remind  all  who 
saw  it  that  it  was  the  sea  that  had  brought  the  order  and  its 
master  such  riches  and  power.  At  the  top  are  the  royal 
arms  crowned,  and  above  the  spheres  of  the  parapet  and  the 
crosses  of  the  cresting  another  larger  cross  dominates  the  whole 
front. 

Such  is  Dom  Manoel's  addition  to  the  Templars'  church, 
and  outlandish  and  strange  as  some  of  it  is,  the  beautiful  rich 
yellow  of  the  stone  under  the  blue  sky  and  the  dark  shadows 
thrown  by  the  brilliant  sun  make  the  whole  a  building  of  real 
beauty.  Even  the  wild  west  window  is  helped  by  the  com- 
pactness of  its  outline  and  by  the  plainness  of  the  wall  in 
which  it  is  set,  and  only  the  great  coral  branches  of  the  round 
buttresses  are  actually  unpleasing.  The  size  too  of  the 
windows  and  the  great  thickness  of  the  wall  give  the  Coro 
a  strength  and  a  solidity  which  agree  well  with  the  old  church, 
despite  the  richness  of  the  one  and  the  severe  plainness  of  the 
other.  There  is  perhaps  no  building  in  Portugal  which  so 
well  tells  ot  the  great  increase  of  wealth  which  began  under 
Dom  Manoel,  or  which  so  well  recalls  the  deeds  of  his  heroic 
captains — their  long  and  terrible  voyages,  and  their  successful 
conquests  and  discoveries.  Well  may  the  emblem  of  Hope/ 
the  armillary  sphere,  whereby  they  found  their  way  across 
the  ocean,  be  carved  all  round  the  parapet,  over  the  door, 
and  beside  the  west  window  with  its  wealth  of  knots  and 
wreaths. 

Whether  or  not  Ayres  or  Joao  de  Castilho  meant  the 
branches  of  coral  to  tell  of  the  distant  oceans,  the  trees  of 
the  forests  of  Brazil,  and  the  ropes  of  the  small  ships  which 
underwent  such  dangers,  is  of  little  consequence.  To  the 
present  generation  which  knows  that  all  these  discoveries 
were  only  possible  because  Prince  Henrv  and  his  Order 
of   Christ    had    devoted    their   time   and    their  wealth    to   the 

'  E»p(h)era  =  //4rr«  ;  Espeia  =  /o/^,  present  im[:erative. 


17©        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

one  object  of  finding  the  way  to  the  East,  Thomar  will 
always  be  a  fitting  memorial  of  these  great  deeds,  and  of  the 
great  men,  Bartolomeu  Diaz,  Vasco  da  Gama,  Affbnso  de 
Albuquerque,  Pedro  Cabral,  and  Tristfio  da  Cunha,  by  whom 
Prince  Henry's  great  schemes  were  brought  to  a  successful 
issue. 


THE  ADDITIONS  TO  BATALHA        171 


CHAPTER    XII 

THE    ADDITIONS    TO     BATALHA 

Little  had  been  done  to  the  monastery  of  Batalha  since  the 
death  of  Dom  Duarte  left  his  great  tomb-chapel  unfinished. 
Dom  AfFonso  v.,  bent  on  wasting  the  lives  of  the  bravest  of 
his  people  and  his  country's  wealth  in  the  vain  pursuit  of 
conquests  in  Morocco,  could  spare  no  money  to  carry  out 
what  his  father  had  begun,  and  so  make  it  possible  to  move 
his  parents'  bodies  from  their  temporary  resting-place  before 
the  high  altar  to  the  chapel  intended  to  receive  them. 
AfFonso  V.  himself  dying  was  laid  in  a  temporary  tomb  of 
wood  in  the  chapter-house,  as  were  his  wife  and  his  grandson, 
the  only  child  of  Dom  Joao  11.  ;  while  a  coffin  of  wood  in  one 
of  the  side  chapels  held  Dom  Joao  himself. 

When  Joiio  died,  his  widow  Dona  Leonor  is  said  to  have 
urged  her  brother,  the  new  king,  to  finish  the  work  begun 
by  their  ancestor  and  so  form  a  fitting  burial-place  for  her 
son  as  well  as  for  himself  and  his  descendants.  Dom  Manoel 
therefore  determined  to  finish  the  Capelias  Imperfeitas,  and 
the  work  was  given  to  the  elder  Matheus  Fernandes,  who 
had  till  1480,  when  he  was  followed  by  Joao  Rodrigues,  been 
master  of  the  royal  works  at  Santarem.  The  first  document 
which  speaks  of  him  at  Batalha  is  dated  150J,  and  mentions 
him  as  Matheus  Fernandes,  vassal  of  the  king,  judge  in 
ordinary  of  the  town  of  Santa  Maria  da  Victoria,  and  master 
of  the  works  ot  the  same  monastery,  named  by  the  king.  He 
died  in  151 5,  and  was  buried  near  the  west  door.'  He  was 
followed  by  another  Matheus  Fernandes,  probably  his  son, 
who  died  in  1528,  to  be  succeeded  by  Jofio  de  Castilho.  But 
by  then  Dom  Manoel  was  already  dead.  He  had  been  buried 
not  here,   but  in  his  new  foundation  of  Belem,  and  his  son 

'  The  inscription  says :  '  Aqui  jaz  Matheus  Fernaniies  mestre  que  t'oi  destas  obras, 
e  sua  mulher  Izabel  Guilhermc  e  levou-o  nosso  Scnhor  a  dcz  dias  ttc  Abril  dc  1515. 
Ella  Icvou-a  a.  .  .  .' 


172        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Joao  III.  and  Jofio  de  Castilho  himself  were  too  much  occupied 
in  finishing  Belem  and  in  making  great  additions  to  Thomar 
to  be  able  to  do  much  to  the  Capellas  Imperfeitas.  So  after 
building  two  beautiful  but  incongruous  arches,  Joao  de  Castilho 
went  back  to  his  work  elsewhere,  and  the  chapels  remain 
Imperfeitas  to  this  day. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  tomb-house  begun  by 
Dom  Duarte  took  the  form  of  a  vast  octagon  some  seventy- 
two  feet  in  diameter  surrounded  by  seven  apsidal  chapels — 
one  on  each  side  except  that  towards  the  church — and  by 
eight  smaller  chapels  between  the  apses.  When  Matheus 
Fernandes  began  his  work  most  of  the  seven  surrounding 
chapels  were  finished  except  for  their  vaulting,  but  not  all, 
as  in  two  or  three  the  outer  moulding  of  the  entrance  arch 
is  enriched  by  small  crosses  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  and  by 
armillary  spheres  carved  in  the  hollow  ;  while  the  whole 
building  stood  isolated  and  unconnected  with  the  church. 

The  first  thing,  therefore,  done  by  Matheus  was  to  build 
an  entrance  hall  or  pateo  uniting  the  octagon  with  the  church. 
Unless  the  walls  of  the  Pateo  be  older  than  Dom  Manoel's 
time  it  is  impossible  now  to  tell  how  Huguet,  Dom  Duarte's 
architect,  meant  to  connect  the  two,  perhaps  by  a  low  passage 
running  eastwards  from  the  central  apse,  perhaps  not  at  all. 

The  plan  carried  out  by  Matheus  took  the  form  of  a 
rectangular  hall  enclosing  the  central  apse  and  the  two  smaller 
apses  to  the  north  and  south,  but  leaving — now  at  any  rate — 
a  space  between  it  and  the  side  apses.  Possibly  the  original 
intention  may  have  been  to  pull  down  the  two  side  apses,  and 
so  to  form  a  square  ambulatory  behind  the  high  altar  leading 
to  the  great  octagon  beyond  ;  but  if  that  were  the  intention 
it  was  never  carried  out,  and  now  the  only  entrance  is  through 
an  insignificant  pointed  door  on  the  north  side. 

The  walls  of  the  Pateo  with  their  buttresses,  string  courses 
and  parapet  are  so  exactly  like  the  older  work  as  to  suggest 
that  they  may  really  date  from  the  time  of  Dom  Duarte,  and 
that  all  that  Matheus  Fernandes  did  was  to  build  the  vault, 
insert  the  windows,  and  form  the  splendid  entrance  to  the 
octagon  ;  but  in  any  case  the  building  was  well  advanced  if 
not  finished  in  1509,  when  over  the  small  entrance  door  was 
written,  '  Perfectum  fuit  anno  Domini  1509.' 

Two  windows  light  the  Pateo,  one  looking  north  and  one 
south.     They    are     both    alike,    and    both    are    thoroughly 


THE  ADDITIONS  TO  BATALHA        173 

Manoelino  in  style.  They  are  of  two  lights,  with  well- 
moulded  jambs,  and  half-octagonal  heads.  The  drip-mould, 
instead  of  merely  surrounding  the  half  octagon,  is  so  broken 
and  bent  as  to  project  across  it  at  four  points,  being  indeed 
shaped  like  half  a  square  with  a  semicircle  on  the  one  com- 
plete side,  and  two  quarter  circles  on  the  half  sides,  all  enriched 
by  many  a  small  cusp  and  leaf.  The  mullion  is  made  of  two 
branches  twisting  upwards,  and  the  whole  window  head  is 
filled  with  curving  boughs  and  leaves  forming  a  most  curious 
piece  of  naturalistic  tracery,  to  be  compared  with  the  tracery 
of  some  of  the  openings  in  the  Claustro  Real.     (Fig.  58.) 

No  doubt,  while  the  Pateo  was  being  built,  the  great 
entrance  to  the  Imperfect  chapels,  one  of  the  richest  as  well  as 
one  of  the  largest  doorways  in  the  world,  was  begun,  and  it 
must  have  taken  a  long  time  to  build  and  to  carve,  for  the 
lower  part,  on  the  chapel  side  especially,  seems  to  be  rather 
earlier  in  style  than  the  upper.  The  actual  opening  to  the 
springing  of  the  arch  measures  some  17  feet  wide  by  28  feet 
high,  while  including  the  jambs  the  whole  is  about  24  feet  wide 
on  the  chapel,  and  considerably  more  on  the  Pateo  side, — 
since  there  the  splay  is  much  deeper — by  40  feet  high.  To 
take  the  chapel  side  first  : — Above  a  complicated  base  there  is  up 
the  middle  of  each  jamb  a  large  hollow,  in  which  are  two  niches 
one  above  the  other,  with  canopies  and  bases  of  the  richest  late 
Gothic  ;  on  either  side  of  this  hollow  are  tall  thin  shafts  entirely 
carved  with  minute  diaper,  two  on  the  inner  and  one  on  the 
outer  side.  Next  towards  the  chapel  is  another  slender  shaft, 
bearing  two  small  statues  one  above  the  other,  and  outside  it 
slender  Gothic  pinnacles  and  tabernacle  work  rise  up  to  the 
capital.  Up  the  outer  side  of  the  jambs  are  carved  sharp 
pointed  leaves,  like  great  acanthus  whose  stalk  bears  many  large 
exquisitely  carved  crockets.  On  the  other  side  of  the  central 
hollow  the  diapered  shaft  is  separated  from  the  tiers  of  tiny 
pinnacles  which  form  the  inner  angle  of  the  jamb  by  a  broad 
band  of  carving,  which  for  beauty  of  design  and  for  delicacy  of 
carving  can  scarcely  be  anywhere  surpassed.  On  the  Pateo  side 
the  carving  is  even  more  wonderful.'  There  are  seven  shafts  in 
all  on  each  side,  some  diapered,  some  covered  with  spirals  of 
leaves,  one  with  panelling  and  one  with  exquisite  foliage  carved 
as  minutely  as  on  a  piece  of  ivory 

Between  each  shaft  are  narrow  mouldings,  and  between  the 
outer  five   four  bands  of  ivy,  not  as   rich   or  as   elaborately 

'   Fig.  57. 


174        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

undercut  as  on  the  chapel  side,  but  still  beautiful,  and  interest- 
ing as  the  ivy  forms  many  double  circles,  two  hundred  and 
four  in  all,  in  each  of  which  are  written  the  words  '  Tayas 
Erey '  or  '  Tfiya  Serey,'  Dom  Manoel's  motto.  For  years  this 
was  a  great  puzzle.  In  the  seventeenth  century  the  writer  of 
the  history  of  the  Dominican  Order  in  Portugal,  Frei  Luis  de 
Souza,  boldlv  said  they  were  Greek,  and  in  this  opinion  he  was 
supported  by  'persons  of  great  judgment,  for  "Tanyas"  is 
the  accusative  of  a  Greek  word  ''Tanya,"  which  is  the  same 
as  region,  and  "erey"  is  the  imperative  of  the  verb  "ereo" 
which  signifies  to  seek,  inquire,  investigate,  so  that  the  meaning 
is,  addressed  to  Dom  Manoel,  seek  for  new  regions,  new 
climes.'  Of  course  whatever  the  meaning  may  be  it  is  not 
Greek,  indeed  at  that  time  in  Portugal  there  was  hardly  any 
one  who  could  speak  Greek,  and  Senhora  de  Vasconcellos — 
than  whom  no  one  has  done  more  for  the  collecting  of  inscrip- 
tions in  Portugal — has  come  to  the  very  probable  conclusion 
that  the  words  are  Portuguese.  She  holds  that  'Tayas  erey  ' 
or  '  Taya  serey'  should  be  read  'Tanaz  serey,'  'I  shall  be  tena- 
cious ' — for  Tanaz  is  old  Portuguese  for  Tenaz — and  that  the 
Y  is  nothing  but  a  rebus  or  picture  of  a  tenaz  or  pair  of 
pincers,  and  indeed  the  Y's  are  very  like  pincers.  In  this 
opinion  she  is  upheld  by  the  carving  of  the  tenacious  ivy  round 
each  word,  and  the  fact  that  Dom  Manoel  was  not  really 
tenacious  at  all,  but  rather  changeable,  makes  it  all  the  more 
likely  that  he  would  adopt  such  a  motto. 

The  carvers  were  doubtless  quite  illiterate  and  may  well 
have  thought  that  the  pincers  in  the  drawing  from  which  they 
were  working  were  a  letter  and  may  therefore  have  mixed 
them  up  to  the  puzzling  of  future  generations.'  Or  since 
nowhere  is  '  Tayaz  serey  '  written  with  the  '  z  '  may  not  the 
first  '  y  '  be  the  final  '  z  '  of  Tanaz  misplaced  ^ 

The  arched  head  of  the  opening  is  treated  differently  on 
the  two  sides.  Towards  the  Pateo  the  two  outer  mouldings 
form  a  large  half  octagon  set  diagonally  and  with  curved  sides  ; 
the  next  two  form  a  large  trefoil.  In  the  spandrels  between 
these  are  larger  wreaths  enclosing  '  Tanyas  erey,'  which  is  also 
repeated  all  round  these  four  mouldings. 

The  trefoils  form  large  hanging  cusps  in  front  of  the  com- 
plicated inner  arch.      This  too  is  more  or  less  trefoil  in  shape, 

'  As  Caf'tl/ai  Imferjeitas  e  a  lenJa  Jas  dcvisas  Gregas.     Por  Caroline  Michaelis 
de  Vasconcellos.     Porto,  1905. 


■34 


nc.  57- 

llATAI.llA. 

ENTRANCK  to  CAPKI.I.AS   iMrERFF.ITAS. 

/■Dm  a  /hc/.vafh  h  i.  lli'l  ^  I"..  Of^rlt. 


THE  ADDITIONS  TO  BATALHA       175 

but  with  smaller  curves  between  the  larger,  and  all  elaborately- 
fringed  with  cuspings  and  foliage. 

Four  mouldings  altogether  are  of  this  shape,  two  on  each 
side,  and  beyond  them  towards  the  chapel  is  that  arch  or 
moulding  which  gives  to  the  whole  its  most  distinctive  character. 
The  great  trefoil,  with  large  cusps,  which  forms  the  head  is 
crossed  by  another  moulding  in  such  a  way  as  to  become  a 
cinquefoil,  while  the  second  moulding,  like  the  hood  of  the 
door  at  Santarem,  forms  three  large  reversed  cusps,  each 
ending  in  splendid  acanthus  leaves.  Further,  the  whole  of 
these  mouldings  are  on  the  inner  side  carved  with  a  delicate 
spiral  of  ribbon  and  small  balls,  and  on  the  outer  with  the 
same  acanthus  that  runs  up  the  jambs. 

Now,  on  the  chapel  side  especially,  from  the  base  to  the 
springing  there  is  little  that  might  not  be  found  in  late  French 
Gothic   work,  except   perhaps   that  diapered  shafts  were  not 
then  used  in  France,  and  that  the  bands  of  carving  are  rather 
different  in  spirit  from  French  work  ;  but  as  for  the  head,  no 
opening  of  that  size  was  made  in   France  of  so  complicated 
and,   it  must    be   added,  so    unconstructional  a  shape.      It  is 
the    chef-cT oeuvre   of   the    Manoelino    style,    and     although    a 
foreigner  may  be  inclined  at  first,  from  its  very  strangeness,  to 
call  it  Eastern,  it  is  really  only  a  true  development  in  the  hands 
of  a   real   artist  of  what   Manoelino   was ;    an  expression  of 
Portugal's  riches  and  power,  and  of  the  gradual  assimilation 
of  such  Moors  as  still  remained  on  this  side  the  Straits.     Of 
course  it  is  easy  to  say  that  it  is  extravagant,  overloaded  and 
debased  ;  and  so  it  may  be.     Yet  no  one  who  sees  it  can  help 
falling  a  victim   to  its  fascination,   for  perhaps  its  only  real 
fault  is  that  the  great  cusps  and  finials  are  on  rather  too  large 
a  scale  for  the  rest.     Not  even  the  greatest  purist  could  help 
admiring  the   exquisite   fineness    of   the    carving — a    fineness 
made  possible   by  the  limestone,  very  soft  when  new,  which 
gradually  hardens  and  grows  to  a  lovely  yellow  with   exposure 
to  the  air.     No  records  tell  us  so,  but  considering  the  difference 
in  style  between  the  upper  and  the  lower  part  it  may  perhaps 
be  conjectured  that  the  elder  Matheus  designed  the  lower  part, 
and  the  younger  the  upper,  after  his  father's  death  in  1515. 

In  the  great  octagon  itself  the  first  thing  to  be  done  was 
to  build  huge  piers,  which  partly  encroach  on  the  small 
sepulchral  chapels  between  the  larger  apses.  These  piers  now 
rise  nearly  to  the  level  of  the  central  aisle  of  the  church  where 


1/6        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

they  are  cut  off"  unfinished  ;  they  must  be  about  80  or  90  feet 
in  height.  On  the  outer  side  they  are  covered  with  many 
circular  shafts  which  are  banded  together  by  mouldings  at  nearly 
regular  intervals.  Haupt  has  pointed  out  that  in  general  ap- 
pearance they  are  not  unlike  the  great  minar  called  the  Kutub 
at  Old  Delhi,  and  a  lively  imagination  might  see  a  resemblance 
to  the  vast  piers,  once  the  bases  of  minars,  which  flank  the 
great  entrance  archways  of  some  mosques  at  Ahmedabad,  for 
example  those  in  the  Jumma  Musjid.  Yet  there  is  no 
necessity  to  go  so  far  afield.  Manoelino  architects  had  always 
been  fond  of  bundles  of  round  mouldings  and  so  naturally 
used  them  here,  nor  indeed  are  the  piers  at  all  like  either  the 
Kutub  or  the  minars  at  Ahmedabad.  They  have  not  the 
batter  or  the  sharp  angles  of  the  one,  nor  the  innumerable 
breaks  and  mouldings  of  the  others. 

Between  each  pier  a  large  window  was  meant  to  open,  of 
which  unfortunately  nothing  has  been  built  but  part  of  the 
jambs. 

Inside  the  vaulting  of  the  apsidal  chapels  was  first  finished  ; 
all  the  vaults  are  elaborate,  have  well-moulded  ribs,  and 
bosses,  some  carved  with  crosses  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  some 
with  armillary  spheres,  others  with  a  cross  and  the  words  '  In 
hoc  signo  vinces,'  or  with  a  sphere  and  the  words  '  Espera  in 
Domino.'  Where  Dom  Joao  ir.  was  to  be  buried  is  a  pelican 
vulning  herself — for  that  was  his  device — and  in  that  intended 
for  his  father  Dom  Affbnso  v.  a  '  rodisio '  or  mill-wheel.  A 
little  above  the  entrance  arches  to  the  chapels  the  octagon 
is  surrounded  by  two  carved  string  courses  separated  by  a 
broad  plain  frieze.^  On  the  lower  string  are  the  beautifully 
modelled  necks  and  heads  of  dragons,  springing  from 
acanthus  leaves  and  so  set  as  to  form  a  series  of  M's,  and  on 
the  upper  an  exquisite  pattern  arranged  in  squares,  while  on 
it  rests  a  most  remarkable  cresting.  In  this  cresting,  which 
is  formed  of  a  single  bud  set  on  branches  between  two  coupled 
buds,  the  forms  are  most  strange  and  at  the  same  time  beautiful. 

Inside,  the  great  piers  have  been  much  more  highly 
adorned  than  without.  The  vaulting  shafts  in  the  middle — 
which,  formed  of  several  small  round  mouldings,  have  run  up 

'  The  frieze  is  now  filled  up  and  plastered,  but  not  long  ago  was  empty  and 
recessed  as  if  prepared  for  letting  in  reliefs.  Can  these  have  been  of  terra  cotta  of 
the  della  Robbia  school?  Dom  Manoel  imported  many  which  are  now  all  gone  but 
one  in  the  Museum  at  Lisbon.  There  are  also  some  della  Robbia  medallions  at  the 
Quinta  de  Bacalhoa  at  .'\2eita0  near  Setubal. 


THE  ADDITIONS  TO  BATALHA        177 

quite  plain  from  the  ground,  only  interrupted  by  shields  and 
their  mantling  on  the  frieze — are  here  broken  and  twisted. 
On  either  side  are  niches  with  Gothic  canopies,  above  which 
are  interlacing  leaves  and  branches.  Beyond  the  niches  are 
the  window  jambs,  on  which,  next  the  opening,  are  shafts 
carved  with  naturalistic  tree-stems,  and  between  these  and  the 
niches  two  bands  of  ornament  separated  by  thin  plain  shafts. 

In  each  opening  these  bands  are  different.  In  some  is 
Gothic  foliage,  in  others  semi-classic  carving  like  the  string 
below  or  realistic  like  the  cresting.  In  others  are  naturalistic 
branches,  and  in  the  opening  over  the  chapel  where  Dom 
Manoel  was  to  lie  are  cut  the  letters  M  in  one  hand  and  R  in 
the  other  ;   Manoel  Rey.     (Fig.  59.) 

Only  the  first  foot  or  so  of  the  vaulting  has  been  built, 
and  there  is  nothing  now  to  show  how  the  great  octagon  was 
to  be  roofed.  Murphy'  gives  his  idea  ;  the  eight  piers  carried 
high  up  and  capped  with  spires,  huge  Gothic  windows  between, 
and  the  whole  covered  by  a  vast  pointed  roof — presumably  of 
wood — above  the  vault.  Haupt  with  his  Indian  prepossessions 
suggests  a  dome  surrounded  by  eight  great  domed  pinnacles. 
Probably  neither  is  right  ;  certainly  Murphy's  great  roof  of 
wood  would  never  have  been  made,  and  as  for  Haupt's  dome 
nothing  domed  was  built  in  Portugal  till  long  after  and  that  at 
first  only  on  a  small  scale."  Besides,  the  well-developed  Gothic 
ribs  which  are  seen  springing  in  each  corner  clearly  show  that 
some  kind  of  Gothic  vault  was  meant,  and  not  a  dome  ;  and 
that  the  Portuguese  could  build  wonderful  vaults  had  been 
already  shown  by  the  chapter-house  here  and  was  soon  to  be 
shown  by  the  transept  at  Belem.  So  in  all  probability  the 
roof  would  have  been  a  great  Gothic  vault  of  which  the  centre 
would  rise  very  considerably  above  the  sides  ;  for  there  is  no 
sign  of  stilting  the  ribs  over  the  windows.  The  whole  would 
have  been  covered  with  stone  slabs,  and  would  have  been 
surrounded  by  eight  groups  of  pinnacles,  most  of  which  would 
no  doubt  have  been  twisted. 

Deeply  though  one  must  regret  that  this  great  chapel  has 
been  left  unfinished  and  open  to  the  sky,  yet  even  in  its 
incomplete  state  it  is  a  treasure-house  of  beautiful  ornament, 
and  it  is  wonderful   how  well  the  more  commonplace  Gothic 

'  J.  Murphy,  History  of  the  Royal  Convent  oj  Balalha.     London,  1792. 
'  One  of  the  first  was  probably  the  chapel  dos  Keys  Magos  at  Sao  Marcos  near 
Coimbra. 

M 


178        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

of  Huguet's  work  agrees  with  and  even  enhances  the  richness 
of  the  detail  which  Fernandes  drew  from  so  many  sources, 
late  Gothic,  early  renaissance,  and  naturalistic,  and  which  he 
knew  so  well  how  to  combine  into  a  beautiful  whole. 

The  great  Claustro  Real,  built  by  Dom  Jo!lo  i.,  was 
peculiar  among  Portuguese  cloisters  in  having,  or  at  least 
being  prepared  for,  large  traceried  windows.  Probably  these 
had  remained  blank,  and  for  about  a  hundred  years  awaited 
the  tracery  which  more  than  any  part  of  the  convent  shows 
the  skill  of  Matheus  Fernandes. 

There  seems  to  be  no  exact  record  of  when  the  work  was 
done,  but  it  must  have  been  while  additions  were  being  made 
to  the  Imperfect  chapels,  though  more  fortunate  than  they, 
the  work  here  was  successfully  finished. 

The  cloister  has  seven  bays  on  each  side,  of  which  the 
five  in  the  middle  are  nearly  equal,  having  either  five  or  six 
lights.  In  the  eastern  corners  the  openings  have  only  three 
lights,  in  the  south-western  they  have  four,  and  in  the  north- 
western there  stands  the  square  two-bayed  lavatory.    (Fig.  60.) 

In  all  the  openings  the  shafts  are  alike.  They  have  tall 
eight-sided  and  round  bases,  similar  capitals  and  a  moulded 
ring  half-way  up,  while  the  whole  shaft  from  ring  to  base 
and  from  ring  to  capital  is  carved  with  the  utmost  delicacy, 
with  spirals,  with  diaper  patterns,  or  with  leaflike  scales. 
Above  the  capitals  the  pointed  openings  are  filled  in  with 
veils  of  tracery  of  three  difl^erent  patterns.  In  the  central 
bay,  and  in  the  two  next  but  one  on  either  side  of  it,  and  so 
filling  nine  openings,  is  what  at  first  seems  to  be  a  kind  of 
reticulated  tracery.  But  on  looking  closer  it  is  found  to  be 
built  up  of  leaf-covered  curves  and  of  buds  very  like  those 
forming  the  cresting  in  the  Capellas  Imperfeitas.  In  the 
corner  bays  —  except  where  stands  the  lavatory  —  there  is 
another  form  of  reticulated  tracery,  where  the  larger  curves 
are  formed  by  branches,  whose  leaves  make  the  cusps,  while 
filling  in  the  larger  spaces  are  budlike  growths  like  those  in 
the  first-mentioned  windows. 

On  either  side  of  the  central  openings  the  tracery  is  irrore 
naturalistic  than  elsewhere  ;  here  the  whole  is  formed  of  inter- 
lacing and  intertwining  branches,  with  leaves  and  large  fruit- 
like poppy  heads,  and  in  the  centre  the  Cross  of  the  Order 
of  Christ.  But  of  all,  the  most  successful  is  in  the  lavatory ; 
there  the  two  bays  which  form  each  side  are  high  and  narrow. 


35 


*^pi^-    I     "^    ""^ '~  •*- ^'^  ■_:'::',  .'^- "'  T 


,•  * 


J   a   a  -s 
<   a    <  ■« 


it: 


THE  ADDITIONS  TO  BATALHA        179 

with  richly  cusped  pointed  arches.  Instead  of  cutting  out 
the  cusps  and  filling  the  upper  part  with  tracery,  Matheus 
Fernandes  has  with  extraordinary  skill  thrown  a  crested 
transome  across  the  opening  and  below  it  woven  together  a 
veil  of  exquisitely  carved  branches,  which,  resting  on  a  central 
shaft,  half  hide  and  half  reveal  the  large  marble  fountain 
within.      (Fig.  61.) 

At  first,  perhaps,  accustomed  to  the  ordinary  forms  of 
Gothic  tracery,  these  windows  seem  strange,  to  some  even 
unpleasing.  Soon,  however,  when  they  have  been  studied 
more  closely,  when  it  has  been  recognised  that  the  brilliant 
sunshine  needs  closer  tracery  and  smaller  openings  than  does 
the  cooler  North,  and  that  indeed  the  aim  of  the  designer  is 
to  keep  out  rather  than  to  let  in  the  direct  rays  of  light,  no 
one  can  be  anything  but  thankful  that  Matheus  Fernandes, 
instead  of  trying  to  adapt  Gothic  forms  to  new  requirements, 
as  was  done  by  his  predecessors  in  the  church,  boldly  invented 
new  forms  for  himself;  forms  which  are  entirely  suited  to  the 
sun,  the  clear  air  and  sky,  and  which  with  their  creamy  lace 
make  a  fitting  background  to  the  roses  and  flowers  with  which 
the  cloister  is  now  planted. 

Now  the  question  arises,  from  whence  did  Matheus  Fer- 
nandes draw  his  inspiration  ?  We  have  seen  that  windows 
with  good  Gothic  tracery  are  almost  unknown  in  Portugal, 
for  even  in  the  church  here  at  Batalha  the  larger  windows 
nearly  all  show  a  want  of  knowledge,  and  a  wish  to  shut  out 
the  sun  as  much  as  possible,  and  besides  there  is  really  no 
resemblance  between  the  tracery  in  the  church  and  that  in  the 
cloister. 

In  the  lowest  floor  of  the  Torre  de  Sao  Vicente,  begun 
by  Dom  Joao  11.  and  finished  by  Dom  Manoel  to  defend  the 
channel  of  the  Tagus,  the  central  hall  is  divided  from  a 
passage  by  a  thin  wall  whose  upper  part  is  pierced  to  form 
a  perforated  screen.  The  original  plan  for  the  tower  is  said 
to  have  been  furnished  by  Garcia  de  Resende,  whose  house 
we  have  seen  at  Evora,  and  if  this  screen,  which  is  built  up 
of  heart-shaped  curves,  is  older  than  the  cloister  windows  at 
Batalha,  he  may  have  suggested  to  Matheus  Fernandes  the 
tracery  which  has  a  more  or  less  reticulated  form,  though  on 
the  other  hand  it  may  be  later  and  have  been  suggested  by 
them.  Most  probably,  however,  Matheus  Fernandes  thought 
out   the   tracery  for  himself      He  would   not   have  had  tar  to 


i8o        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

go  to  see  real  reticulated  panelling,  for  the  church  is  covered 
with  it  ;  but  an  even  more  likely  source  of  this  reticulation 
might  be  found  in  the  beautiful  Moorish  panelling  which 
exists  on  such  buildings  as  the  Giralda  or  the  tower  at  Rabat, 
and  if  we  find  Moors  among  the  workmen  at  Thomar  there 
may  well  have  been  some  at  Batalha  as  well.  As  for  the 
naturalistic  tracery,  it  is  clearly  only  an  improvement  on  such 
windows  as  those  of  the  Pateo  behind  the  church,  and  there 
is  no  need  to  go  to  Ahmedabad  and  find  there  pierced  screens 
to  which  they  have  a  certain  resemblance. 

However,  whatever  may  be  its  origin,  this  tracery  it  is 
which  makes  the  Claustro  Real  not  only  the  most  beautiful 
cloister  in  Portugal,  but  even,  as  that  may  not  seem  very  great 
praise,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  cloisters  in  the  world,  and  it 
must  have  been  even  more  beautiful  before  a  modern  restora- 
tion crowned  all  the  walls  with  a  pierced  Gothic  parapet  and 
a  spiky  cresting,  whose  angular  form  and  sharp  mouldings 
do  not  quite  harmonise  with  the  rounded  and  gentle  curves  of 
the  tracery  below. 

After  the  suppression  of  the  monastic  orders  in  1834, 
Batalha,  which  had  already  suffered  terribly  from  the  French 
invasion — for  in  18  10  during  the  retreat  under  Massena  two 
cloisters  were  burned  and  much  furniture  destroyed — was  for 
a  time  left  to  decay.  However,  in  1840  the  Cortes  decreed 
an  annual  expenditure  of  two  contos  of  reis,^  or  about 
;^450  to  keep  the  buildings  in  repair  and  to  restore  such  parts 
as  were  damaged. 

The  first  director  was  Senhor  Luis  d' Albuquerque,  and  he 
and  his  successors  have  been  singularly  successful  in  their 
efforts,  and  have  carried  out  a  restoration  with  which  little 
fault  can  be  found,  except  that  they  have  been  too  lavish  in 
building  pierced  parapets,  and  in  filling  the  windows  of  the 
church  with  wooden  fretwork  and  with  hideous  green,  red  and 
blue  glass. 

'  A  conto=  i-ocoSooo. 


v:^  -) 


Ki<;.  60. 

Batalha. 
Cloisier. 

Fr«m  a  fhotografh  ty  E.  But  &  Co..  Oporto. 


L 


liATAI.HA. 

Lavatory  in  Ci.ausiro  Kkai.. 


BELEM  1 81 


CHAPTER    XIII 

BELEM 

Belem  or  Bethlehem  lies  close  to  the  shore,  after  the  broad 
estuary  of  the  Tagus  has  again  grown  narrow,  about  four  miles 
from  the  centre  of  Lisbon,  and  may  best  be  reached  by  one 
of  the  excellent  electric  cars  which  now  so  well  connect 
together  the  different  parts  of  the  town  and  its  wide-spreading 
suburbs. 

Situated  where  the  river  mouth  is  at  its  narrowest,  it  is 
natural  that  it  was  chosen  as  the  site  of  one  of  the  forts  built 
to  defend  the  capital.  Here,  then,  on  a  sandbank  washed 
once  by  every  high  tide,  but  now  joined  to  the  mainland  by  so 
unromantic  a  feature  as  the  gasworks,  a  tower  begun  by  Dom 
Jofio  II.,  and  designed,  it  is  said,  by  Garcia  de  Resende,  was 
finished  by  Dom  Manoel  about  1520  and  dedicated  to  Sao 
Vicente,  the  patron  of  Lisbon.' 

The  tower  is  not  of  very  great  size,  perhaps  some  forty  feet 
square  by  about  one  hundred  high.  It  stands  free  on  three 
sides,  but  on  the  south  towards  the  water  it  is  protected  by  a 
great  projecting  bastion,  which,  rather  wider  than  the  tower, 
ends  at  the  water  edge  in  a  polygon. 

The  tower  contains  several  stories  of  one  room  each,  none 
of  which  are  in  themselves  in  any  way  remarkable  except  the 
lowest,  in  which  is  the  perforated  screen  mentioned  in  the 
last  chapter.  In  the  second  story  the  south  window  opens  on 
to  a  long  balcony  running  the  whole  breadth  of  the  tower, 
and  the  other  windows  on  to  smaller  balconies.  The  third 
story  is  finished  with  a  fortified  parapet  resting  on  great 
corbels.  The  last  and  fourth,  smaller  than  those  below,  is 
fortified  with  pointed  merlons,  and  with  a  round  corbelled 
turret  at  each  corner. 

'  It  is  no  use  telling  a  tramway  coniluclor  to  stop  near  the  Torre  de  Slo  Vicente. 
He  has  never  heard  of  it,  but  if  one  says  'Fabrica  de  Gas'  the  car  will  stoji  at  the 
right  place. 


i82        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

On  entering,  it  is  found  that  the  bastion  contains  a  sort 
of  cloister  with  a  flat  paved  roof  on  to  which  opens  the  door 
of  the  tower.  Under  the  cloister  are  horrid  damp  dungeons, 
last  used  by  Dom  Miguel,  who  during  his  usurpation  impris- 
oned in  them  such  of  his  liberal  opponents  as  he  could  catch. 
The  whole  bastion  is  fortified  with  great  merlons,  rising  above 
a  rope  moulding,  each,  like  those  on  the  tower,  bearing  a 
shield  carved  with  the  Cross  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  and 
by  round  turrets  corbelled  out  at  the  corners.  These,  like 
all  the  turrets,  are  capped  with  melon-shaped  stone  roofs,  and 
curious  finials.  Similar  turrets  jut  out  from  two  corners  of 
the  ground  floor. 

The  parapet  also  of  the  cloister  is  interesting.  It  is 
divided  into  squares,  in  each  of  which  a  quatrefoil  encloses 
a  cross  of  the  Order  of  Christ.  At  intervals  down  the  sides 
are  spiral  pinnacles,  at  the  corners  columns  bearing  spheres, 
and  at  the  south  end  a  tall  niche,  elaborately  carved,  under 
whose  strange  canopy  stand  a  Virgin  and  Child. 

The  most  interesting  features  of  the  tower  are  the 
balconies.  That  on  the  south  side,  borne  on  huge  corbels, 
has  in  front  an  arcade  of  seven  round  arches,  resting  on  round 
shafts  with  typical  Manoelino  caps.  A  continuous  sloping 
stone  roof  covers  the  whole,  enriched  at  the  bottom  by  a 
rope  moulding,  and  marked  with  curious  nicks  at  the  top. 
The  parapet  is  Gothic  and  very  thin.  The  other  balconies 
are  the  same,  a  pointed  tentlike  roof  ending  in  a  knob,  a 
parapet  whose  circles  enclose  crosses  of  the  order,  but  with 
only  two  arches  in  front. 

The  third  story  is  lit  by  two  light  windows  on  three 
sides,  and  on  the  south  side  by  two  round-headed  windows, 
between  which  is  cut  a  huge  royal  coat-of-arms  crowned. 

Altogether  the  building  is  most  picturesque,  the  balconies 
are  charming,  and  the  round  turrets  and  the  battlements  give 
it  a  look  of  strength  and  at  the  same  time  add  greatly  to  its 
appearance.  The  general  outline,  however,  is  not  altogether 
pleasing  owing  to  the  setting  back  of  the  top  story.     (Fig.  62.) 

The  detail,  however,  is  most  interesting.  It  is  throughout 
iVIanoelino,  and  that  too  with  hardly  an  admixture  of  Gothic. 
There  is  no  naturalism,  and  hardly  any  suggestion  of  the 
renaissance,  and  as  befits  a  fort  it  is  without  any  of  the  ex- 
uberance so  common  to  buildings  of  this  time. 

Now  here  again,  as  at  Thomar  and  Batalha,  Haupt  has 


BELEM  183 

seen  a  result  of  the  intercourse  with  India  ;  both  in  the  balconies 
and  in  the  turret  roofs  ^  he  sees  a  likeness  to  a  temple  in 
Gujerat  ;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  in  the  example  he 
gives  the  balconies  and  roofs  are  not  at  all  unlike  those  at 
Belem.  It  might  further  be  urged  that  Garcia  de  Resende  who 
designed  the  tower,  it  he  was  never  in  India  himself,  formed 
part  of  Dom  Manoel's  great  embassy  to  Rome  in  15  14,  when 
the  wonders  of  the  East  were  displayed  before  the  Pope,  that 
he  might  easily  be  familiar  with  Indian  carvings  or  paintings, 
and  that  finally  there  are  no  such  balconies  elsewhere  in 
Portugal.  All  that  may  be  true,  and  yet  in  his  own  town  of 
Evora  there  are  still  many  pavilions  more  like  the  smaller 
balconies  than  are  those  in  India,  and  it  surely  did  not  need 
very  great  originality  to  put  such  a  pavilion  on  corbels  and  so 
give  the  tower  its  most  distinctive  feature.  As  for  the  turrets, 
in  Spain  there  are  many,  at  Medina  del  Campo  or  at  Coca, 
which  are  corbelled  out  in  much  the  same  way,  though  their 
roofs  are  different,  and  like  though  the  melon-shaped  dome  of 
the  turrets  may  be  to  some  in  Gujerat,  thev  are  more  like 
those  at  Bacalh6a,  and  surely  some  proof  of  connection  between 
Belem  and  Gujerat,  better  than  mere  likeness,  is  wanted  before 
the  Indian  theory  can  be  accepted.  That  the  son  of  an  Indian 
viceroy  should  roof  his  turrets  at  Bacalhoa  with  Indian  domes 
might  seem  natural  ;  but  the  turrets  were  certainly  built  before 
he  bought  the  Qiiinta  in  1528,  and  neither  they  nor  the  house 
shows  any  other  trace  of  Indian  influence. 

The  night  of  July  7,  1497,  the  last  Vasco  da  Gama  and 
his  captains  were  to  spend  on  shore  before  starting  on  the 
momentous  voyage  which  ended  at  Calicut,  was  passed  by  them 
in  prayer,  in  a  small  chapel  built  by  Prince  Henry  the  Navi- 
gator for  the  use  of  sailors,  and  dedicated  to  Nossa  Senhora  do 
Restello. 

Two  years  later  he  landed  again  in  the  Tagus,  with  a 
wonderful  story  of  the  difficulties  overcome  and  of  the  vast 
wealth  which  he  had  seen  in  the  East.  As  a  thankoffering 
Dom  Manoel  at  once  determined  to  found  a  great  monastery 
for  the  Order  of  St.  Jerome  on  the  spot  where  stood  Prince 
Henry's  chapel.  Little  time  was  lost,  and  the  first  stone  was 
laid  on  April  i  of  the  next  year. 

'  Similar  roof's  cap  the  larger  angle  turrets  in  the  house  of  the  (jtiintade  Bacalhoa 
near  Setubal,  built  by  Dona  Brile».  mother  ot  Dom  Manoel,  about  1490,  and  rebuilt 
or  altered  by  the  younger  Albuquerijue  alter  1528  when  he  bought  the  (juinta. 


i84        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

The  first  architect  was  that  Boutaca  who,  about  ten  years 
before,  had  built  the  Jesus  Church  at  Setubal  for  the  king's 
nurse,  Justa  Rodrigues,  and  to  him  is  probably  due  the  plan. 
Boutaca  was  succeeded  in  151 1  by  Lourcn^o  Fernandes,  who 
in  turn  gave  place  to  Joao  de  Castilho  in  1517  '  or  1522. 

It  is  impossible  now  to  say  how  much  each  of  these 
different  architects  contributed  to  the  building  as  finished. 
At  Setubal  Boutaca  had  built  a  church  with  three  vaulted 
aisles  of  about  the  same  height.  The  idea  was  there  carried 
out  very  clumsily,  but  it  is  quite  likely  that  Belem  owes  its 
three  aisles  of  equal  height  to  his  initiative  even  though  they 
were  actually  carried  out  by  some  one  else. 

Judging  also  from  the  style,  for  the  windows  show  many 
well-known  Manoelino  features,  while  the  detail  of  the  great 
south  door  is  more  purely  Gothic,  they  too  and  the  walls  may 
be  the  work  of  Boutaca  or  of  Louren^o  Fernandes,  while  the 
great  door  is  almost  certainly  that  of  Jofio  de  Castilho. 

In  any  case,  when  Joao  de  Castilho  came  the  building  was 
not  nearly  finished,  for  in  1 522  he  received  a  thousand  cruzados 
towards  building  columns  and  the  transept  vault." 

But  even  more  important  to  the  decoration  of  the  building 
than  either  Boutaca  or  Joao  de  Castilho  was  the  coming  of 
Master  Nicolas,  the  Frenchman^  whom  we  shall  see  at  work 
at  Coimbra  and  at  Sao  Marcos.  Belem  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  place  to  which  he  came  after  leaving  home,  and  we 
soon  find  him  at  work  there  on  the  statues  of  the  great  south 
door,  and  later  on  those  of  the  west  door,  where,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  Italian  door  at  Cintra,  is  carved  what  is  probably 
the  earliest  piece  of  renaissance  detail  in  the  country. 

The  south  door,  except  for  a  band  of  carving  round  each 
entrance,  is  free  of  renaissance  detail,  and  so  was  probably 
built  before  Nicolas  added  the  statues,  but  in  the  western  a  few 
such  details  begin  to  appear,  and  in  these,  as  in  the  band  round 
the  other  openings,  he  may  have  had  a  hand.  Inside  renais- 
sance detail  is  more  in  evidence,  but  since  the  great  piers 
would  not  be  carved  till  after  they  were  built,  it  is  more  likely 
that  the  renaissance  work  there  is  due  to  Joao  de  Castilho 
himself  and  to  what  he   had   learned  either  from  Nicolas  or 

■  Raczynski  says  1517,  Haupt  1522. 

^  According  to  Raczynski,  Joao  de  Castilho  in  1517  undertook  to  carry  on  the 
work  for  i40$3oo  per  month,  at  the  rate  ot  S50  per  day  per  man.  i4oSooo  =  now 
about  /^ii. 

^  Nicolas  was  the  first  of  the  French  renaissance  artists  to  come  to  Portugal. 


^( 


■"     ,5   a 


BELEM  185 

from  the  growing  influence  of  the  Coimbra  School.  It  is,  of 
course,  also  possible  that  when  Nicolas  went  to  Coimbra, 
where  he  was  already  at  work  in  1524,  some  French  assistant 
may  have  stayed  behind,  yet  the  carving  on  the  piers  is 
rather  coarser  than  in  most  French  work,  and  so  was  more 
probably  done  by  Portuguese  working  under  Castilho's 
direction. 

The  monastic  buildings  were  begun  after  the  church  ;  but 
although  at  first  renaissance  forms  seem  supreme  in  the 
cloisters,  closer  inspection  will  show  that  they  are  practically 
confined  to  the  carving  on  the  buttresses  and  on  the  parapets 
of  the  arches  thrown  across  from  buttress  to  buttress.  Ail 
the  rest,  except  the  door  of  the  chapter-house — the  refectory, 
undertaken  by  Leonardo  Vaz,  the  chapter-house  itself,  and  the 
great  undercroft  of  the  dormitory  stretching  607  feet  away 
opposite  the  west  door,  and  scarcely  begun  in  1521,  are  purely 
Manoelino,  so  that  the  date  1544  on  the  lower  cloister  must 
refer  to  the  finishing  of  the  renaissance  additions  and  not  to 
the  actual  building,  especially  as  the  upper  cloister  is  even 
more  completely  Gothic  than  the  lower. 

The  sacristy,  adjoining  the  north  transept,  must  have  been 
one  of  the  last  parts  of  the  original  building  to  be  finished, 
since  in  it  the  vault  springs  in  the  centre  from  a  beautiful 
round  shaft  covered  with  renaissance  carving  and  standing  on 
a  curious  base.     (Fig.  63.) 

The  first  chancel,  which  in  1523  was  nearly  ready,  was 
thought  to  be  too  small  and  so  was  pulled  down,  being  re- 
placed in  1551  by  a  rather  poor  classic  structure  designed  by 
Diogo  de  Torralva.  In  it  now  lie  Dom  Manoel,  his  son 
Dom  Joao  in.,  and  the  unfortunate  Dom  Sebastiao,  his  great- 
grandson.  Vasco  da  Gama  and  other  national  heroes  have 
also  found  a  resting-place  in  the  church,  and  the  chapter-house 
is  nearly  filled  with  the  tomb  of  Hcrculano,  the  best  historian 
of  his  country. 

Since  the  expulsion  of  the  monks  in  1834  the  monastic 
buildings  have  been  turned  into  an  excellent  orphanage  for 
boys,  who  to  the  number  of  about  seven  hundred  are  taught 
some  useful  trade  and  who  still  use  the  refectory  as  their 
dining-hall.  The  onlv  other  change  since  1835  has  been  the 
building  of  an  exceedingly  poor  domed  top  to  the  south-west 
tower  instead  of  its  original  low  spire,  the  erection  of  an  upper 
story    above    the    long    undercrot't,  and   of   a  great  entrance 


i86 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


tower  half-way  along,  with  the  result  that  the  tower  soon  fell, 
destroying  the  vault  below. 

The  plan  of  the  church  is  simple  but  original.  It  consists 
of  a  nave  of  four  bays  with  two  oblong  towers  to  the  west. 
The  westernmost  bay  is  divided  into  two  floors  by  a  great 


1,  CMAPTtR     Movac 
».    SACRISTY 

SLiNTCNDCD   EJ^TRAf^CC    PORCti 
6  vMDtRCRorr  or  dormitory 
607  FCE.X    UOINQ 


FCVNDCD    BY    DOM   riAMOCL     APRIL  UC     1500. 
eCVTACA  ARCHITECT  TILL    1511.      SVCCEEDE.O  BY 
LOVRCJN^O    FCRtHAINDCS.       LITTUC    DOME,    till 
fS^tfi.    WHCri      TOAO      DC     CASTILHO     SVCCCCOCO. 
LOWtlR    CLC4STER     FINISMtD     lS*4. 
CAPELLA    MCR    RC.BVILT     1551     BY     OtOGO    OE. 
ToRRALVy\ 


choir  gallery  entered  from  the  upper  cloister  and  also  extend- 
ing to  the  west  between  the  towers,  which  on  the  ground  floor 
form  chapels.  The  whole  nave  with  its  three  aisles  of  equal 
height  measures  from  the  west  door  to  the  transept  some  165 
feet  long  by  77  broad  and  over  80  high.  East  of  the  nave 
the  church  spreads  out  into  an  enormous  transept  95  feet  long 
by  65  wide,  and  since  the  vast  vault  is  almost  barrel-shaped 


BELEM  187 

considerably  higher  than  the  nave.  North  and  south  of  this 
transept  are  smaller  square  chapels,  and  to  the  east  the  later 
chancel,  the  whole  church  being  some  300  feet  long  inside. 
North  of  the  nave  is  the  cloister  measuring  175  feet  by  185, 
on  its  western  side  the  refectory  125  feet  by  30,  and  on  the 
east  next  the  transept  a  sacristy  48  feet  square,  and  north  of  it 
a  chapter-house  of  about  the  same  size,  but  increased  on  its 
northern  side  by  a  large  apse.  In  the  thickness  of  the  north 
wall  of  the  nave  a  stair  leads  from  the  transept  to  the  upper 
cloister,  and  a  series  of  confessionals  open  alternately,  the  one 
towards  the  church  for  the  penitent  and  the  next  towards  the 
lower  cloister  for  the  father  confessor.  Lastly,  separated  from 
the  church  by  an  open  space  once  forming  a  covered  porch, 
there  stretches  away  to  the  west  the  great  undercroft,  607  feet 
long  by  30  wide. 

Taking  the  outside  of  the  church  first.  The  walls  of  the 
transept  and  of  the  transept  chapel  are  perfectly  plain,  with- 
out buttresses,  with  but  little  cornice  and,  now  at  least, 
without  a  cresting  or  parapet.  They  are  only  relieved  by  an 
elaborate  band  of  ornament  which  runs  along  the  whole  south 
side  of  the  church,  by  the  tall  round-headed  windows,  and  in 
the  main  transept  by  a  big  rope  moulding  which  carries  on  the 
line  of  the  chapel  roof.  Plain  as  it  is,  this  part  of  the  church 
is  singularly  imposing  from  its  very  plainness  and  from  its 
great  height,  and  were  the  cornice  and  cresting  complete  and 
the  original  chancel  still  standing  would  equal  if  not  surpass 
in  beauty  the  more  elaborate  nave.  The  windows — one  of 
which  lights  the  main  transept  on  each  side  of  the  chancel,  and 
two,  facing  east  and  west,  the  chapel  which  also  has  a  smaller 
round  window  looking  south — are  of  great  size,  being  about 
thirty-four  feet  high  by  over  six  wide  ;  they  are  deeply  set  in 
the  thick  wall,  are  surrounded  by  two  elaborate  bands  of 
carving,  and  have  crocketed  ogee  hood-moulds. 

The  great  band  of  ornament  which  is  interrupted  by  the 
lower  part  of  the  windows  has  a  rope  moulding  at  the  top 
above  which  are  carved  and  interlacing  branches,  two  rope 
mouldings  at  the  bottom,  and  between  them  a  band  of  carving 
consisting  of  branches  twisted  into  intertwining  S's,  ending  in 
leaves  at  the  bottom  and  buds  at  the  top,  the  whole  being 
nearly  six  feet  across, 

I'he  three  eastern  bays  of  the  nave  are  separated  by 
buttresses,    square    below,    polygonal    above,    and    ending    in 


1 88        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

round  shafts  and  pinnacles  at  the  top.  The  cornice,  here 
complete,  is  deep  with  its  five  carved  mouldings,  but  not  of 
great  projection.  On  it  stands  the  cresting  of  elaborately 
branched  leaves,  nearly  six  feet  high. 

The  central  bay  is  entirely  occupied  by  the  great  south 
door  which,  with  its  niches  statues  and  pinnacles  entirely 
hides  the  lower  part  of  the  buttresses.  The  outer  round  arch 
of  the  door  is  thrown  across  between  the  two  buttresses,  which 
for  more  than  half  their  height  are  covered  with  carved  and 
twisted  mouldings,  with  niches,  canopies,  corbels,  and  statues 
all  carved  with  the  utmost  elaboration.  Immediately  above 
the  great  arch  is  a  round-headed  window,  and  on  either  side 
between  it  and  the  buttresses  are  two  rows  of  statues  and 
niches  in  tiers  separated  by  elaborate  statue-bearing  shafts 
and  pinnacles.  Statues  even  occupy  niches  on  the  window 
jamb,  and  a  Virgin  and  Child  stand  up  in  front  on  the  end  of 
the  ogee  drip-mould  of  the  great  arch.      (Fig.  64.) 

It  will  be  seen  later  how  poorly  Diogo  de  Castilho  at 
Coimbra  finished  off  his  window  on  the  west  front  of  Santa 
Cruz.  Here  the  work  was  probably  finished  first,  and  it  is 
curious  that  Diogo  in  copying  his  brother's  design  did  not 
also  copy  the  great  canopy  which  overshadows  the  window  and 
which,  rising  through  the  cornice  to  a  great  pinnacled  niche, 
so  successfully  finishes  the  whole  design.  Here  too  the 
buttresses  carry  up  the  design  to  the  top  of  the  wall,  and  with 
the  strong  cornice  and  rich  cresting  save  it  from  the  weakness 
which  at  Coimbra  is  emphasised  by  the  irregularity  of  the 
walling  above. 

Luckier  than  the  door  at  Coimbra  this  one  retains  its 
central  jamb,  on  which,  on  a  twisting  shaft  from  whose  base 
look  out  two  charming  lions,  there  stands,  most  appropriately, 
Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  without  whose  enterprise  Vasco 
da  Gama  would  in  all  probability  never  have  sailed  to  India 
and  so  given  occasion  for  the  founding  of  this  church.  Round 
each  of  the  two  entrances  runs  a  band  of  renaissance  carving, 
and  the  flat  reliefs  in  the  divided  tympanum  are  rather  like 
some  that  may  be  seen  in  France,'  but  otherwise  the  detail  is 
all  Gothic.  Twisted  shafts  bearing  the  corbels,  elaborate 
canopies,  crocketed  finials,  all  are  rather  Gothic  than  Manoel- 
ino.  Since  the  material — a  kind  of  marble — is  much  less 
fine  than  the  stone  used  at  Batalha  or  in  Coimbra  or  Thomar, 

'  E.g.  on  the  Hotel  Bourgtheroulde,  Rouen. 


BELEM  189 

the  carving  is  naturally  less  minute  and  ivory-like  than  it  is 
there,  and  this  is  especially  the  case  with  the  foliage,  which 
is  rather  coarse.  The  statues  too — except  perhaps  Prince 
Henry's — are  a  little  short  and  sturdy. 

The  tall  windows  in  the  bays  on  either  side  of  this  great 
door  are  like  those  in  the  transept,  except  that  round  them  are 
three  bands  of  carving  instead  of  two,  the  one  in  the  centre 
formed  of  rods  which  at  intervals  of  about  a  foot  are  broken  to 
cross  each  other  in  the  middle,  and  that  beyond  the  jambs  tall 
twisted  shafts  run  up  to  round  finials  just  under  the  cornice. 

In  the  next  bay  to  the  west,  where  is  the  choir  gallery 
inside,  there  are  two  windows,  one  above  the  other,  like  the 
larger  ones  but  smaller,  and  united  by  a  moulding  which  runs 
round  both. 

The  same  is  the  case  with  the  tower,  where,  however,  the 
upper  window  is  divided  into  two,  the  lower  being  a  circle  and 
the  upper  having  three  intersecting  lights.  The  drip-mould 
is  also  treated  in  the  common  Manoelino  way  with  large 
spreading  finials.  Above  the  cornice,  which  is  less  elaborate 
than  in  the  nave,  was  a  short  octagonal  drum  capped  by  a  low 
spire,  now  replaced  bv  a  poor  dome  and  flying  buttresses. 

The  west  door  once  opened  into  a  three-aisled  porch  now 
gone.  It  is  much  less  elaborate  than  the  great  south  door,  but 
shows  great  ingenuity  in  fitting  it  in  under  what  was  once  the 
porch  vault.  The  twisted  and  broken  curves  of  the  head 
follow  a  common  Manoelino  form,  and  below  the  top  of  the 
broken  hood-mould  are  two  flying  angels  who  support  a  large 
corbel  on  which  is  grouped  the  Holy  Family.  On  the  jambs 
are  three  narrow  bands  of  foliage,  and  one  of  figures 
standing  under  renaissance  canopies.  On  either  side  are 
spreading  corbels  and  large  niches  with  curious  bulbous 
canopies  '  under  which  kneel  Dom  Manoel  on  the  left  presented 
by  St.  Jerome,  and  on  the  right,  presented  by  St.  John  the 
Baptist,  his  second  wife,  Queen  Maria — like  the  first.  Queen 
Isabel,  a  daughter  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  and  the  aunt  of 
his  third  wife,  Leonor.  These  figures  are  evidently  portraits, 
and  even  if  they  were  flattered  show  that  they  were  not  a 
handsome  couple. 

Below  these  large  corbels,  on  which  are  carved  large 
angels,  are  two  smaller  niches  with  figures,  one  on  each  side  of 
the  twisted  shaft.     Renaissance  curves  form  the  heads  of  these 

'   Cr.  the  top  of  a  turret  at  St.  Wiilt'raiii,  Abbeville. 


190        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

as  they  do  of  larger  niches,  one  on  each  side  of  the  Holy 
Family  above,  which  contain  the  Annunciation  and  the  Visit  of 
the  Wise  iVIen. 

Beyond  Dom  Manoel  and  his  wife  are  square  shafts  with 
more  niches  and  figures,  and  beyond  them  again  flatter  niches, 
half  Manoelino,  half  renaissance.  The  rest  of  the  west  front 
above  the  ruined  porch  is  plain  except  for  a  large  round 
window  lighting  the  choir  gallery.  The  north-west  tower 
does  not  rise  above  the  roof. 

Outside,  the  church  as  a  whole  is  neither  well  proportioned 
nor  graceful.  The  great  mass  of  the  transept  is  too  over- 
whelming, the  nave  not  long  enough,  and  above  all,  the  large 
windows  of  the  nave  too  large.  It  would  have  looked  much 
better  had  they  been  only  the  size  of  the  smaller  windows 
lighting  the  choir  gallery — omitting  the  one  below,  and  this 
would  further  have  had  the  advantage  of  not  cutting  up  the 
beautiful  band  of  ornament.  But  the  weakest  part  of  the 
whole  design  are  the  towers,  which  must  always  have  been  too 
low,  and  yet  would  have  been  too  thin  for  the  massive  build- 
ing behind  them  had  they  been  higher.  Now,  of  course,  the 
one  finished  with  a  dome  has  nothing  to  recommend  it, 
neither  height,  nor  proportion,  nor  design.  Yet  the  doorway 
taken  by  itself,  or  together  with  the  bay  on  either  side,  is  a 
very  successful  composition,  and  on  a  brilliantly  sunny  day  so 
blue  is  the  sky  and  so  white  the  stone  that  hardly  any  one 
would  venture  to  criticise  it  for  being  too  elaborate  and  over- 
charged, though  no  doubt  it  might  seem  so  were  the  stone 
dingy  and  the  sky  grey  and  dull. 

The  church  of  Belem  may  be  ill-proportioned  and  unsatis- 
factory outside,  but  within  it  is  so  solemn  and  vast  as  to  fill 
one  with  surprise.  Compared  with  many  churches  the  actual 
area  is  not  really  very  great  nor  is  it  very  high,  yet  there  is 
perhaps  no  other  building  which  gives  such  an  impression  of 
space  and  of  freedom.  Entering  from  the  brilliant  sunlight  it 
seems  far  darker  than,  with  large  windows,  should  be  the  case, 
and  however  hideous  the  yellow-and-blue  checks  with  which 
they  are  filled  may  be,  they  have  the  advantage  of  keeping  out 
all  brilliant  light  ;  the  huge  transept  too  is  not  well  lit  and 
gives  that  feeling  of  vastness  and  mystery  which,  as  the 
supports  are  few  and  slender,  would  otherwise  be  wanting, 
while  looking  westwards  the  same  result  is  obtained  by  the 
dark  cavernous  space  under  the  gallery.     (Fig-  65.) 


I 


>   i 


o 

^  s  § 

c 


BELEM 


191 


On  the  south  side  the  walls  are  perfectly  plain,  broken 
only  by  the  windows,  whose  jambs  are  enriched  with  empty 
niches  ;  on  the  north  the  small  windows  are  placed  very  high 
up,  the  twisted  vaulting  shafts  only  come  down  a  short  way 
to  a  string  course  some  way  below  the  windows,  leaving  a 
great  expanse  of  cliff"-like  wall.  At  the  bottom  are  the  con- 
fessional doors,  so  small  that  they  add  greatly  to  the  scale, 
and  above  them  tall  narrow  niches  and  their  canopies.  But 
the  nave  piers  are  the  most  astonishing  part  of  the  whole 
building.  Not  more  than  three  feet  thick,  they  rise  up  to 
a  height  of  nearly  seventy  feet  to  support  a  great  stone  vault. 
Four  only  of  the  six  stand  clear  from  floor  to  roof,  for  the 
two  western  are  embedded  at  the  bottom  in  the  jambs  of  the 
gallery  arches.  From  their  capitals  the  vaulting  ribs  spread  out 
in  every  direction,  being  constructively  not  unlike  an  English 
fan  vault,  and  covering  the  whole  roof  with  a  network  of  lines. 
The  piers  are  round,  stand  on  round  moulded  pedestals,  and 
are  divided  into  narrow  strips  by  eight  small  shafts.  The 
height  is  divided  into  four  nearly  equal  parts  by  well-moulded 
rings,  encircling  the  whole  pier,  and  in  the  middle  of  the 
second  of  these  divisions  are  corbels  and  canopies  for  statues. 
The  capitals  are  round  and  covered  with  leaves,  but  scarcely 
exceed  the  piers  in  diameter.  Besides  all  this  each  strip 
between  the  eight  thin  shafts  is  covered  from  top  to  bottom — 
except  where  the  empty  niches  occur- — with  carving  in  slight 
relief,  either  foliage  or,  more  usually,  renaissance  arabesques. 

Larger  piers  stand  next  the  transept,  cross-shaped,  formed 
of  four  of  the  thinner  piers  set  together,  and  about  six  feet 
thick.  They  are  like  the  others,  except  that  there  are  corbels 
and  canopies  for  statues  in  the  angles,  and  that  a  capital  is 
formed  by  a  large  moulding  carved  with  what  is  meant  for  egg 
and  tongue.  From  this,  well  moulded  and  carved  arches,  round 
in  the  central  and  pointed  in  the  side  aisles,  cross  the  nave 
from  side  to  side,  dividing  its  vault  from  that  of  the  transept. 

This  transept  vault,  perhaps  the  largest  attempted  since 
the  days  of  the  Romans — for  it  covers  a  space  measuring 
about  ninety-five  feet  by  sixty-five — is  three  bays  long  from 
north  to  south  and  two  wide  from  east  to  west  ;  formed  of 
innumerable  ribs  springing  from  these  points — of  which  those 
at  the  north  and  south  ends  are  placed  immediately  above  the 
arches  leading  to  the  chapels — it  practically  assumes  in  the 
middle  the  shape  of  a  fl.it  oblong  dome. 


192        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Now,  though  the  walls  are  thick,  there  are  no  buttresses, 
and  the  skill  and  daring  required  to  build  a  vault  sixty-five 
feet  wide  and  about  a  hundred  feet  high  resting  on  side  walls 
on  one  side  and  on  piers  scarcely  six  feet  thick  on  the  other 
must  not  only  excite  the  admiration  of  every  one,  especially 
when  it  is  remembered  that  no  damage  was  caused  by  the 
great  earthquake  which  shook  Lisbon  to  pieces  in  1755,  but 
must  also  raise  the  wish  that  what  has  been  so  skilfully  done 
here  had  been  also  done  in  the  Capellas  Imperfeitas  at 
Batalha. 

At  the  north  end  of  the  main  transept  are  two  doors,  one 
leading  to  the  cloister  and  one  to  the  sacristy.  A  straight  and 
curved  moulding  surrounds  their  trefoil  heads  under  a  double 
twining  hood-mould.  Outside,  other  mouldings  rise  high 
above  the  whole  to  form  a  second  large  trefoil,  whose  hood- 
mould  curves  into  two  great  crocketed  circles  before  rising 
to  a  second  ogee. 

The  chancel  has  a  round  and  the  chapels  pointed  entrance 
arches,  formed,  as  are  the  jambs,  of  two  bands  of  carving  and 
two  thick  twisted  mouldings.  Tomb  recesses,  added  later, 
with  strap-work  pediments  line  the  chapels,  and  at  the  entrance 
to  the  chancel  are  two  pulpits,  for  the  Gospel  and  Epistle. 
These  are  rather  like  Joao  de  Ruao's  pulpit  at  Coimbra  in 
outline,  but  supported  on  a  large  capital  are  quite  Gothic,  as 
are  the  large  canopies  which  rise  above  them. 

Strong  arches  with  cable  mouldings  lead  to  the  space 
under  the  gallery,  which  is  supported  by  an  elaborate  vault, 
elliptical  in  the  central  and  pointed  in  the  side  aisles. 

In  the  gallery  itself — only  to  be  entered  from  the  upper 
cloister — are  the  choir  stalls,  of  Brazil  wood,  added  in  1560, 
perhaps  from  the  designs  of  Diogo  da  Carta. ^ 

With  the  earlier  stalls  at  Santa  Cruz  and  at  Funchal,  and 
the  later  at  Evora,  these  are  almost  the  only  ones  left  which 
have  not  been  replaced  by  rococo  extravagances. 

The  back  is  divided  into  large  panels  three  stalls  wide, 
each  containing  a  painting  of  a  saint,  and  separated  by 
panelled  and  carved  Corinthian  pilasters.  Below  each  painting 
is  an  oblong  panel  with,  in  the  centre,  a  beautifully  carved 
head  looking  out  of  a  circle,  and  at  the  sides  bold  carvings 
of  leaves,  dragons,  sirens,  or  animals,  while  beautiful  figures 
of  saints  stand  in  round-headed   niches   under   the   pilasters. 

1  Haupt. 


BELEM  193 

At  the  ends  are  larger  pilasters,  and  a  cornice  carried  on 
corbels  serves  as  canopy.  Each  of  the  lower  stalls  has  a 
carved  panel  under  the  upper  book-board,  but  the  small 
figures  which  stood  between  them  on  the  arms  are  nearly  all 
gone. 

If  1560  be  the  real  date,  the  carving  is  extraordinarily 
early  in  character;  the  execution  too  is  excellent,  though 
perhaps  the  heads  under  the  paintings  are  on  too  large  a  scale 
for  woodwork,  still  they  are  not  at  all  coarse,  and  would  be 
worthy  of  the  best  Spanish  or  French  sculptors. 

The  cloister,  nearly,  but  not  quite  square,  has  six  bays  on 
each  side,  of  which  the  four  central  bays  are  of  four  lights 
each,  while  narrower  ones  at  the  ends  have  no  tracery.  In 
the  traceried  bays  the  arches  are  slightly  elliptical,  subdivided 
by  two  round-headed  arches,  which  in  turn  enclose  two  smaller 
round  arches  enriched  some  with  trefoil  cusps,  some  with 
curious  hanging  pieces  of  tracery  which  are  put,  not  in  the 
middle,  but  a  little  to  the  side  nearer  the  central  shaft.  The 
shafts  are  round,  very  like  those  at  Batalha,  and,  like  every 
inch  of  the  arch  and  tracery  mouldings,  are  covered  with 
ornament  ;  some  are  twisted,  some  diapered,  some  covered 
with  renaissance  detail.  Broad  bands  too  ot  carving  run 
round  the  inside  and  the  outside  of  the  main  arches,  the  inner 
being  almost  renaissance  and  the  outer  purely  Manoelino. 
The  vault  of  many  ribs,  varying  in  arrangement  in  the  different 
walks,  is  entirely  Gothic,  while  all  the  doors  —  except  the 
double  opening  leading  to  the  chapter-house,  which  has 
beautifully  carved  renaissance  panels  on  the  jambs  —  are 
Manoelino.  The  un traceried  openings  at  the  ends  are  fringed 
with  very  extraordinary  lobed  projections,  and  on  the  solid 
pieces  of  walling  at  the  corners  are  carved  very  curious  and 
interesting  coats  of  arms  crosses  and  emblems  worked  in  with 
beautifully  cut  leaves  and  birds.     (Figs.  66  and  67.) 

Outside,  between  each  bay,  wide  buttresses  project,  of  which 
the  front — formed  into  a  square  pilaster — is  enriched  with 
panels  of  beautiful  renaissance  work,  while  the  back  part  is 
fluted  or  panelled.  From  the  top  mouldings  of  these  pil- 
asters, rather  higher  than  the  capitals  of  the  openings,  elliptical 
arches  with  a  vault  behind  are  thrown  across  from  pier  to 
pier  with  excellent  effect.  Now,  the  base  mouldings  of  these 
panelled  [blasters  either  do  not  quite  fit  those  of  the  fluted 
strips  behind,  or  else  arc  cut  off  against  them,  as  are  also  the 

N 


194        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

top  mouldings  of  the  fluted  part  ;  further,  the  fluted  part  runs 
up  rather  awkwardly  into  the  vault,  so  that  it  seems  reasonable 
to  conjecture  that  these  square  renaissance  pilasters  and  the 
arches  may  be  an  after-thought,  added  because  it  was  found 
that  the  original  buttresses  were  not  quite  strong  enough  for 
their  work,  and  this  too  would  account  for  the  purely  renais- 
sance character  of  the  carving  on  them,  while  the  rest  is 
almost  entirely  Gothic  or  Manoelino.  The  arches  are  carried 
diagonally  across  the  corners,  in  a  very  picturesque  manner, 
and  they  all  help  to  keep  out  the  direct  sunlight  and  to  throw 
most  effective  shadows. 

The  parapet  above  these  arches  is  carved  with  very  pleas- 
ing renaissance  details,  and  above  each  pier  rise  a  niche  and 
saint. 

The  upper  cloister  is  simpler  than  the  lower.  All  the 
arches  are  round  with  a  big  splay  on  each  side  carved  with 
four-leaved  flowers.  They  are  cusped  at  the  top,  and  at  the 
springing  two  smaller  cusped  arches  are  thrown  across  to  a 
pinnacled  shaft  in  the  centre.  The  buttresses  between  them 
are  covered  with  spiral  grooves,  and  are  all  finished  off  with 
twisted  pinnacles.  Inside  the  pointed  vault  is  much  simpler 
than  in  the  walks  below. 

Here  the  tracery  is  very  much  less  elaborate  than  in  the 
Claustro  Real  at  Batalha,  but  as  scarcely  a  square  inch  of  the 
whole  cloister  is  left  uncarved  the  effect  is  much  more  dis- 
turbed and  so  less  pleasing. 

Beautiful  though  most  of  the  ornament  is,  there  is  too 
much  of  it,  and  besides,  the  depressed  shape  of  the  lower 
arches  is  bad  and  ungraceful,  and  the  attempt  at  tracery  in 
the  upper  walks  is  more  curious  than  successful. 

The  chapter-house  too,  though  a  large  and  splendid  room, 
would  have  looked  better  with  a  simpler  vault  and  without 
the  elliptical  arches  of  the  apse  recesses. 

The  refectory,  without  any  other  ornament  than  the  bold 
ribs  of  its  vaulted  roof,  and  a  dado  of  late  tiles,  is  far  more 
pleasing. 

Altogether,  splendid  as  it  is,  Belem  is  far  less  pleasing, 
outside  at  least,  than  the  contemporary  work  at  Batalha  or 
at  Thomar,  for,  like  the  tower  of  Sao  Vicente  near  by,  it  is 
wanting  in  those  perfect  proportions  which  more  than  richness 
of  detail  give  charm  to  a  building.  Inside  it  is  not  so,  and 
though  many  of  the  vaulting  ribs  might  be  criticised  as  useless 


39 


6     H" 


o 
-1 


BELEM  195 

and  the  whole  vault  as  wanting  in  simplicity,  yet  there  is  no 
such  impressive  interior  in  Portugal  and  not  many  elsewhere. 

The  very  over-elaboration  which  spoils  the  cloister  is  only 
one  of  the  results  of  all  the  wealth  which  flowed  in  from  the 
East,  and  so,  like  the  whole  monastery,  is  a  worthy  memorial 
of  all  that  had  been  done  to  further  exploration  from  the 
time  of  Prince  Henry,  till  his  efforts  were  crowned  with 
success  by  Vasco  da  Gama. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  transept  front  of  the  Concei^io, 
church  of  the  Concei(;ao  Veiha  was  also  designed  bv  Joao  de  ^ellia. 
Castilho.  The  church  was  built  after  1520  on  the  site  of  a 
synagogue,  and  was  almost  entirely  destroyed  by  the  earth- 
quake of  1755-  Only  the  transept  front  has  survived,  robbed 
of  its  cornice  and  cresting,  and  now  framed  in  plain  pilasters 
and  crowned  by  a  pediment.  The  two  windows,  very  like 
those  at  Belem,  have  beautiful  renaissance  details  and  saints 
in  niches  on  the  jambs. 

The  large  door  has  a  round  arch  with  uprights  at  the  sides 
rising  to  a  horizontal  crested  moulding.  Below,  these  uprights 
have  a  band  of  renaissance  carving  on  the  outer  side,  and  in 
front  a  canopied  niche  with  a  well-modelled  figure.  Above 
they  become  semicircular  and  end  in  sphere-bearing  spirelets. 
The  great  round  arch  is  filled  with  two  orders  of  mouldings, 
one  a  broad  strip  of  arabesque,  the  other  a  series  of  kneeling 
angels  below  and  of  arabesque  above.  The  actual  openings 
are  formed  of  two  round-headed  arches  whose  outer  mould- 
ings cross  each  other  on  the  central  jamb.  Above  them  are 
two  reversed  semicircles,  and  then  a  great  tympanum  carved 
with  a  figure  of  Our  Lady  sheltering  popes,  bishops,  and 
saints  under  her  robe  :  a  carving  which  seems  to  have  lately 
taken  the  place  of  a  large  window.      (Fig.  68.) 

As  it  now  stands  the  front  is  not  pleasing.  It  is  too  wide, 
and  the  great  spreading  pediment  is  very  ugly.  Of  course 
it  ought  not  to  be  judged  by  its  present  appearance,  and  yet 
it  must  be  admitted  that  the  windows  are  too  large  and  come 
too  ne.ir  the  ground,  and  that  much  of  the  detail  is  coarse. 
Still  it  is  of  interest  if  only  because  it  is  the  only  surviving 
building  closely  related  to  the  church  of  Belem.  Built  perhaps 
to  commemorate  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews,  it  shared  the  fate 
of  the  Jesuits  who  instigated  the  expulsion,  and  was  destroyed 
only  a  few  years  before  thev  were  driven  from  the  country 
by  the  Marques  de  Pombal. 


196        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    XIV 

THE    COMING    OF    THE    FOREIGN    ARTISTS 

If  Joao  de  Castilho  and  his  brother  Diogo  were  really  natives 
of  one  of  the  Basque  provinces,  they  might  rightly  be  included 
among  the  foreign  artists  who  played  such  an  important  part 
in  Portugal  towards  the  end  of  Dom  Manoel's  reign  and  the 
beginning  of  that  of  his  son,  Dom  Joao  in.  Yet  the  earlier 
work  of  Joao  de  Castilho  at  Thomar  shows  little  trace  of  that 
renaissance  influence  which  the  foreigners,  and  especially  the 
Frenchmen,  were  to  do  so  much  to  introduce. 
Santa  Cruz,  A  great  house  of  the  Canon  Regular  of  St.  Augustine  had 
Coimbra.  \)QQn  founded  at  Coimbra  by  Dom  AfFonso  Henriques  for 
his  friend  Sao  Theotonio  in  1131.  But  with  the  passage  of 
centuries  the  church  and  monastic  building  of  Sta.  Cruz  had 
become  dilapidated,  and  were  no  longer  deemed  worthy  of  so 
wealthy  and  important  a  body.  So  in  1502  Dom  Manoel 
determined  to  rebuild  them  and  to  adorn  the  church,  and  it 
was  for  this  adorning  that  he  summoned  so  many  sculptors  in 
stone  and  in  wood  to  his  aid. 

The  first  architect  of  the  church  was  Marcos  Pires,  to 
whom  are  due  the  cloister  and  the  whole  church  except  the 
west  door,  which  was  finished  by  his  successor  Diogo  de 
Castilho  with  the  help  of  Master  Nicolas,  a  Frenchman. 

One  Gregorio  Louren?©  seems  to  have  been  what  would 
now  be  called  master  of  the  works,  and  from  his  letters  to 
Dom  Manoel  we  learn  how  the  work  was  going  on.  After 
Dom  Manoel's  death  in  1521  he  writes  to  Dom  Joao  in. 
telling  him  what,  of  all  the  many  things  his  father  the  late  king 
had  ordered,  was  already  finished  and  what  was  still  undone. 

The  church  consists  of  a  nave  of  four  bays,  measuring 
some  105  feet  by  39,  with  flanking  chapels,  the  whole  lined 
with  eighteenth-century  tiles,  mostly  blue  and  white.  There 
are  also  a  great  choir  gallery  at  the  west  end,  a  chancel,  poly- 


AO 


Fic.  68. 

Lisbon. 
CoNCKUAo  Vei.h.v. 


FOREIGN  ARTISTS 


91 


gonal  within  but  square  outside,  54  feet  long  by  20  broad, 
with  a  seventeenth-century  sacristy  to  the  south,  a  cloister  to 
the  north,  and  chapels,  one  of  which  was  the  chapter-house, 
forming  a  kind  of  passage  from  sacristy  to  cloister  behind  the 
chancel. 

By  15  I  8  the  church  must  have  been  already  well  advanced, 
for  in  January  of  that  year  Gregorio  Louren90  writes  to  Dom 
Manoel  saying  that  '  the  wall  of  the  dormitory  was  shaken 
and  therefore  I  have  sent  for  "  Pere  Anes  " — Pedro  Annes  had 
been  master  builder  of  the 
roval  palace,  now  the  univer- 
sity at  Coimbra,  and  being 
older  may  have  had  more  ex- 
perience than  Marcos  Pires, 
the  designer  of  the  monastery 
— who  had  it  shored  up,  and 
they  say  that  after  the  vault 
of  the  cloister  is  finished  and 
the  wooden  floors  in  it  will  be 
quite  safe.  Also  six  days  ago 
came  the  master  of  the  reredos 
from  Seville  and  set  to  work 
at  once  to  finish  the  great 
reredos,  for  which  he  has 
worked  all  the  wood — he  must 
surely  have  brought  it  with 
him  from  Seville — but  the 
glazier  has  not  yet  come  to 
finish  the  windows.' 

On  22nd  July  following  he  writes  again  that  all  but  one 
of  the  vaults  of  the  cloister  were  finished — '  and  Marcos  Pirez 
works  well,  and  the  master  of  the  reredos  has  finished  the 
tabernacle,  and  the  "  cadeiras  "  [that  is  probably,  sedilia]  and 
the  bishop  has  come  to  see  them  and  they  are  very  good, 
and  the  master  who  is  making  the  tombs  of  the  kings  is 
working  at  his  job,  and  has  already  much  stonework.' 

These  tombs  of  the  kings  are  the  monuments  of  Dom 
Affonso  Henriques  on  the  north  wall  of  the  chancel  and  of 
Dom  Sancho  i.  on  the  south.  The  two  first  kings  of  Portugal 
had  originally  been  buried  in  front  of  the  old  church,  and 
were  now  for  the  first  time  given  monuments  worthy  ot  their 
importance  in  the  history  of  their  country. 


FETEIT 


PLAN    OF    STA.    CRUZ 


198        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

In  1 52 1  Dom  Manoel  died,  and  next  year  Gregorio  tells 
his  successor  what  his  father  had  ordered  ;  after  speaking  of  the 
pavement,  the  vault  of  Sao  Theotonio's  Chapel,  the  dormitory 
with  its  thirty  beds  and  its  fireplace,  the  refectory,  the  royal 
tombs  and  a  great  screen  twenty-five  palms,  or  about  eighteen 
feet  high,  he  comes  to  the  pulpit — 'This,  Sir,  which  is  finished, 
all  who  see  it  say,  that  in  Spain  there  is  no  piece  of  stone  of 
better  workmanship,  for  this  20$coo  have  been  paid,'  leaving 
some  money  still  due. 

He  then  speaks  of  the  different  reredoses,  tombs  of  two 
priors,  silver  candlesticks,  a  great  silver  cross  made  by  Eytor 
Gonsalves,  a  goldsmith  of  Lisbon,  much  other  church  plate, 
and  then  goes  on  to  say  that  a  lectern  was  ordered  for  the 
choir  but  was  not  made  and  was  much  needed,  as  was  a  silver 
monstrance,  and  that  the  monastery  had  no  money  to  pay 
Christovam  de  Figueiredo  for  painting  the  great  reredos  of 
the  high  altar  and  those  of  the  other  chapels,  '  and,  Sir,  it  is 
necessary  that  they  should  be  painted.' 

Besides  making  so  many  gifts  to  Sta.  Cruz,  Dom  Manoel 
endowed  it  with  many  privileges.  The  priors  were  exempt 
from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  bishop,  and  had  themselves  com- 
plete control  over  their  own  dependent  churches.  All  the 
canons  were  chaplains  to  the  king,  and  after  the  university 
came  back  to  Coimbra  from  Lisbon  in  1539  Dom  Joao  iii. 
made  the  priors  perpetual  chancellors.^ 

By  1522  then  the  church  must  have  been  practically  ready, 
though  some  carving  still  had  to  be  done. 

Marcos  Pires  died  in  1524  and  was  succeeded  by  Diogo 
de  Castilho,  and  in  a  letter  dated  from  Evora  in  that  year  the 
king  orders  a  hundred  gold  cruzados  to  be  paid  to  Diogo  and 
to  Master  Nicolas "  for  the  statues  on  the  west  door  which 
were  still  wanting,  and  two  years  later  in  September  another 
letter  granted  Diogo  the  privilege  of  riding  on  a  mule.^ 

The  interest  of  the  church  itself  is  very  inferior  to  that  of 

1  The  university  was  first  accommodated  in  Sta.  Cruz,  till  Dom  Joao  gave  up  the 
palace  where  it  still  is.  It  was  after  the  return  of  the  university  to  Coimbra  that 
George  Buchanan  was  for  a  time  professor.  He  got  into  difficulties  with  the  Inquisi- 
tion and  had  to  leave. 

^  Nicolas  the  Frenchman  is  first  mentioned  in  15  17  as  working  at  Belem.  He 
therefore  was  probably  the  first  to  introduce  the  renaissance  into  Portugal,  for  Sanso- 
vino  had  no  lasting  influence.  «=■  v 

^  'To  give  room  and  licence  to  Dioguo  de  Castylho,  master  of  the  work  of  my 
palace  at  Coimbra,  to  ride  on  a  mule  and  a  nag  seeing  that  he  has  no  horse,  and  not- 
withstanding my  decrees  to  the  contrary.' — Sept.  18,  1526. 


FOREIGN  ARTISTS  199 

the  different  pieces  of  church  furniture,  nearly  all  the  work  of 
foreigners,  with  which  it  was  adorned,  and  of  which  some, 
though  not  all,  survive  to  the  present  day. 

Inside  there  is  nothing  very  remarkable  in  the  structure  of 
the  church  except  the  fine  vaulting  with  its  many  moulded  ribs, 
the  large  windows  with  their  broken  Manoelino  heads,  and  the 
choir  gallery  which  occupies  nearly  two  bays  at  the  west  end. 
Vaulted  underneath,  it  opens  to  the  church  by  a  large  elliptical 
arch  which  springs  from  jambs  ornamented  with  beautiful 
candelabrum  shafts. 

Of  the  outside  little  is  to  be  seen  except  the  west  front, 
one  of  the  least  successful  designs  of  that  period. 

In  the  centre— now  partly  blocked  up  by  eighteenth- 
century  additions,  and  sunk  several  feet  below  the  street^s  a 
great  moulded  arch,  about  eighteen  feet  across  and  once 
divided  into  two  by  a  central  jamb  bearing  a  figure  of  Our 
Lord,  whence  the  door  was  called  '  Portal  da  Majestade '  ; 
above  the  arch  a  large  round-headed  window,  deeply  recessed, 
lights  the  choir  gallery,  and  between  it  and  the  top  of  the  arch 
are  three  renaissance  niches,  divided  by  pilasters,  and  contain- 
ing three  figures — doubtless  some  of  those  for  which  Diogo 
de  Castilho  and  Master  Nicolas  were  paid  one  hundred 
cruzados  in  1524.  The  window  with  its  mouldings  is  much 
narrower  than  the  door,  and  is  joined  to  the  tall  pinnacles 
which  rise  to  the  right  and  left  of  the  great  opening  by  Gothic 
flying  buttresses.  Between  the  side  pinnacles  and  the  central 
mass  of  the  window  a  curious  rounded  and  bent  shaft  rises 
from  the  hood-mould  of  the  door  to  end  in  a  semi-classic 
column  between  two  niches,  and  from  the  shaft  there  grow 
out  two  branches  to  support  the  corbels  on  which  the  niche 
statues  stand.  All  this  is  very  like  the  great  south  door  of 
the  Jeronymite  monastery  at  Belem,  the  work  of  Diogo's 
brother  Joao  de  Castilho  ;  both  have  a  wide  door  below  with 
a  narrower  window  above,  surrounded  by  a  mass  of  pinnacles 
and  statues,  but  here  the  lower  door  is  far  too  wide,  and  the 
upper  window  too  small,  and  besides  the  wall  is  set  back  a  foot 
or  two  immediately  on  each  side  of  the  window  so  that  the 
surface  is  more  broken  up.  Again,  instead  of  the  whole 
rising  up  with  a  great  pinnacled  niche  to  pierce  the  cornice 
and  to  dominate  parapet  and  cresting,  the  drip-mould  of  the 
window  only  gives  a  tew  ugly  twists,  and  leaves  a  blank  space 
between  the  window  head  and  the  straight  line  of  the  cornice 


200        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

and  parapet  ;  a  line  in  no  way  improved  by  the  tall  rustic  cross 
or  the  four  broken  pinnacles  which  rise  above  it.  Straight 
crested  parapets  also  crown  the  wall  where  it  is  set  back,  but 
at  the  sides  the  two  corners  grow  into  eight-sided  turrets  ending 
in  low  crocketed  stone  roofs.  Of  course  the  whole  front  has 
suffered  much  from  the  raising  of  the  street  level,  but  it  can 
never  have  been  beautiful,  for  the  setting  back  of  part  of  the 
wall  looks  meaningless,  and  the  turrets  are  too  small  for 
towers  and  yet  far  too  large  for  angle  pinnacles.     (Fig.  69.) 

Although  the  soft  stone  is  terribly  perished,  greater  praise 
can  be  given  to  the  smaller  details,  especially  to  the  figures, 
which  show  traces  of  considerable  vigour  and  skill. 

If  the  church  shows  that  Marcos  Pires  was  not  a  great 
architect,  the  cloister  still  more  marks  his  inferiority  to  the 
Fernandes  or  to  Joao  de  Castilho,  though  with  its  central 
fountain  and  its  garden  it  is  eminently  picturesque.  Part  of 
it  is  now,  and  probably  all  once  was,  of  two  stories.  The 
buttresses  are  picturesque,  polygonal  below,  a  cluster  of 
rounded  shafts  above,  and  are  carried  up  in  front  of  the 
upper  cloister  to  end  in  a  large  cross.  All  the  openings  have 
segmental  pointed  heads  with  rather  poor  mouldings.  Each 
is  subdivided  into  two  lights  with  segmental  round  heads, 
supporting  a  vesica-like  opening.  All  the  shafts  are  round, 
with  round  moulded  bases  and  round  Manoelino  caps.  The 
central  shaft  has  a  ring  moulding  half-way  up,  and  all,  including 
the  flat  arches  and  the  vesicas,  are  either  covered  with  leaves, 
or  are  twisted  into  ropes,  but  without  any  ot  that  wonderful 
delicacy  which  is  so  striking  at  Batalha.  Across  one  corner 
a  vault  has  been  thrown  covering  a  fountain,  and  though  else- 
where the  ribs  are  plainly  moulded,  here  they  are  covered  with 
leaf  carving,  and  altogether  make  this  north-east  corner  the 
most  picturesque  part  of  the  whole  cloister.     (Fig.  70.) 

The  upper  walk  with  its  roof  of  wood  is  much  simpler, 
there  being  three  flat  arches  to  each  bay  upheld  by  short 
round  shafts. 

Now  to  turn  from  the  church  itself  and  its  native  builders 
to  the  beautiful  furniture  provided  for  it  by  foreign  skill. 
Much  of  it  has  vanished.  The  church  plate  when  it  became 
unfashionable  was  sent  to  Goa,  the  great  metal  screen  made  by 
Antonius  Fernandes  is  gone,  and  so  is  the  reredos  carved  by  a 
master  from  Seville  and  painted  by  Christovao  de  Figueredo. 
There  still  hang  on   the    wall   of  the   sacristy  two   or   three 


41 


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:£.    .. 

S  c 

Is 


FOREIGN  ARTISTS  201 

pictures  which  may  have  formed  part  of  this  reredos.  They 
are  high  up  and  very  dirty,  but  seem  to  have  considerable 
merit,  especially  one  of'  Pentecost '  which  is  signed  '  Velascus.' 
The  '  Pentecost '  still  has  for  its  frame  some  pieces  of  beautiful 
early  renaissance  moulding  not  unlike  what  may  still  be  seen 
on  the  reredos  at  Funchal,  and  it  is  just  the  size  of  a  panel  for 
a  large  reredos.  Of  course  '  Velascus '  is  not  Grao  Vasco, 
though  the  name  is  the  same,  nor  can  he  be  Christovao  de 
Figueredo,  but  perhaps  the  painting  spoken  of  bv  Gregorio 
Louren^o  as  done  by  Christovao  may  only  have  been  of  the 
framing  and  not  necessarily  of  the  panels. 

These  are  gone,  but  there  are  still  left  the  royal  tombs, 
the  choir  stalls,  the  pulpit,  and  three  beautiful  carved  altar- 
pieces  in  the  cloister. 

The  royal  tombs  are  both  practically  alike.  In  each  the 
king  lies  under  a  great  round  arch,  on  a  high  altar-tomb,  on 
whose  front,  under  an  egg  and  tongue  moulding  a  large 
scroll  bearing  an  inscription  is  upheld  by  winged  children. 
The  arch  is  divided  into  three  bands  of  carving,  one — the 
widest — carved  with  early  renaissance  designs,  the  next  which 
is  also  carried  down  the  jambs,  with  very  rich  Gothic  foliage, 
and  the  outermost  with  more  leaves.  The  back  of  each  tomb 
is  divided  into  three  by  tall  Gothic  pinnacles,  and  contains 
three  statues  on  elaborate  corbels  and  under  very  intricate 
canopies,  of  which  the  central  rises  in  a  spire  to  the  top  of  the 
arch. 

On  the  jambs,  under  the  renaissance  band  of  carving,  are 
two  statues  one  above  the  other  on  Gothic  corbels  but  under 
renaissance  canopies. 

Beyond  the  arch  great  piers  rise  up  with  three  faces 
separated  by  Gothic  pinnacles.  On  each  face  there  is  at  the 
bottom — above  the  interpenetrating  bases — a  classic  medallion 
encompassed  by  Manoelino  twisting  stems  and  leaves,  and 
higher  up  two  statues  one  above  the  other.  Of  these  the 
lower  stands  on  a  Gothic  corbel  under  a  renaissance  canopy, 
and  the  upper,  standing  on  the  canopy,  has  over  it  another 
tall  canopy  Gothic  in  style.  Higher  up  the  piers  rise  up  to 
the  vault  with  many  pinnacles  and  buttresses,  and  between 
them,  above  the  arch,  are  other  figures  in  niches  and  two 
angels  holding  the  royal  arms. 

The  design  of  the  whole  is  still  very  Manoelino,  and  there- 
fore the   master   of  the   royal   tombs  spoken  of  by  Gregorio 


202        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Louren^o  was  probably  a  Portuguese,  but  the  skill  shown  in 
modelling  the  figures  and  the  renaissance  details  are  some- 
thing quite  new.     (Fig.  71.) 

Manv  Frenchmen  are  known  to  have  worked  in  Santa 
Cruz.  One,  Master  Nicolas,  has  been  met  already  working 
at  Belem  and  at  the  west  door  here,  and  others — Longuim, 
Philipo  Uduarte,  and  finally  Joiio  de  Ruiio  (Jean  de  Rouen) — 
are  spoken  of  as  having  worked  at  the  tombs. 

Though  the  figures  are  good  with  well-modelled  draperies, 
their  faces,  or  those  of  most  of  them,  are  rather  expression- 
less, and  some  of  them  look  too  short — all  indeed  being  less 
successful  than  those  on  the  pulpit,  the  work  of  Joao  de 
Ruiio.  It  is  likely  then  that  the  figures  are  mostly  the  work 
of  the  lesser  known  men  and  not  of  Master  Nicolas  or  of 
Joao  de  Rufio,  though  Joao,  who  came  later  to  Portugal,  may 
have  been  responsible  for  some  of  the  renaissance  canopies 
which  are  not  at  all  unlike  some  of  his  work  on  the  pulpit. 

The  pulpit  projects  from  the  north  wall  of  the  church 
between  two  of  the  chapels.  In  shape  it  is  a  half-octagon  set 
diagonally,  and  is  upheld  by  circular  corbelling.  It  was  ready 
by  the  time  Gregorio  Louren^o  wrote  to  Dom  Jo5o  in.  in 
1522,  but  still  wanted  a  suitable  finishing  to  its  door.  This 
Gregorio  urged  Dom  Joao  to  add,  but  it  was  never  done,  and 
now  the  entrance  is  onlv  framed  by  a  simple  classic  architrave. 

Now  Georges  d'Amboise,  the  second  archbishop  of  that 
name  to  hold  the  see  of  Rouen,  began  the  beautiful  tomb,  on 
which  he  and  his  uncle  kneel  in  prayer,  in  the  year  1520, 
and  the  pulpit  at  Coimbra  was  finished  before  March  1522. 

Among  the  workmen  employed  on  this  tomb  a  Jean  de 
Rouen  is  mentioned,  but  he  left  in  1521.  The  detail  of  the 
tomb  at  Rouen  and  that  of  the  pulpit  here  are  alike  in  their 
exceeding  fineness  and  beauty,  and  a  man  thought  worthy  of 
taking  part  in  the  carving  of  the  tomb  might  well  be  able  to 
carry  out  the  pulpit  ;  besides,  on  it  are  cut  initials  or  signs 
which  have  been  read  as  J.R.^  The  J  or  I  is  distinct,  the  R 
much  less  so,  but  the  carver  of  the  pulpit  was  certainly  a 
Frenchman  well  acquainted  with  the  work  of  the  French 
renaissance.  It  may  therefore  be  accepted  with  perhaps 
some  likelihood,  that  the  Jean  de  Rouen  who  left  Normandy 
in  1 52 1,  came  then  to  Coimbra,  carved  this  pulpit,  and  is  the 
same  who  as  Joao  de  Ruao  is  mentioned  in  later  documents  as 

1   l":l/iena  Barhosa  Monumentes  i'e  Portugal,  p.  411. 


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FOREIGN  ARTISTS  203 

still  working  for  Santa  Cruz,  where  he  signed  a  discharge  as 
late  as  1549.^ 

The  whole  pulpit  is  but  small,  not  more  than  about  five 
feet  high  including  the  corbelled  support,  and  all  carved  with 
a  minuteness  and  delicacy  not  to  be  surpassed  and  scarcely  to 
be  equalled  by  such  a  work  as  the  tomb  at  Rouen.  At  the 
top  is  a  finely  moulded  cornice  enriched  with  winged  heads, 
tiny  egg  and  tongue  and  other  carving.  Below  on  each  of 
the  four  sides  are  niches  whose  shell  tops  rest  on  small 
pilasters  all  covered  with  the  finest  ornaments,  and  in  each 
niche  sits  a  Father  of  the  Western  Church,  St.  Augustine, 
St.  Jerome,  St.  Gregory,  and  St.  Ambrose.  Their  feet  rest  on 
slightly  projecting  bases,  on  the  front  of  each  of  which  is  a  small 
panel  measuring  about  four  inches  by  two  carved  with  tiny 
figures  and  scenes  in  slight  relief.  On  the  shell  heads,  which 
project  a  little  in  the  centre,  there  stand,  above  St.  Augustine 
three  minute  figures  of  boys  with  wreaths,  the  figures  being 
about  three  or  four  inches  high,  above  St.  Jerome  sit  two  others, 
with  masks  hanging  from  their  arms,  upholding  a  shield  and  a 
cross  of  the  Order  of  Christ.  Those  above  St.  Gregory  support 
a  sphere,  and  above  St.  Ambrose  one  stands  alone  with  a  long- 
necked  bird  on  each  side.  At  each  angle  two  figures,  one 
above  the  other,  each  about  eight  inches  high,  stand  under 
canopies  the  delicacy  of  whose  carving  could  scarcely  be  sur- 
passed in  ivory.  They  represent,  above.  Religion  with  Faith, 
Hope,  and  Charity,  and  below,  four  prophets.  The  corbelled 
support  is  made  up  of  a  great  many  different  mouldings,  most 
of  them  enriched  in  different  ways. 

Near  the  top  under  the  angles  of  the  pulpit  are  beauti- 
ful cherubs'  heads.  About  half-way  down  creatures  with 
wings  and  human  heads  capped  with  winged  helmets  grow 
out  of  a  mass  of  flat  carving,  and  at  the  very  bottom  is  a  kind 
of  winged  dragon  whose  five  heads  stretch  up  across  the  lower 
mouldings.      (Fig.  72.) 

Altogether  the  pulpit  is  well  worthy  of  the  praise  given  it 
by  Gregorio  ;  there  may  be  more  elaborate  pieces  of  carving 
in  Spain,  but  scarcely  one  so  beautiful  in  design  and  in 
execution,  ai;d  indeed  it  may  almost  be  doubted  whether 
France  itself  can  produce  a  finer  piece  of  work.  The  figure 
sculpture  is  worthy  of  the  best  French  artists,  the  whole 
design   is   elaborate,   but   not   too   much   so,   considering   the 

'  Other  men  trom  Rouen  arc  albo  mentioned,  Jeronymo  and  Simlo. 


204        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

smallness  of  the  scale,  and  the  execution  is  such  as  could  only 
have  been  carried  out  in  alabaster  or  the  finest  limestone, 
such  as  that  found  at  Anga  not  far  off,  and  used  at  Coimbra 
for  all  delicate  work.' 

In  the  discharge  signed  by  Joao  de  Ruao  in  1549  reredoses 
are  spoken  of  as  worked  by  him.  There  is  nothing  in  the 
document  to  show  whether  these  are  the  three  great  pieces  of 
sculpture  in  the  cloisters  each  of  which  must  once  have  been 
meant  for  a  reredos.  Unfortunately  in  the  seventeenth 
century  they  were  walled  up,  and  were  only  restored  to  view 
not  many  years  ago,  and  though  much  destroyed,  enough 
survives  to  show  that  they  were  once  worthy  of  the  pulpit. 

They  represent  '  Christ  shown  to  the  people  by  Pilate,'  the 
'  Bearing  of  the  Cross,'  and  the  '  Entombment.' 

In  each  there  is  at  the  bottom  a  shelf  narrower  than  the 
carving  above,  and  uniting  the  two,  a  broad  band  wider  at  the 
top  than  at  the  bottom,  most  exquisitely  carved  in  very  slight 
relief,  with  lovely  early  renaissance  scrolls,  and  with  winged 
boys  holding  shields  or  medallions  in  the  centre.  Above  is  a 
large  square  framework,  flanked  at  the  sides  by  tall  candela- 
brum shafts  on  corbels,  and  finished  at  the  top  by  a  moulding 
or,  above  the  '  Bearing  of  the  Cross,'  by  a  crested  entablature, 
with  beautifully  carved  frieze.  Within  this  framework  the 
stone  is  cut  back  with  sloping  sides,  carved  with  architectural 
detail,  arches,  doors,  entablatures  in  perspective.  At  the  top 
is  a  panelled  canopy. 

In  the  '  Ecce  Homo '  on  the  left  is  a  flight  of  steps  leading 
up  to  the  judgment  seat  of  Pilate,  who  sits  under  a  large  arch, 
with  Our  Lord  and  a  soldier  on  his  right.  The  other  half  of 
the  composition  has  a  large  arch  in  the  background,  and  in 
front  a  crowd  of  people  some  of  whom  are  seen  coming  through 
the  opening  in  the  sloping  side. 

In  the  'Bearing  of  the  Cross'  the  background  is  taken  up 
by  the  walls  and  towers  of  Jerusalem.  Our  Lord  with  a 
great  T-shaped  cross  is  in  the  centre,  with  St.  Veronica  on  the 
right  and  a  great  crowd  of  people  behind,  while  other  persons 
look  out  of  the  perspective  arches  at  the  side.     (Fig.  73-) 

In  all,  especially  perhaps  in  the   '  Ecce  Homo,'  the   com- 

'  The  stone  used  at  Batalha  and  at  Alcoba(;a  is  of  similar  fineness,  but  seems 
better  able  to  stand  exposure,  as  the  front  cf  Santa  Cruz  at  Coimbra  is  much  more 
decayed  than  are  any  parts  of  the  buildings  at  either  Batalha  or  Alcoba^a.  The 
stone  resembles  Caen  stone,  but  is  even  finer. 


FOREIGN  ARTISTS  205 

position  is  good,  and  the  modelling  of  the  figures  excellent. 
Unfortunately  the  faces  are  much  decayed  and  perhaps  the 
figures  may  be  rather  wanting  in  repose,  and  yet  even  in 
their  decay  they  are  very  beautiful  pieces  of  work,  and  show 
that  Joao  de  Ruao — if  he  it  was  who  carved  them — was  as 
able  to  design  a  large  composition  as  to  carve  a  small  pulpit. 
Under  the  '  Ecce  Homo,'  in  a  tablet  held  by  winged  boys  who 
grow  out  of  the  ends  of  the  scrolls,  there  is  a  date  which 
seems  to  read  i  550.  The  '  Quita^am  '  was  signed  on  the  i  ith 
of  September  1549,  and  if  1550  is  the  date  here  carved  it  may 
show  when  the  work  was  finally  completed.^ 

There  once  stood  in  the  refectory  a  terra  cotta  group  of 
the  '  Last  Supper.'  Now  nothing  is  left  but  a  few  fragments 
in  the  Museum,  but  there  too  the  figures  of  the  apostles  were 
well  modelled  and  well  executed. 

Of  the  other  works  ordered  by  Dom  Manoel  the  only  one 
which  still  remains  are  the  splendid  stalls  in  the  western  choir 
gallery.  These  in  two  tiers  of  seats  run  round  the  three 
walls  of  the  gallery  except  where  interrupted  by  the  large  west 
window.  Tlicy  can  hardly  be  the  '  cadeiras '  or  seats  men- 
tioned in  Gregorio's  letter  of  July  1518,  for  it  is  surely 
impossible  that  they  should  have  been  begun  in  January  and 
finished  in  July  however  active  the  Seville  master  may  have 
been,  and  judging  from  their  carving  they  seem  more  Flemish 
than  Spanish,  and  we  know  that  Flemings  had  been  working 
not  very  long  before  on  the  cathedral  rercdos.  The  lower 
tier  of  seats  has  Gothic  panelling  below,  good  Miserere  seats, 
arms,  on  each  of  which  sits  a  monster,  and  on  the  top  between 
each  and  supporting  the  book-board  of  the  upper  row,  small 
figures  of  men,  with  bowed  backs,  begga.-s,  pilgrims,  men  and 
women  all  most  beautifully  carved.  The  panels  behind  the 
upper  tier  are  divided  by  twisted  Manoelino  shafts  bearing 
Gothic  pinnacles,  and  the  upper  part  of  each  panel  is  enriched 
with  deeply  undercut  leaves  and  finials  surrounding  armillary 
spheres.  Above  the  panels,  except  over  the  end  stalls  where 
sat  the  Dom  Prior  and  the  other  dignitaries,  and  which  have 
higher  canopies,  there  runs  a  continuous  canopy  panelled 
with  Gothic  quatrcfoils,  and  having  in  front  a  fringe  of  inter- 
lacing cusps.  Between  this  and  the  cresting  is  a  beautiful 
carved  cornice  of  leaves  and  of  crosses  of  the  Order  of  Christ, 
and  the  cresting  itself  is  formed  by  a  number  of  carved  scenes, 

'  Jolo  i\e  Ruao  also  made  some  bookcases  for  tlie  monastery  library. 


2o6        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

cities,  forests,  sliips,  separated  by  saintly  figures  and  sur- 
mounted by  a  carved  band  from  which  grow  up  great  curl- 
ing leaves  and  finials.  These  scenes  are  supposed  to  repre- 
sent the  great  discoveries  of  Vasco  da  Gama  and  of  Pedro 
Alvares  Cabral  in  India  and  in  Brazil,  but  if  this  is  really  so 
the  carvers  must  have  been  left  to  their  own  imagination,  for 
the  towns  do  not  look  particularly  Indian,  nor  do  the  forests 
suggest  the  tropical  luxuriance  of  Brazil  :  perhaps  the  small 
three-masted  ships  alone,  with  their  high  bows  and  stern, 
represent  the  reality.     (Fig.  74.) 

As  a  whole  the  design  is  entirely  Gothic,  only  at  the 
ends  of  each  row  of  stalls  is  there  anything  else,  and  there 
the  panels  are  carved  with  renaissance  arabesque,  which, 
being  gilt  like  all  the  other  carving,  stands  out  well  from  the 
dark  brown  background. 

These  are  almost  the  only  mediasval  stalls  left  in  the 
country.  Those  at  Thomar  were  burnt  by  the  French,  those 
in  the  Carmo  at  Lisbon  destroyed  by  the  earthquake,  and 
those  at  Alcobaga  have  disappeared.  Only  at  Funchal  are 
there  stalls  of  the  same  date,  for  those  at  Vizeu  seem  rather 
later  and  are  certainly  poorer,  their  chief  interest  now  being 
derived  from  the  old  Chinese  stamped  paper  with  which  their 
panels  are  covered. 
Coimbra,  If  the  Stalls  at  Santa  Cruz  are  the  only  examples  of  this 

Se  Velha.  period  still  left  on  the  mainland,  the  Se  Velha  possesses  the 
only  great  mediaeval  reredos.  In  Spain  great  structures  are 
found  in  almost  every  cathedral  rising  above  the  altar  to  the 
vault  in  tier  upon  tier  of  niche  and  panel.  Richly  gilded, 
with  fine  paintings  on  the  panels,  with  delicate  Gothic  pinnacles 
and  tabernacle  work,  they  and  the  metal  screens  which  half 
hide  them  do  much  to  make  Spanish  churches  the  most 
interesting  in  the  world.  Unfortunately  in  Portugal  the  bad 
taste  of  the  eighteenth  century  has  replaced  all  those  that  may- 
have  existed  by  great  and  heavy  erections  of  elaborately  carved 
wood.  All  covered  with  gold,  the  Corinthian  columns,  twisted 
and  wreathed  with  vines,  the  overloaded  arches  and  elaborate 
entablatures  are  now  often  sadly  out  ot  place  in  some  old 
interior,  and  make  one  grieve  the  more  over  the  loss  of  the 
simpler  or  more  appropriate  reredos  which  came  before 
them. 

Dom  Jorge  d'Almeida  held  the  see  of  Coimbra  and  the 
countship  of  Arganil — for  the  bishops  are  always  counts  of 


43 


.  (J 

< 

32 


<  S  3 

0    <    .„ 


FOREIGN  ARTISTS 


207 


Arganil — from  1481  till  1543,  when  he  died  at  the  age  of 
eighty-five  ;  during  these  sixty-two  years  he  did  much  to 
beautify  his  church,  and  of  these  additions  the  oldest  is  the 
reredos  put  up  in  1508.  This  we  learn  from  a  '  quitaca '  or 
discharge  granted  in  that  year  to  '  Mestre  Vlimer  framengo, 
ora  estante  nesta  cidada,  e  seu  Parceiro  Joao  Dipri,'  that  is,  to 
'  Master  Vlimer  a  Fleming,  now  in  this  city,  and  to  his  partner 
John  of  Ypres.' 

The  reredos  stands  well  back  in  the  central  apse  ;  it  is 
divided  into  five  upright  parts,  of  which  that  in  the  centre  is 
twice  as  wide  as  any  ot  the  others,  while  the  outermost  with 
the  strips  of  panelling  and  carving  which  come  beyond  them 
are  canted,  following  the  line  of  the  apse  wall.  Across  these 
five  upright  divisions  and  in  a  straight  line  is  thrown  a  great 
flattened  trefoil  arch  joined  to  the  back  with  Gothic  vaulting. 
In  the  middle  over  the  large  division  it  is  fringed  with  the 
intersecting  circles  of  curved  branches,  while  from  the  top  to 
the  blue-painted  apse  vault  with  its  gilded  ribs  and  stars  a 
forest  of  pinnacles,  arches,  twisting  and  intertwining  branches 
and  leaves  rises  high  above  the  bishop's  arms  and  mitre  and 
the  two  angels  who  uphold  them. 

Below  the  arch  the  five  parts  are  separated  by  pinnacle 
rising  above  pinnacle.  At  the  bottom  under  long  canopies  of 
extraordinary  elaboration  are  scenes  in  high  relief  Above 
them  in  the  middle  the  apostles  watch  the  Assumption  of  the 
Virgin  ;  saints  stand  in  the  other  divisions,  one  in  each,  and 
over  their  heads  are  immense  canopies  rising  across  a  richly 
cusped  background  right  up  to  the  vaulting  of  the  arch. 
Though  not  so  high,  the  canopy  over  the  Virgin  is  far  more 
intricate  as  it  forms  a  great  curve  made  up  of  seven  little  cusped 
arches  with  innumerable  pinnacles  and  spires.      (Fig.  75.) 

Being  the  work  of  Flemings,  the  reredos  is  naturally  full 
of  that  exuberant  Flemish  detail  which  may  be  seen  in  a 
Belgian  town-hall  or  in  the  work  of  an  early  Flemish  painter  ; 
and  if  the  stalls  at  Santa  Cruz  are  not  by  this  same  Master 
Vlimer,  the  intertwining  branches  on  the  cresting  and  the 
sharply  carved  leaves  on  the  panels  show  that  he  had  followers 
or  pupils. 

Like  most  Flemish  productions,  the  reredos  is  wanting  in 
grace.  Though  it  throws  a  fine  deep  shadow  the  great  arch 
is  very  ugly  in  shape  and  the  great  canopies  are  far  too  large, 
and    yet   the   mass   of  gold,   well   lit    by  the  windows  of  the 


2o8        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

lantern  and  rising  to  the  dim  blue  vault,  makes  a  singularly 
fine  ending  to  the  old  and  solemn  church. 

More  important  than  the  reredos  in  the  art  history  of  the 
country  are  some  other  changes  made  by  Dom  Jorge,  which 
show  that  the  Frenchmen  working  at  Santa  Cruz  were  soon 
employed  elsewhere. 

On  the  north  side  of  the  nave  a  door  leads  out  of  the 
church,  and  this  these  Frenchmen  entirely  transformed. 

At  the  bottom,  between  two  much  decayed  Corinthian 
pilasters,  is  the  door  reached  by  a  flight  of  steps.  The  arch  is 
of  several  orders,  one  supported  by  thin  columns,  one  by 
square  fluted  pilasters.  Within  these,  at  right  angles  to  each 
other,  are  broad  faces  carved  and  resting  on  piers  at  whose 
corners  are  tiny  round  columns,  in  two  stories,  with  carved 
reliefs  between  the  upper  pair.  In  the  tympanum  is  a  beauti- 
ful Madonna  and  Child,  and  two  round  medallions  with  heads 
adorn  the  spandrils  above  the  arch.  Beyond  each  pilaster  is 
a  canted  side  joining  the  porch  to  the  wall  and  having  a  large 
niche  and  figure  near  the  top.  The  whole  surface  has  been 
covered  with  exquisite  arabesques  like  those  below  the  reredoses 
in  the  cloister  at  Santa  Cruz,  but  they  have  now  almost  entirely 
perished. 

Above  the  entablature  a  second  story  rises  forming  a  sort 
of  portico.  At  the  corners  are  square  fluted  Corinthian 
pilasters  ;  between  them  in  front  runs  a  balustrading,  divided 
into  three  by  the  pedestals  of  two  slender  columns,  Corinthian 
also, and  there  are  others  next  the  pilasters.  The  entablature  has 
been  most  delicate,  with  the  finest  wreaths  carved  on  the  frieze. 
Over  the  canted  sides  are  built  small  round-domed  turrets. 

Above  this  the  third  story  reaches  nearly  up  to  the  top  of 
the  wall.  In  the  middle  is  an  arch  resting  on  slender  columns 
and  supporting  a  pediment ;  on  either  side  are  square  niches 
with  columns  at  the  sides,  beyond  them  fan-shaped  semicircles, 
and  at  the  corners  vases.  Behind  this  there  rise  to  the  top  of 
the  battlements  four  panelled  Doric  pilasters  with  cornice  above, 
and  two  deep  round-headed  niches  with  figures,  one  on  each 
side. 

Inside  the  church  are  pilasters  and  a  wealth  of  delicate 
relief. 

Perhaps  the  whole  may  not  be  much  more  fortunate  than 
most  attempts  to  build  up  a  tall  composition  by  piling  columns 
one  above  the  other,  and  the  top  part  is  certainly  too  heavy 


.     <  -  o 


O  .. .    O 

'■^  -7.  J 


s 
u 


%W*.'AV^rt.I.3i. .  ••  T.  :-*/    ■'    •■■ 


FOREIGN  ARTISTS 


209 


for  what  comes  below  it.  Yet  the  details  are  or  were  beauti- 
ful, and  the  portico  above  the  door  most  graceful  and  pleasing, 
though,  being  unfortunately  on  the  north  side,  the  effect  is 
lost  of  the  deep  shadow  the  sun  would  have  thrown  and  the 
delicacy  of  the  mouldings  almost  wasted. 

Less  important  are  the  changes  made  to  the  north  transept 
door.  Fluted  pilasters  and  Corinthian  columns  were  inserted 
below,  a  medallion  with  a  figure  cut  on  the  tympanum,  and 
small  coupled  shafts  resting  on  the  Doric  capitals  of  the 
pilasters  built  to  uphold  the  entablature. 

Inside  the  most  important,  as  well  as  the  most  beautiful 
addition,  was  a  reredos  built  by  Dom  Jorge  as  his  monument 
in  the  chapel  of  Sfio  Pedro,  the  small  apse  to  the  north  of  the 
high  altar. 

Just  above  the  altar  table — which  is  of  stone  supported 
on  one  central  shaft — are  three  panels  filled  in  high  relief 
with  sculptured  scenes  from  the  life  of  St.  Peter,  the 
central  and  widest  panel  representing  his  martyrdom,  while 
on  the  uprights  between  them  are  small  figures  under 
canopies. 

The  upper  and  larger  part  is  arranged  somewhat  like  a 
Roman  triumphal  arch.  There  are  three  arches,  one  larger 
and  higher  in  the  middle,  with  a  lower  and  narrower  one  on 
each  side,  separated  by  most  beautiful  tall  candelabrum  shafts 
with  very  delicate  halt-Ionic  capitals.  In  the  centre,  in  front 
of  the  representation  of  some  town,  probably  Rome,  is  Our 
Lord  bearing  His  Cross  and  St.  Peter  kneeling  at  His  feet — 
no  doubt  the  well-known  legend  '  Domine  quo  vadis  ? '  In 
the  side  arches  stand  two  figures  with  books  :  one  is  St.  Paul 
with  a  sword,  and  the  other  probably  St.  Peter  himself. 
Above  each  of  the  side  arches  there  is  a  small  balustraded 
loggia,  scarcely  eighteen  inches  high,  in  each  of  which  are  two 
figures,  talking,  all  marvellously  lifelike.  Beautiful  carvings 
enrich  the  friezes  everywhere,  and  small  heads  in  medallions 
all  the  spandrils.  At  the  top,  in  a  hollow  circle  upheld  by 
carved  supports,  crowned  and  bearing  an  orb  in  His  left  hand, 
is  God  the  Father  Himself.      (Fig.  76.) 

Less  elaborate  than  the  pulpit  and  less  pictorial  than  the 
altar-pieces  in  the  cloister  of  Santa  Cruz,  this  reredos  is  one 
of  the  most  successful  of  all  the  French  works  at  Coimbra, 
and  its  beauty  is  enhanced  by  the  successful  lighting  through 
a   large    window    cut    on    purpose    at    the    side,    and    by    the 


210        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

beautiful  tiles — probably  contemporary — with  which  the  chapel 
is  lined. 

In  front  of  the  altar  lies  Dom  Jorge  d'Almeida,  under  a 
flat  stone,  bearing  his  arms,  and  this  inscription  in  Latin, 
'  Here  lies  Jorge  d'Almeida  by  the  goodness  of  the  divine 
power  bishop  and  count.  He  lived  eighty-five  years,  and 
died  eight  days  before  the  Kalends  of  Sextillis  a.d.  1543, 
having  held  both  dignities  sixty-two  years.' 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREIGNER    211 


CHAPTER    XV 

THE    INFLUENCE    OF    THE    FOREIGNER 

Very  quickly  the  fame  of  these  French  workers  spread  across 
the  country,  and  they  or  their  pupils  were  employed  to  design 
tombs,  altar-pieces,  or  chapels  outside  of  Coimbra.  Perhaps 
the  da  Silvas,  lords  of  Vagos,  were  among  the  very  first  to 
employ  them,  and  in  their  chapel  of  Sao  Marcos,  some  eight 
or  nine  miles  from  Coimbra,  more  than  one  example  of  their 
handiwork  may  still  be  seen. 

However,   before  visiting   Sao   Marcos  mention   must   be  Tomb  in 
made  of  two  tombs,  one  in   Nossa   Senhora  dos   Olivaes  at  Nossa  Senhora 
Thomar,  and  one  in  the  Graga  church  at  Santarem.      Both  are  xhomar""' 
exceedingly  French  in  design,  and  both  were  erected  not  long 
after  the  coming  of  the  foreigners. 

The  tomb  in  Thomar  is  the  older.  It  is  that  of  Diogo 
Pinheiro,  the  first  bishop  of  P'unchal — which  he  never  visited 
— who  died  in  1525.  No  doubt  the  monument  was  put  up 
soon  after.  It  is  placed  rather  high  on  the  north  wall  of  the 
chancel  ;  at  the  very  bottom  is  a  moulding  enriched  with  egg 
and  tongue,  separated  by  a  plain  frieze — crossed  by  a  shield 
with  the  bishop's  arms  —  from  the  plinth  and  from  the  pedestals 
(if  the  side  shafts  and  their  supporting  mouldings.  On  the 
plinth  under  a  round  arched  recess  stands  a  sarcophagus  with 
a  tablet  in  front  bearing  the  date  a.d.  1525,  while  behind  in 
an  elegant  shell-topped  niche  is  a  figure  kneeling  on  a  beautiful 
corbel.  The  front  of  this  arch  is  adorned  with  cherubs'  heads, 
the  jambs  with  arabesques,  and  heads  look  out  of  circles  in 
the  spandrils.  At  the  sides  are  Corinthian  pilasters,  and  in 
front  of  them  beautiful  candelabrum  shafts.  The  cornice 
with  a  well-carved  frieze  is  simple,  and  in  the  pediment  are 
again  carved  Dom  Diogo's  arms,  surmounted  by  his  bishop's  hat. 

At  the  ends  are  vase-shaped  finials,  and  another  supported 
by  dragons  rises  from  the  pediment.      (Fig.  77.) 


212 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Tomb  in 
Graga,  San- 
tarem. 


Sao  Marcos. 


This  monument  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  pleasing  pieces 
of  renaissance  work  in  existence,  and  one  would  be  tempted 
to  attribute  it  to  Joao  de  Castilho  were  it  not  that  it  is  more 
French  than  any  ot  his  work,  and  that  in  1525  he  can  hardly 
have  come  back  to  Thomar,  where  the  Claustro  da  Micha, 
the  first  of  the  new  additions,  was  only  begun  in  1528.  It 
will  be  safer  then  to  attribute  it  to  one  of  the  Coimbra 
Frenchmen. 

The  same  must  be  said  of  the  tomb  in  the  Gra^a  church 
at  Santarem.  It  was  built  in  1532  in  honour  of  three  men 
already  long  dead — Pero  Carreiro,  Gonzalo  Gil  Barbosa  his 
son-in-law,  and  Francisco  Barbosa  his  grandson.  The  design 
is  like  that  of  Bishop  Pinheiro's  monument,  omitting  all 
beneath  the  plinth,  except  that  the  back  is  plain,  the  arch 
elliptical,  and  the  pediment  small  and  round.  The  coffer 
has  a  long  inscription,'  the  jambs  and  arch  are  covered  with 
arabesques,  the  side  shafts  are  taller  and  even  more  elegant 
than  at  Thomar,  and  in  the  round  pediment  is  a  coat  of  arms, 
and  on  one  side  the  head  of  a  young  man  wearing  a  helmet, 
and  on  the  other  the  splendidly  modelled  head  of  an  old  man  ; 
though  much  less  pleasing  as  a  whole,  this  head  for  excellent 
realism  is  better  than  anything  found  on  the  bishop's  tomb. 

If  we  cannot  tell  which  Frenchman  designed  these  tombs, 
we  know  the  name  of  one  who  worked  for  the  da  Silvas  at 
Sao  Marcos,  and  we  can  also  see  there  the  work  of  some  of 
their  pupils  and  successors. 

Sao  Marcos,  which  lies  about  two  miles  to  the  north  of 
the  road  leading  from  Coimbra  through  Tentugal  to  Figueira 
de  Foz  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mondego,  is  now  unfortunately 
much  ruined.  Nothing  remains  complete  but  the  church,  for 
the  monastic  buildings  were  all  burned  not  so  long  ago  by 
some  peasantry  to  injure  the  landlord  to  whom  they  belonged, 
and  with  them  perished  many  a  fine  piece  of  carving. 

The  da  Silvas  had  long  had  here  a  manor-house  with  a 
chapel,  and  in  1452  Dona  Brites  de  Menezes,  the  wife  of 
Ayres  Gomes  da  Silva,  the  fourth  lord  of  Vagos,  founded 
a  small  Jeronymite  monastery.     Of  her  chapel,  designed  by 

'  '  Aqiii  jas  o  muito  honrado  Pero  Rodrigues  Porto  Carreiro,  ayo  que  foy  do 
Conde  D.  Henrique,  Cavalleiro  da  Ordem  de  San  Tiago,  e  o  muyto  honrado  Gonzalo 
Gil  Barbosa  seu  genro,  Cavalleiro  da  Ordem  de  X'*,  e  assiin  o  muito  honrado  seu 
lilho  Francisco  Barbosa :  os  quaes  torSo  trasladados  a  esta  sepultura  no  anno  de 
1532." — Fr.  Hisloria  de  Santarem  edificaJa.  By  Ignacio  da  Piedade  e  Vasconcellos. 
Lisboa  Occidental,  mdccxxxx. 


45 


y  <  =Q 


y. 


o 
H 


;;   <  9  fe 
H  s  - 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREIGNER    213 

Gil  de  Souza,  little  now  remains,  for  the  chancel  was  rebuilt 
in  the  next  century  and  the  nave  in  the  seventeenth.  Only 
the  tomb  of  Dona  Brites'  second  son,  Fernao  Telles  de 
Menezes,  still  survives,  for  the  west  door,  with  a  cusped  arch, 
beautifully  undercut  foliage,  and  knotted  shafts  at  the  side, 
was  added  in  1570. 

The  tomb  of  Fernao  Telles,  which  was  erected  about  the 
year  1471,  is  still  quite  Gothic.  In  the  wall  there  opens  a 
large  pointed  and  cusped  arch,  within  which  at  the  top  there 
hangs  a  small  tent  which,  passing  through  a  ring,  turns  into 
a  great  stone  curtain  upheld  by  hairy  wild  men.  Inside  this 
curtain  Dom  Fernao  lies  in  armour  on  a  tomb  whose  front 
is  covered  with  beautifully  carved  foliage,  and  which  has  a 
cornice  of  roses.  On  it  are  three  coats  of  arms,  Dom  Fernao's, 
those  of  his  wife,  Maria  de  Vilhena,  and  between  them  his  and 
hers  quartered. 

Most  of  the  tombs,  five  in  all,  are  found  in  the  chancel 
which  was  rebuilt  by  Ayres  da  Silva,  fifth  lord  of  Vagos,  the 
grandson  of  Dona  Brites,  in  1522  and  1523.  These  are,  on 
the  north  side,  first,  at  the  east  end,  Dona  Brites  herself,  then 
her  son  Jofio  da  Silva  in  the  middle,  and  her  grandson  Ayres 
at  the  west,  the  tombs  of  Ayres  and  his  father  being  practi- 
cally identical.  Opposite  Dona  Brites  lies  the  second  count  of 
Aveiras,  who  died  in  1672  and  whose  tomb  is  without  interest, 
and  opposite  Ayres,  his  son  Joao  da  Silva,  sixth  lord  of  Vagos, 
who  died  in  1559.  At  the  east  end  is  a  great  reredos  given  by 
Ayres  and  containing  figures  of  himself  and  of  his  wife  Dona 
Guiomar  de  Castro,  while  opening  from  the  north  side  of  the 
nave  is  a  beautiful  domed  chapel  built  by  Dona  Antonia  de 
Vilhena  as  a  tomb-house  for  her  husband,  Diogo  da  Silva,  who 
died  in  1556.  In  it  also  lies  his  elder  brother  Lourengo, 
seventh  lord  of  Vagos. 

The  chance),  which  is  of  two  bays,  one  wide,  and  one 
to  the  east  narrower,  has  a  low  vault  with  many  well-moulded 
ribs  springing  from  large  corbels,  some  of  which  are  Manoelino, 
while  others  have  on  them  shields  and  figures  of  the 
renaissance.  It  still  retains  an  original  window  on  each  side, 
small,  round-headed,  with  a  band  of  beautiful  renaissance 
carving  on  the  splay. 

Dona  Brites  lies  on  a  plain  tomb  in  front  of  which  there  is  a 
long  inscription.  Above  her  rises  a  round  arch  set  in  a  square 
frame.       Large    flowers    like    Tudor    roses    are    cut    on    the 


214        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

spandrils,  the  ogee  hood-mould  is  enriched  with  huge 
wonderfully  undercut  curly  crockets,  all  Gothic,  but  the  band 
between  the  two  mouldings  of  the  arch  is  carved  with 
renaissance  arabesques.  The  tomb  of  Ayres  himself  and  that 
of  his  father  Jofio  are  much  more  elaborate.  Each,  lying  like 
Dona  Brites  on  an  altar-tomb,  is  clad  in  full  armour.  In  front 
are  semi-classic  mouldings  at  the  top  and  bottom,  and  between 
them  a  tablet  held  by  cherubs,  that  on  Dom  Joao's  bearing  a 
long  inscription,  while  Dom  Ayres'  has  been  left  blank.  The 
arches  over  the  recumbent  figures  are  slightly  elliptical,  and 
like  that  of  the  foundress's  tomb  each  is  enriched  by  a  band  of 
renaissance  carving,  but  with  classic  mouldings  outside,  instead 
of  a  simple  round,  and  with  a  rich  fringe  ot  leafy  cusps  within. 
At  the  ends  and  between  the  tombs  are  square  buttresses  or 
pilasters  ornamented  on  each  face  with  renaissance  corbels  and 
canopies.  The  background  of  each  recess  is  covered  with 
delicate  flowing  leaves  in  very  slight  relief,  and  has  in  the 
centre  a  niche,  with  rustic  shafts  and  elaborate  Gothic  base  and 
canopy  under  which  stands  a  figure  of  Our  Lord  holding  an  orb 
in  His  left  hand  and  blessing  with  His  right.  The  buttresses, 
on  which  stand  curious  vase-shaped  finials,  are  joined  by  a 
straight  moulded  cornice,  above  which  rises  a  rounded  pediment 
floriated  on  the  outer  side.  From  the  pediment  there  stands 
out  a  helmet  whose  mantling  entirely  covers  the  flat  surface, 
and  below  it  hangs  a  shield,  charged  with  the  da  Silva  arms,  a 
lion  rampant.     (Fig.  78.) 

Here,  as  in  the  royal  tombs  at  Coimbra,  Manoelino  and 
renaissance  forms  have  been  used  together,  but  here  the 
renaissance  largely  predominates,  for  even  the  cusping  is  not 
Gothic,  although,  as  is  but  natural,  the  general  design  still  is 
after  the  older  style.  Though  very  elaborate,  these  tombs 
cannot  be  called  quite  satisfactory.  The  figure  sculpture  is 
poor,  and  it  is  only  the  arabesques  which  show  skill  in  execution. 
Probably  then  it  was  the  work  not  of  one  of  the  well-known 
Frenchmen,  but  of  one  of  their  pupils.' 

Raczynski"  thought  that  here  in  Sao  Marcos  he  had  found 
some  works  of  Sansovino  :  a  battlepiece  in  relief,  a  statue  of 
St.  Mark,  and  the  reredos.  The  first  two  are  gone,  but  if  they 
were  as  unlike  Italian  work  as  is  the  reredos,  one  may  be  sure 

'  The  ilate  1522  is  found  on  a  tablet  on  Ayres'  tomb,  so  the  three  must  have  been 
worked  while  the  thancel  was  being  built. 

■  Lei  Arts  en  Portugal:   letters  to  the  Berlin  Academy  of  Arts.     Paris,  i  8+6. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREIGNER    215 

that  they  were  not  by  him.  A  recently  found  document'  con- 
firms what  its  appearance  suggests,  namely,  that  it  is  French. 
It  was  in  fact  the  work  of  Mestre  Nicolas,  the  Nicolas 
Chantranez  who  worked  first  at  Belem  and  then  on  the  Portal 
da  Magestade  at  Santa  Cruz,  and  who  carved  an  altar-piece  in 
the  Pena  chapel  at  Cintra.  Though  much  larger  in  general 
design,  it  is  not  altogether  unlike  the  altar-piece  in  the  Se  Velha. 
It  is  divided  into  two  stories.  In  the  lower  are  four  divisions, 
with  a  small  tabernacle  in  the  middle,  and  in  each  division, 
which  has  either  a  curly  broken  pediment,  or  a  shell  at  its  head, 
are  sculptured  scenes  from  the  life  of  St.  Jerome. 

The  upper  part  contains  only  three  divisions,  one  broad 
under  an  arch  in  the  centre,  and  one  narrower  and  lower  on 
each  side.  As  in  the  cathedral,  slim  candelabrum  shafts  stand 
between  each  division  and  at  the  ends,  but  the  entablatures  are 
less  refined,  and  the  sharp  pediments  at  the  two  sides  are 
unpleasing,  as  is  the  small  round  one  and  the  vases  at  the  top. 
The  large  central  arch  is  filled  with  a  very  spirited  carving  of 
the  '  Deposition.'  In  front  of  the  three  crosses  which  rise  behind 
with  the  thieves  still  hanging  to  the  two  at  the  sides,  is  a  group 
of  people — officials  on  horseback  on  the  left,  and  weeping 
women  on  the  right.  In  the  division  to  the  left  kneels  Ayres 
himself  presented  by  St.  Jerome,  and  in  the  other  on  the  right 
Dona  Guiomar  de  Castro,  his  wife,  presented  by  St.  Luke. 
Throughout  all  the  figure  sculpture  is  excellent,  as  good  as 
anything  at  Coimbra,  but  compared  with  the  reredos  in  the 
Se  Velha,  the  architecture  is  poor  in  the  extreme:  the  central 
division  is  too  large,  and  the  different  levels  of  the  cornice, 
rendered  necessary  of  course  by  the  shape  of  the  vault,  is  most 
unpleasing.  No  one,  however,  can  now  judge  of  the  true 
effect,  as  it  has  all  been  carefully  and  hideously  painted  with  the 
brightest  of  colours.     (Fig.  79.) 

Being  architecturally  so  inferior  to  the  Sc  Velha  reredos,  it 
is  scarcely  possible  that  they  should  be  by  the  same  hand,  and 
therefore  it  seems  likely  that  both  the  work  in  St.  Peter's 
chapel  and  the  pulpit  in  Santa  Cruz  may  have  been  executed  by 
the  same  man,  namely  by  Joao  de  Ru;"lo." 

Leaving  Sao  Marcos  for  a  minute  to  finish  with  the  works  Pcna  ChaptI, 

Ciiitra. 

'  SJo  Marcos:  E.  Bid.  Porti),  in  A  arte  t  a  natureza  em  Portugal:  text  by 
J.  lie  Vasconcellos. 

•  There  is  alxi  a  fine  reredos  of  somewhat  later  date  in  the  church  of  Varziella  near 
Cantanhrde  not  tar  oHT:  but  it  belongs  rather  lo  the  school  of  the  chapel  dos  Kcis 
Magos  J  there  is  another  in  the  Matriz  of  Cantanhede  itself. 


2i6        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

of  Nicolas  Chantranez,  we  turn  to  the  small  chapel  of  Nossa 
Senhora  da  Pena,  founded  by  Dom  Maiioel  in  1503  as  a  cell 
of  the  Jeronymite  monastery  at  Beleni.  Here  in  1532  his 
son  Joilo  III.  dedicated  a  reredos  of  alabaster  and  black 
marble  as  a  thankoffering  for  the  birth  of  a  son.' 

Like  Nicolas'  work  at  Sfio  Marcos  the  altar  piece  is  full  of 
exquisite  carving,  more  beautiful  than  in  his  older  work.  In 
the  large  central  niche,  with  its  fringe  of  cusps,  is  the  '  Entomb- 
ment,' where  Our  Lord  is  being  laid  by  angels  in  a  beautiful 
sarcophagus.  Above  this  niche  sit  the  Virgin  and  Child,  on 
the  left  are  the  Annunciation  above  and  the  Birth  at  Bethlehem 
below,  and  on  the  right  the  Visit  of  the  Magi  and  the  Flight 
into  Egypt.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  delicacy  of  these 
alabaster  carvings  or  of  the  beautiful  little  reliefs  that  form  the 
pradella.  Many  of  the  little  columns  too  are  beautifully 
wrought,  with  good  capitals  and  exquisitely  worked  drums, 
and  yet,  though  the  separate  details  may  be  and  are  fine,  the 
whole  is  even  more  unsatisfactory  than  is  his  altar-piece  at  Sao 
Marcos,  and  one  has  to  look  closely  and  carefully  to  see  its 
beauties.  As  the  one  at  Sao  Marcos  is  spoiled  by  paint,  this 
one  is  spoiled  by  the  use  of  different-coloured  marble  ;  besides, 
the  different  parts  are  even  worse  put  together.  There  is  no 
repose  anywhere,  for  the  little  columns  are  all  different,  and 
the  bad  effect  is  increased  by  the  way  the  different  entablatures 
are  broken  out  over  the  many  projections. 
S5o  Marcos.  Interesting  and  even   beautiful  as  are   the   tombs  on   the 

north  side  of  the  chancel  of  Sao  Marcos,  the  chapel  dos  Reis 
Magos  is  even  more  important  historicalh .  This  chapel,  as 
stated  above,  was  built  by  Dona  Antonia  de  Vilhena  in  1556  as 
a  monument  to  her  husband.  Dona  Antonia  was  in  her  time 
noted  for  her  devotion  to  her  husband's  memory,  and  for  her 
patriotism  in  that  she  sent  her  six  sons  to  fight  in  Morocco,  from 
whence  three  never  returned.  Her  brother-in-law,  Louren^o 
da  Silva,  also,  who  lies  on  the  east  side  of  the  same  chapel,  fell 
in  Africa  in  the  fatal  battle  of  Alcacer-Quebir  in  1578,  where 
Portugal  lost  her  king  and  soon  after  her  independence. 

'  Johaniiis  ill.  Emanuelis  filius,  Ferdinandi  nep. 
Ediiardi  proiicp.  Johannis  I.  abnep.  Portugal,  et  Alg. 
rex.  Atfric.  Aetliiop.  arabic.  persic.  Indi.  ob  teliceni 
partum  Cathcrinae  reginae  conjugis  incomparabilis 
suscepto  Emanuele  filio  principi,  aram  cum  signis  pes. 
dedicavitque  anno  MDXXXU.  Divae  Marlae  Virgini  et 
Matri  sac. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREIGNER    217 

The  chapel  is  entered  from  the  nave  by  a  large  arch 
enriched  in  front  with  beautiful  cherubs'  heads  and  wreaths 
of  flowers,  and  on  the  under  side  with  coffered  panels.  This 
arch  springs  from  a  beautifully  modelled  entablature  borne  on 
either  side  by  a  Corinthian  pilaster,  panelled  and  carved,  and 
bv  a  column  fluted  above,  and  wreathed  with  hanging  fruits 
and  flowers  below,  while  similar  arches  form  recesses  on  the 
three  remaining  sides  of  the  chapel,  one — to  the  north — con- 
taining the  altar,  and  the  other  two  the  tombs  of  Diogo  and  of 
Louren(;o  da  Silva. 

On  the  nave  side,  outside  the  columns,  there  stands  on 
either  side — placed  like  the  columns  on  a  high  pedestal — a 
pilaster,  panelled  and  carved  with  exquisite  arabesques.  These 
pilasters  have  no  capitals,  but  instead  well-moulded  corbels, 
carved  with  griffin  heads,  uphold  the  entablature,  and,  by  a 
happy  innovation,  on  the  projection  thus  formed  are  pedestals 
bearing  short  Corinthian  columns.  These  support  the  main 
entablature  whose  cornice  and  frieze  are  enriched,  the  one  with 
egg  and  tongue  and  with  dentils,  and  the  other  with  strap- 
work  and  with  leaves.  In  the  spandrils  above  the  arch  are 
medallions  surrounding  the  heads  of  St.  Peter  and  of  St.  Paul, 
St.  Peter  being  especially  expressive. 

Inside,  the  background  of  each  tomb  recess  is  covered  with 
strapwork,  surrounding  in  one  case  an  open  and  in  another  a 
blank  window,  but  unfortunately  the  reredos  representing  the 
Visit  of  the  Magi  is  gone,  and  its  place  taken  by  a  very  poor 
picture  of  Our  Lady  of  Lourdes. 

The  pendentives  with  their  cherub  heads  are  carried  by 
corbels  in  the  corners,  and  the  dome  is  divided  by  bold  ribs, 
themselves  enriched  with  carving,  into  panels  filled  with  strap- 
work.     (Fig.  80.) 

This  chapel  then  is  of  great  interest,  not  only  because  of 
the  real  beauty  of  its  details  but  also  because  it  was  the  first 
built  ot  a  type  which  was  repeated  more  than  once  elsewhere, 
as,  for  instance,  at  Marceana  near  Alemquer,  on  the  Tagus, 
and  in  the  church  of  Nossa  Senhora  dos  Anjos  at  Montemor- 
o-V'elho,  not  far  from  S;lo  Marcos.  Of  the  chapels  at 
Montemor  one  at  least  was  built  by  the  same  family,  and  in 
another  where  the  reredos — a  very  fine  piece  ot  carving — 
represents  a  Pieta,  small  angels  are  seen  to  weep  as  they  look 
from  openings  high  up  at  the  sides. 

Perhaps  the  most  successful  feature  of  the  design  is  the 


2i8        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

happy  way  in  which  corbels  take  the  place  of  capitals  on  the 
lower  pilasters  of  the  front.  By  this  expedient  it  was  possible 
to  keep  the  upper  column  short  without  having  to  compare  its 
proportions  with  those  of  the  pilaster  below,  and  also  by  pro- 
jecting these  columns  to  give  the  upper  part  an  importance 
and  an  emphasis  it  would  not  otherwise  have  had. 

There  is  no  record  of  who  designed  this  or  the  similar 
chapels,  but  by  1556  enough  time  had  passed  since  the  coming 
of  the  French  for  native  pupils  to  have  learned  much  from 
them.  There  is  in  the  design  something  which  seems  to  show 
that  it  is  not  from  the  hand  of  a  Frenchman,  but  from  that  of 
some  one  who  had  learned  much  from  Master  Nicolas  or  from 
Joao  de  Ruao,  but  who  had  also  learned  something  from  else- 
where. While  the  smaller  details  remain  partly  French,  the 
dome  with  its  bold  ribs  suggests  Italy,  and  it  is  known  that 
Dom  Manoel,  and  after  him  Dom  Joao,  sent  young  men  to 
Italy  for  study.  In  any  case  the  result  is  something  neither 
Italian  nor  French. 

Even  more  Italian  is  the  tomb  of  Dona  Antonia's  father- 
in-law,  Joao  da  Silva,  sixth  lord  of  Vagos,  erected  in  1559  and 
probably  by  the  same  sculptor.  Joao  da  Silva  lies  in  armour 
under  a  round  arch  carved  with  flowers  and  cherubs.  In 
front  of  his  tomb  is  a  long  inscription  on  a  tablet  held  by 
beautifully  modelled  boys.  On  each  side  of  the  arch  is  a 
Corinthian  pilaster,  panelled  and  carved  below  and  having  at 
the  top  a  shallow  niche  in  which  stand  saints.  On  the  entab- 
lature, enriched  with  medallions  and  strapwork,  is  a  frame 
supported  by  boys  and  containing  the  da  Silva  arms.  But 
the  most  interesting  and  beautiful  part  of  the  monument  is  the 
back,  above  the  effigy.  Here,  in  the  upper  part,  is  a  shallow 
recess  flanked  by  corbel-carried  pilasters,  and  containing  a 
relief  of  the  Assumption  of  the  Virgin.  Now,  the  execution 
of  the  Virgin  and  of  the  small  angels  who  bear  her  up  may 
not  be  of  the  best,  but  the  character  of  the  whole  design  is 
quite  Italian,  and  could  only  have  been  carved  by  some  one 
who  knew  Italian  work.  On  either  side  of  this  recess 
are  round-headed  niches  containing  saints,  while  boys  sit  in 
the  spandrils  above  the  arch. 

Any  one  seeing  this  tomb  will  be  at  once  struck  with  the 
Italian  character  of  the  design,  especially  perhaps  with  the  boys 
who  hold  the  tablet  and  with  those  who  sit  in  the  spandrils.^ 

'  The  only  other  object  of  any  interest  in  the   Slo  Marcos  is  a  small  early 
renaissance  pulpit  on  the  north  side  of  the  nave,  not  unlike  that  at  Caminha. 


46 


o  S 

00         ^    ^ 


u 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREIGNER    219 

Even  without  leaving  their  country,  Portuguese  designers 
would  already  have  had  no  great  difficulty  in  finding  pieces  of 
real  Italian  work.  Not  to  speak  of  the  white  marble  door  in 
the  old  palace  of  Cintra,  possibly  the  work  of  Sansovino  him- 
self, with  its  simple  mouldings  and  the  beautiful  detail  of  its 
architrave,  there  exist  at  Evora  two  doorways  originally  belong- 
ing to  the  church  of  Sao  Domingos,  which  must  either  be  the 
work  of  ItaHans  or  of  some  man  who  knew  Italy.     (Fig.  81.) 

Built  of  white  marble  from  Estremoz  and  dating  from  Evora,  Sao 
about  1530,  the  panelled  jambs  have  moulded  caps  on  which  ^"'"'"gos. 
rests  the  arch.  Like  the  jambs,  the  arch  has  a  splay  which 
is  divided  into  small  panels.  Above  in  the  spandrils  are 
ribboned  circles  enclosing  well-carved  heads.  On  either  side 
are  pilasters  with  Corinthian  capitals  of  the  earlier  Italian 
kind.  The  entablature  is  moulded  only,  and  instead  of  a 
pediment  two  curves  lead  up  to  a  horizontal  moulding  sup- 
porting a  shell,  and  above  it  a  cherub's  head. 

Such  real  Italian  doors,  which  would  look  quite  at  home 
in  Genoa,  seem  almost  unique,  but  there  are  many  examples 
of  work  which,  like  the  tomb  and  the  chapel  at  Sao  Marcos, 
seem  to  have  been  influenced  not  only  by  the  French  school 
at  Coimbra,  but  also  by  Italian  work. 

Not  very  far  from  Evora  in  Portalegre,  where  a  bishop's  Portalegre. 
see  was  founded   by  Dom  Joao  in.  in   1549,  there  is  a   very 
fine  monument  of  this  kind  to  a  bishop  of  the  Mello  family  in 
the  seminary,   and  also   a   doorway,   while   at  Tavira   in  the  T.ivira. 
Algarve  the  Misericordia  has  an  interesting  door,  not  unlike 
that    at    Evora,    but    more    richly   ornamented    by   having    a 
sculptured  frieze  and  a  band  of  bold  acanthus  leaves  joining 
the   two   capitals   above    the   arch.     There   is   another   some- 
what similar,  but  less  successful,  in  the  church  of  Sfio  Sebastiao  Lagos. 
at  Lagos. 

Nearer  Coimbra  there  are  some  fine  monuments  to  the 
Silveira  family  at  Goes  not  far  from  Louza,  and  four  less  Goes, 
interesting  to  the  Lemos  in  the  little  parish  church  of  Trofa  Troia. 
near  Agueda.  At  Trofa  there  is  a  pair  of  tombs  on  each  side 
of  the  chancel,  round-arched,  with  pilasters  and  with  heads  in 
the  spandrils,  and  covered  with  arabesques.  Each  pair  is 
practically  alike  except  that  the  tombs  on  the  north  side, 
being  placed  closer  together  leave  no  room  for  a  central 
pilaster  and  have  small  shafts  instead  of  panelled  jambs,  and 
tliat   the     pair    on    the    south     have     pediments.       The     best 


220        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

feature  is  a  figure  of  the  founder  of  the  chancel  kneeling  at 
prayer  with  his  face  turned  towards  the  high  altar. 

Caminha.  Even  in  the  far  north  the  doors  of  the  church  at  Caminha 

show  how  important  had  been  the  coming  of  the  Frenchmen 
to  Coimbra.  They  seem  later  than  the  church,  but  though 
very  picturesque  are  clearly  the  work  of  some  one  who  was 
not  yet  quite  familiar  with  renaissance  forms.  The  south 
door  is  the  more  interesting  and  picturesque.  The  arch  and 
jambs  are  splayed,  but  there  are  no  capitals  ;  heads  look  out  of 
circles  in  the  spandrils  ;  and  the  splay  as  well  as  the  panels  of 
the  side  pilasters  are  enriched  with  carvings  which,  partly 
perhaps  owing  to  the  granite  in  which  they  are  cut,  are  much 
less  delicate  than  elsewhere.  The  Corinthian  capitals  of  the 
pilasters  are  distinctly  clumsy,  as  are  the  mouldings,  but  the 
most  interesting  part  of  the  whole  design  is  the  frieze,  which  is 
so  immensely  extended  as  to  leave  room  for  four  large  niches 
separated  by  rather  clumsy  shafts  and  containing  figures  of 
St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke  in  the  middle  and  of  St.  Peter  and 
St.  Paul  at  the  ends.  Above  in  the  pediment  are  a  Virgin 
and  Child  with  kneeling  angels.  Besides  the  innovation  of 
the  enlarged  frieze,  which  reminds  one  of  a  door  in  the 
Certosa  near  Pavia,  the  clumsiness  of  the  mouldings  and 
the  comparative  poorness  of  the  sculpture,  though  the  figures 
are  much  better  than  any  previously  worked  by  native  artists, 
suggest  that  the  designer  and  workmen  were  Portuguese. 

The  same  applies  to  the  west  door,  which  is  wider  and 
where  the  capitals  are  of  a  much  better  shape,  though  the 
pilasters  are  rather  too  tall.  The  sculpture  frieze  is  a 
little  wider  than  usual,  and  instead  of  a  pediment  there  is 
a  picturesque  cresting,  above  which  are  cut  four  extraordinary 
monsters.     (Fig.  82.) 

Moncono.  A  somewhat  similar  but  much  plainer  door  has  been  built 

against  the  older  and  round-arched  entrance  of  the  Miseri- 
cordia  at  Moncorvo  in  Traz  os  Montes.  The  parish  church 
of  the  same  place  begun  in  1544  is  both  outside  and  in  a 
curious  mixture  of  Gothic  and  Classic.  The  three  aisles  are 
of  the  same  height  with  round-arched  Gothic  vaults,  but  the 
columns  are  large  and  round  with  bases  and  capitals  evidently 
copied  from  Roman  doric,  though  the  abacis  have  been  made 
circular. 

Outside  the  buttresses  are  still  Gothic  in  form,  but  the  west 
door  is  of  the  fully  developed  renaissance.     The  opening  is 


47 


o 
o 

Q 


.  o 

<  '^• 

of  r 

I;  ° 

r;  G  C: 

■      .r  '^ 

-      o  ^ 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FOREIGNER    221 

flanked  by  coupled  columns  which  support  an  entablature 
on  which  rest  four  other  shorter  columns  separating  three 
white  marble  niches.  Above  this  is  a  window  flanked  by 
single  columns  which  carry  a  pediment.  Though  built  of 
granite,  the  detail  is  good  and  the  whole  doorway  not 
unpleasing.' 

But,  that  it  was  not  only  such  details  as  doors  and  monu- 
ments that  began  to  show  the  result  of  the  coming  of  the 
Frenchmen  is  seen  in  the  work  of  Joao  de  Castilho,  after 
he  first  left  Thomar  for  Belem.  There  he  had  found  Master 
Nicolas  Chantranez  already  at  work,  and  there  he  learned, 
perhaps  from  him,  so  to  change  his  style  that  by  the  time 
he  returned  to  Thomar  to  work  for  Dom  Joao  in.  in 
1528  he  was  able  to  design  buildings  practically  free  from 
that  Gothic  spirit  which  is  still  found  in  his  latest  work 
at  Belem. 

'  During  the  French  invasion  much  church  plate  was  hidden  on  the  top  of  capitals 
and  so  escaped  discovery. 


222        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    XVI 

LATER    WORK    OF    JOaO    DE    CASTILHO    AND    THE 
EARLIER    CLASSIC 

To  Dom  Manoel,  who  died  in  1521,  had  succeeded  his  son 
Dom  JoSo  III.  The  father  had  been  renowned  for  his  muni- 
ficence and  his  splendour,  the  son  cared  more  for  the  Church 
and  for  the  suppression  of  heresy.  By  him  the  Inquisition  was 
introduced  in  1536  to  the  gradual  crushing  of  all  independent 
thought,  and  so  by  degrees  to  the  degradation  of  his  country. 
He  reigned  for  thirty-six  years,  a  time  of  wealth  and  luxury, 
but  before  he  died  the  nation  had  begun  to  suffer  from  this 
very  luxury  ;  with  all  freedom  of  thought  forbidden,  with  the 
most  brave  and  adventurous  of  her  sons  sailing  east  to  the 
Indies  or  west  to  Brazil,  most  of  them  never  to  return, 
Portugal  was  ready  to  fall  an  easy  prey  to  Philip  of  Spain 
when  in  1580  there  died  the  old  Cardinal  King  Henry, 
last  surviving  son  of  Dom  Manoel,  once  called  the  Fortunate 
King. 

With  the  death  of  Dom  Manoel,  or  at  least  with  the 
finishing  of  the  great  work  which  he  had  begun,  the  most 
brilliant  and  interesting  period  in  the  history  of  Portuguese 
architecture  comes  to  an  end.  When  the  younger  Fernandes 
died  seven  years  after  his  master  in  1538,  or  when  Joao  de 
Castilho  saw  the  last  vault  built  at  Belem,  Gothic,  even  as 
represented  by  Manoelino,  disappeared  for  ever,  and  renais- 
sance architecture,  taught  by  the  French  school  at  Coimbra, 
or  learned  in  Italy  by  those  sent  there  by  Dom  Manoel, 
became  universal,  to  flourish  for  a  time,  and  then  to  fall  even 
lower  than  in  any  other  country. 

Except  the  Frenchmen  at  Coimbra  no  one  played  a  greater 
part  in  this  change  than  Joao  de  Castilho,  who,  no  doubt, 
first  learned  about  the  renaissance  from  Master  Nicolas  at 
Belem  ;  Thomar  also,  his  own  home,  lies  about  halt-way  between 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC   223 

Lisbon  and  Coimbra,  so  that  he  may  well  have  visited  his 
brother  Diogo  at  Santa  Cruz  and  seen  what  other  French- 
men were  doing  there  and  so  become  acquainted  with  better 
architects  than  Master  Nicolas  ;  but  in  any  case,  who  ever  it 
may  have  been  who  taught  him,  he  planned  at  Thomar, 
after  his  return  there,  the  first  buildings  which  are  wholly  in 
the  style  of  the  renaissance  and  are  not  merely  decorated  with 
renaissance  details. 

But  before  following  him  back  to  Thomar,  his  additions  Alcoba^a. 
to  the  abbey  of  Alcoba^a  must  be  mentioned,  as  there  for 
the  last  time,  except  in  some  parts  of  Belem,  he  allowed 
himself  to  follow  the  older  methods,  though  even  at  this  early 
date— 151  8  and  15  19 — renaissance  forms  are  beginning  to 
creep  in. 

On  the  southern  side  of  the  ambulatory  one  of  the 
radiating  chapels  was  pulled  down  in  15  19  to  form  a  passage, 
irregular  in  shape  and  roofed  with  a  vault  of  many  ribs. 
From  this  two  doors  lead,  one  on  the  north  to  the  sacristy, 
and  one  on  the  south  to  a  chapel.  Unfortunately  both 
sacristy  and  chapel  have  been  rebuilt  and  now  contain  nothing 
of  interest,  except,  in  the  sacristy,  some  fine  presses  inlaid 
with  ivory,  now  fast  falling  to  pieces.  The  two  doors  are 
alike,  and  show  that  Joao  de  Castilho  was  as  able  as  any  of  his 
contemporaries  to  design  a  piece  of  extreme  realism.  On  the 
jambs  is  carved  renaissance  ornament,  but  nowhere  else  is 
there  anything  to  show  that  Jofio  and  Nicolas  had  met  at 
Belem  some  two  years  before.  The  head  of  the  arch  is  wavy 
and  formed  mostly  of  convex  curves.  Beyond  the  strip 
of  carving  there  grows  up  on  either  side  a  round  tree,  with 
roots  and  bark  all  shown  ;  at  the  top  there  are  some  leaves 
for  capitals,  and  then  each  tree  grows  up  to  meet  in  the 
centre  and  so  form  a  great  ogee,  from  which  grow  out 
many  cut-off  branches,  all  sprouting  into  great  curly  leaves. 

This  is  realism  carried  to  excess,  and  yet  the  leaves  are  so 
finely  carved,  the  whole  design  so  compact,  and  the  surround- 
ing whitewashed  wall  with  its  dado  of  tiles  so  plain,  that  the 
effect  is  quite  good.       (I'ig-  83.) 

The  year  before  he  had  begun  for  Cardinal  Henry,  after- 
wards king,  and  then  commendator  of  the  abbey,  a  second 
story  to  the  great  cloister  of  Dom  Diniz.  Reached  by  a 
picturesque  stair  on  the  south  side,  the  three-centred  arches 
each    enclose    two    or    three   smaller    round    arches,  with    the 


224       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

spandrils  merely  pierced  or  sometimes  cusped.  The  mould- 
ings are  simple  but  not  at  all  classic.  The  shafts  which 
support  these  round  arches  are  all  carried  down  across  the 
parapet  through  the  rope  moulding  at  the  top  to  the  floor 
level,  and  are  of  three  or  more  patterns.  Those  at  the  jambs 
are  plain  with  hollow  chamfered  edges,  as  are  also  a  few  of  the 
others.  They  are,  however,  mostly  either  twisted,  having 
four  round  mouldings  separated  by  four  hollows,  or  else  shaped 
like  a  rather  fat  baluster  ;  most  of  the  capitals  with  curious 
volutes  at  the  corner  are  evidently  borrowed  from  Corinthian 
capitals,  but  are  quite  unorthodox  in  their  arrangement. 

Though  this  upper  cloister  adds  much  to  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  the  whole  it  is  not  very  pleasing  in  itself,  as  the  three- 
centred  arches  are  often  too  wide  and  flat,  and  yet  it  is  of 
great  interest  as  showing  how  Joao  de  Castilho  was  in  1518 
beginning  to  accept  renaissance  forms  though  still  making 
them  assume  a  Manoelino  dress. 
Bataiha,  But  in  the  door  of  the  little  parish  church  of  Sta.  Cruz  at 

Santa  Cruz.  Bataiha,  also  built  by  Joao  de  Castilho,  Manoelino  and  renais- 
sance details  are  used  side  by  side  with  the  happiest  result. 
On  each  jamb  are  three  round  shafts  and  two  bands  of 
renaissance  carving  ;  of  these  the  inner  band  is  carried  round 
the  broken  and  curved  head  of  the  opening,  while  the  outer 
runs  high  up  to  form  a  square  framing.  Of  the  three  shafts 
the  inner  is  carried  round  the  head,  the  outer  round  the 
outside  of  the  framing,  while  the  one  in  the  centre  divides  into 
two,  one  part  running  round  the  head,  while  the  other  forms 
the  inner  edge  of  the  framing,  and  also  forms  a  great  trefoil 
on  the  flat  field  above  the  opening.  In  the  two  corners 
between  the  trefoils  and  the  framing  are  circles  enclosing 
shields,  one  charged  with  the  Cross  of  the  Order  of  Christ, 
the  other  with  the  armillary  sphere. 

The  inner  side  of  the  trefoil  is  cusped,  crockets  and 
finials  enrich  the  outer  moulding  of  the  opening,  while  beyond 
the  jambs  are  niches,  now  empty.      (Fig.  84.) 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that,  except  the  great  entrance 
to  the  Capellas  Imperfeitas,  this  is  the  most  beautiful  of  all 
Manoelino  doorways  ;  in  no  other  is  the  detail  so  refined  nor 
has  any  other  so  satisfactory  a  framing.  Unfortunately  the 
construction  has  not  been  good,  so  that  the  upper  part  is  now 
all  full  of  cracks  and  gaping  joints. 
Thomar.  Since  Dom  Joao  iii.  was  more  devoted  to  the  Church  than 


48 


Li 


N 

X 
U 

■     <    5 

c 


.  o 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC   225 


to  anything  else  he  determined  in  1524  to  change  the  great 
Order  of  Christ  from  a  body  of  military  knights  bound,  as 
had  been  the  Templars,  by  certain  vows,  into  a  monastic  order 
of  regulars.  This  necessitated  great  additions  to  the  buildings 
at  Thomar,  for  the  knights  had  not  been  compelled  to  live  in 
common  like  monks. 

Accordingly  Jofio  de  Castilho  was  summoned  back  from 
Belem  and  by  1528  had  got  to  work. 

All  these  additions  were  made  to  the  west  of  the  existing 
buildings,  and  to  make  room  for  them  Dom  Joao  had  to  buy 
several  houses  and  gardens,  which  together  formed  a  suburb 
called  Sao  Martinho,  and  some  of  which  were  the  property  of 


PLAN    OF   THOMAR 


Joao  de  Castilho,  who  received  for  them  463S000  or  about 

These  great  additions,  which  took  quite  twenty-five  years 
to  build,  cover  an  immense  area,  measuring  more  than  300 
feet  long  by  300  wide  and  containing  five  cloisters.  Immediately 
to  the  west  of  the  Coro  of  the  church,  then  probably  scarcely 
finished,  is  the  small  cloister  of  Sta.  Barbara  ;  to  the  north  of 
this  is  the  larger  Claustro  da  Hospedaria,  begun  about  1539, 
while  to  the  south  and  hiding  the  lower  part  of  the  Coro  is  the 
splendid  two-storied  Claustro,  miscalled  '  dos  Filippes,'  begun 

'  Jolo  then  bought  a  house  in  the  Rua  de  Corredoura  tor  8o$ooo  or  nearly  /Ji  8. — 
Vieira  Guimarlcs,  J?  Ordtm  de  Christo,  p.  167. 

P 


226        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

in  its  present  form  in  1557  by  Diogo  de  Torralva  some  time 
after  de  Castilho's  death. 

Further  west  are  two  other  large  cloisters,  do  Mixo  or  da 
Micha  to  the  north  and  dos  Corvos  to  the  south,  and  west  of 
the  Corvos  a  sort  of  farmyard  called  the  Pateo  dos  Carrascos — 
that  is  of  the  evergreen  oaks,  or  since  Carrasco  also  means  a 
hangman,  it  may  be  that  the  executioners  of  the  Inquisition 
had  their  quarters  there. 

Between  these  cloisters,  and  dividing  the  three  on  the  east 
from  the  two  on  the  west,  is  an  immense  corridor  nearly  three 
hundred  feet  long  from  which  small  cells  open  on  each  side  ; 
in  the  centre  it  is  crossed  by  another  similar  corridor  stretch- 
ing over  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  to  the  west,  separating  the 
two  western  cloisters,  and  with  a  small  chapel  to  the  east. 

North  of  all  the  cloisters  are  more  corridors  and  rooms 
extending  eastwards  almost  to  the  Templars'  castle,  but  there 
the  outer  face  dates  mostly  from  the  seventeenth  century  or  later. 

The  first  part  to  be  begun  was  the  Claustro  da  iSlicha,  or 
loaf,  so  called  from  the  bread  distributed  there  to  the  poor. 
Outside  it  was  begun  in  1528,  but  inside  an  inscription  over 
the  door  says  it  was  begun  in  1534  and  finished  in  1546. 
Being  the  kitchen  cloister  it  is  very  plain,  with  simple  round- 
headed  arches.  Only  the  entrance  door  is  adorned  with  a 
Corinthian  column  on  either  side  ;  its  straight  head  rests  on 
well-carved  corbels,  and  above  it  is  a  large  inscribed  tablet 
upheld  by  small  boys. 

Under  the  pavement  of  the  cloister  as  well  as  under  the 
Claustro  dos  Corvos  is  a  great  cistern.  On  the  south  was  the 
kitchen  and  the  oil  cellar,  on  the  east  the  dispensary,  and  on 
the  west  a  great  oven  and  wood-store  with  three  large  halls 
above,  which  seem  to  have  been  used  by  the  Inquisition.^ 
The  lodgings  of  the  Dom  Prior  were  above  the  cloister  to  the 
north. 

Like  the  Claustro  da  Micha,  the  Claustro  dos  Corvos  has 
plain  round  arches  resting  on  round  columns  and  set  usually 
in  pairs  with  a  buttress  between  each  pair.  On  the  south  side, 
below,  were  the  cellars,  finished  in  1539,  and  above  the  library, 
on  the  west,  various  vaulted  stores  with  a  passage  above  leading 
to  the  library  from  the  dormitory. 

'  There  is  preseired  in  the  Torre  do  Tombo  at  Lisbon  a  long  accoiinl  ot  the  trial 
of  a  '  new  Christian  '  ot  Thoniar,  Jorge  Manuel,  begun  on  July  15,  1541,  in  the  office 
of  the  Holy  Inquisition  within  the  convent  of  Thoniar. — Vicira  Guimaraes,  p.  179. 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC   227 

The  whole  of  the  east  side  is  occupied  by  the  refectory, 
about  100  feet  long  by  30  wide.  On  each  of  the  long  sides 
there  is  a  pulpit,  one  bearing  the  date  1536,  enriched  with 
arabesques,  angels,  and  small  columns.  At  the  south  end 
are  two  windows,  and  at  the  north  a  hatch  communicating 
with  the  kitchen. 

The  Claustro  da  Hospedaria,  as  its  name  denotes,  was 
where  strangers  were  lodged ;  like  the  Claustro  dos  Corvos 
each  pair  of  arches  is  divided  by  a  buttress,  and  the  round 
columns  have  simple  but  effective  capitals,  in  which  nothing 
of  the  regular  Corinthian  is  left  but  the  abacus,  and  a  large 
plain  leaf  at  each  corner.  Still,  though  plain,  this  cloister  is 
very  picturesque.  Its  floor,  like  those  of  all  the  cloisters,  lies 
deep  below  the  level  of  the  church,  and  looking  eastward 
from  one  of  the  cell  windows  the  Coro  and  the  round  church 
are  seen  towering  high  above  the  brown  tile  roofs  of  the 
rooms  beyond  the  cloister  and  of  the  simple  upper  cloister, 
which  runs  across  the  eastern  walk.      (Fig.  85.) 

This  part  of  the  building,  begun  about  1539,  must  have 
been  carried  on  during  Joao  de  Castilho's  absence,  as  in  1541 
he  was  sent  to  Mazagao  on  the  Moroccan  coast  to  build 
fortifications  ;  there  he  made  a  bastion  '  so  strong  as  to  be 
able  not  only  to  resist  the  Sharifl-",  but  also  the  Turk,  so 
strong  was  it.'  ^ 

The  small  cloister  of  Santa  Barbara  is  the  most  pleasing 
of  all  those  which  Joao  de  Castilho  was  able  to  finish.  In 
order  not  to  hide  the  west  front  of  the  church  its  arches  had 
to  be  kept  very  low.  They  are  three-centred  and  almost 
flat,  while  the  vault  is  even  flatter,  the  bays  being  divided  by 
a  stone  beam  resting  on  beautifully  carved  brackets.  The 
upper  cloister  is  not  carried  across  the  east  side  next  the 
church  ;  but  in  its  south-west  corner  an  opening  with  a  good 
entablature,  resting  on  two  columns  with  fine  Corinthian 
capitals,  leads  to  one  of  those  twisting  stairs  without  a  newel 

'  From  book  54  ot  Jolo  m.'s  Chancery  a  'quitaijl"  or  discharge  given  to 
Jolo  de  Castilho  tor  all  the  work  done  tor  Dom  Jolo  or  for  his  father,  viz. — 'In 
Monastery  ot  Bcleni  ;  in  palace  by  the  sea — swallowed  up  by  the  earthquake  in 
1755 — balconies  in  hall,  slair,  chapel,  and  rooms  of  Queen  Catherine,  chapel  of 
monastery  of  Sao  Francisco  in  Lisbon,  foundation  of  Arsenal  Chapel ;  a  balcony  at 
Santos,  and  divers  other  lesser  works.  Then  a  door,  window,  well  balustrade,  garden 
repairs  ;  work  in  pest  house  ;  stone  buildings  at  the  arsenal  for  a  dry  dock  tor  the 
Indian  ships  ;  the  work  he  has  executed  at  Thomar,  as  well  as  the  work  he  has 
done  a(  Alcolia<;a  anil  Balaiha  ;  besides  he  made  a  bastion  at  Ma/ag.lo  so  strong," 
etc. — Kaczynski's  l.es  Arliilet  Portugais. 


228       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

of  which  builders  of  this  time  were  so  fond.  Going  up  this 
stair  one  reaches  the  cloister  of  the  Filippes  which  Joilo  did 
not  live  to  carry  out. 

More  interesting  than  any  of  these  cloisters  are  the  long 
dormitory  passages.  The  walls  for  about  one-third  of  the 
height  are  lined  with  tiles,  which  with  the  red  paving  tiles 
were  bought  for  about  £23  from  one  Aleixo  Antunes.  The 
roofs  are  throughout  of  dark  panelled  wood  and  semicircular 
in  shape.  The  only  windows — except  at  the  crossing — are  at 
the  ends  of  the  three  long  arms.  There  is  a  small  round- 
headed  window  above,  and  below  one,  flat-headed,  with  a 
column  in  the  centre  and  one  at  each  side,  the  window  on  the 
north  end  having  on  it  the  date  1 541,  eight  years  after  the 
chapel  in  the  centre  had  been  built. 

On  this  chapel  at  the  crossing  has  been  expended  far  more 
ornament  than  on  any  other  part  of  the  passages.  Leading 
to  each  arm  of  the  passage  an  arch,  curiously  enriched  with 
narrow  bands  which  twice  cross  each  other  leaving  diamond- 
shaped  hollows,  rests  on  Corinthian  pilasters,  which  have 
only  four  flutes,  but  are  adorned  with  niches,  whose 
elegant  canopies  mark  the  level  of  the  springing  of  the  chapel 
vault.  This  vault,  considerably  lower  than  the  passage  arches, 
is  semicircular  and  coffered.  Between  it  and  the  cornice 
which  runs  all  round  the  square  above  the  passage  arches  is  a 
large  oblong  panel,  in  the  middle  of  which  is  a  small  round 
window.  Beautifully  carved  figures  which,  instead  of  having 
legs,  end  in  great  acanthus-leaf  volutes  with  dragons  in  the 
centre,  hold  a  beautifully  carved  wreath  round  this  window. 
In  the  middle  of  the  architrave  below,  a  tablet,  held  by 
exquisite  little  winged  boys,  gives  the  date,  '  Era  de  1533.' 
Above  the  cornice  there  rises  a  simple  vault  with  a  narrow 
round-headed  window  on  each  side. 

This  carving  over  the  chapel  is  one  of  the  finest  examples 
of  renaissance  work  left  in  the  country.  It  is  much  bolder 
than  any  of  the  French  work  left  at  Coimbra,  being  in  much 
higher  relief  than  was  usual  in  the  early  French  renaissance, 
and  yet  the  figures  and  leaves  are  carved  with  the  utmost 
delicacy  and  refinement.     (Fig.  86.) 

The  same  delicacy  characterises  such  small  parts  of  the 
cloister  dos  Filippes  as  were  built  by  Joao  de  Castilho  before 
he  retired  in  1551.  These  are  now  confined  to  two  stairs 
leading  from  the   upper  to  the  lower  cloister.     These  stairs 


49 


X  ^ 

X  a 


a  U 


a   o 
>    a: 

P   S 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC   229 

are  adorned  with  pilasters  or  thin  columns  against  the  walls, 
delicate  cornices,  medallions,  figures,  and  foliage  ;  in  one  are 
square-headed  built-up  doors  or  doorlike  spaces,  with  well- 
moulded  architraves,  and  always  in  the  centre  above  the  open- 
ing small  figures  are  carved,  in  one  an  exquisite  little  Cupid 
holding  a  torch.  At  the  bottom  of  the  eastern  stair,  which  is 
decorated  with  scenes  from  the  life  of  St.  Jerome  and  with 
the  head  of  Frei  Antonio  of  Lisbon,  first  prior  of  the 
reformed  order,  a  door  led  into  the  lower  floor  of  the  un- 
finished chapter-house.  On  this  same  stair  there  is  a  date 
1545,  so  the  work  was  probably  going  on  till  the  very  end  of 
Joao's  tenure  of  office,  and  fine  as  the  present  cloister  is,  it  is  a 
pity  that  he  was  not  able  himself  to  finish  it,  for  it  is  the  chief 
cloister  in  the  whole  building,  and  on  it  he  would  no  doubt 
have  employed  all  the  resources  of  his  art.     (Fig.  87.) 

It  is  not  without  interest  to  learn  that,  like  architects  of 
the  present  day,  Jouo  de  Castilho  often  found  very  great 
difficulties  in  carrying  out  his  work.  Till  well  within  the  last 
hundred  years  Portugal  was  an  almost  roadless  country,  and 
four  centuries  ago,  as  now,  most  of  the  heavy  carting  was 
done  by  oxen,  which  are  able  to  drag  clumsy  carts  heavily 
laden  up  and  down  the  most  impassable  lanes.  Several  times 
does  he  write  to  the  king  of  the  difficultv  of  getting  oxen. 
On  4th  March  1548  he  says  : 

'  I  have  written  some  days  ago  to  Pero  Carvalho  to  tell  him 
ot  the  want  ot  carts,  since  those  which  we  had  were  away 
carrying  stone  for  the  works  at  Cardiga  and  at  Almeirim  ' 
— a  palace  now  destroyed  opposite  Santarem — '  the  works  of 
Thomar  remaining  without  stone  these  three  months.  And 
for  want  of  a  hundred  cart-loads  of  stone  which  I  had 
worked  at  the  quarry — doors  and  windows — I  have  not 
finished  the  students'  studies' — probably  in  the  noviciate  near 
the  Claustro  da  iVlicha.  '  The  studies  are  raised  to  more 
than  half  their  height  and  in  eight  days'  work  I  shall  finish 
them  it  only  I  had  oxen,  for  those  I  had  have  died. 

'  I  would  ask  20§ooo  [about  ^^4,  los.]  to  buy  five  oxen, 
and  with  three  which  1  have  I  could  manage  the  carriage  of  a 
thousand  cartloads  of  worked  stone,  besides  that  of  which  I 
speak  of  to  your  Highness,  and  since  there  are  no  carts  the 
men  can  bring  nothing,  even  were  they  given  60  reis  [about  3d.] 
a  cartload  there  is  no  one  to  do  carting.   .   .   . 

'.   .  .   And  if  your  Highness  will  give  me  these  oxen   I 


230        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

shall  finish  the  work  very  quickly,  that  when  your  Highness 
comes  here  you  may  find  something  to  see  and  have  content- 
ment of  it.' 

Later  he  again  complains  of  transport  difficulties,  for  the 
few  carts  there  were  in  the  town  were  all  being  used  by  the 
Dom  Prior;  and  in  the  year  when  he  retired,  1551,  he 
writes  in  despair  asking  the  king  for  *  a  very  strong  edict 
[Alvara]  that  no  one  of  any  condition  whatever  might  be 
excused,  because  in  this  place  those  who  have  something  of 
their  own  are  excused  by  favour,  and  the  poor  men  do  service, 
which  to  them  seems  a  great  aggravation  and  oppression. 
May  your  Highness  believe  that  1  write  this  as  a  desperate 
man,  since  I  cannot  serve  as  I  desire,  and  may  this  provision 
be  sent  to  the  magistrate  and  judge  that  they  may  have  it 
executed  by  their  ofiicer,  since  the  mayor  [Alcaide]  here  is 
always  away  and  never  in  his  place.' ^ 

These  letters  make  it  possible  to  understand  how  buildings 
in  those  days  took  such  a  long  time  to  finish,  and  how  Joao 
de  Castilho — though  it  was  at  least  begun  in  1545 — was  able 
to  do  so  little  to  the  Claustro  dos  Filippes  in  the  following 
six  years. 

The  last  letter  also  seems  to  show  that  some  at  least  of  the 
labour  was  forced. 

Leaving   the   Claustro   dos   Filippes    for   the    present,  we 
must  return  to  Batalha  for  a  little,  and  then  mention   some 
buildings  in  which  the  early  renaissance  details  recall  some  of 
the  work  at  Thomar. 
Batalha.  The  younger  Fernandes   had   died   in    1528,  leaving  the 

Capellas  Imperfeitas  very  much  in  the  state  in  which  they  still 
remain.  Though  so  much  more  interested  in  his  monastery 
at  Thomar,  Dom  Joao  ordered  Joao  de  Castilho  to  go  on 
with  the  chapels,  and  in  1533  the  loggia  over  the  great 
entrance  door  had  been  finished.  Beautiful  though  it  is  it 
did  not  please  the  king,  and  is  not  in  harmony  with  the  older 
work,  and  so  nothing  more  was  done. 

In  place  of  the  large  Manoelino  window,  which  was  begun 
on  all  the  other  seven  sides,  Joao  de  Castilho  here  built  two 
renaissance  arches,  each  of  two  orders,  of  which  the  broader 
springs  from  the  square  pilasters  and  the  narrower  from 
candelabrum  shafts.  In  front  there  run  up  to  the  cornice 
three   beautiful  shafts  standing  on  high  pedestals  which  rest 

'  Vieira  Giilmaraes,  A  Ordem  dt  Christo,  pp.  184,  185. 


50 


.  o 


■j      O    r- 

:    =  ■ 
o 


if   ■& 
<  ,.,  o 


c    - 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC    231 

on  corbels  ;  the  frieze  of  the  cornice  is  carved  much  after  the 
manner  of  the  window  panel  in  the  dormitory  corridor  at 
Thomar,  and  with  long  masks  where  it  projects  over  the 
shafts. 

Below,  the  carved  cornice  and  architrave  are  carried  across 
the  opening  as  they  are  round  the  whole  octagon,  but  the 
frieze  is  open  and  filled  with  balusters.  Behind,  the  whole 
space  is  spanned  bv  a  three-centred  arch,  panelled  like  the 
passage  arches  at  Thomar. 

All  the  work  is  most  exquisite,  but  it  is  not  easy  to  see 
how  the  horizontal  cornice  was  to  be  brought  into  harmony 
with  the  higher  windows  intended  on  the  other  seven  sides, 
nor  does  the  renaissance  detail,  beautiful  though  it  is,  agree 
very  well  with  the  exuberant  Manoelino  of  the  rest. 

With  the  beginning  of  the  Claustro  dos  Filippes  the  work 
of  Joao  de  Castilho  comes  to  an  end.  He  had  been  actively 
employed  for  about  forty  years,  beginning  and  ending  at 
Thomar,  finishing  Belem,  and  adding  to  Alcoba^a,  beside'-- 
improving  the  now  vanished  royal  palace  and  even  fortifying 
Mazagfio  on  the  Moroccan  coast,  where  perhaps  his  work  may 
still  survive.  In  these  forty  years  his  style  went  through 
more  than  one  complete  change.  Beginning  with  late  Gothic 
he  was  soon  influenced  by  the  surrounding  Manoelino  ;  at 
Belem  he  first  met  renaissance  artists,  at  Alcoba^a  he  either 
used  Manoelino  and  renaissance  side  by  side  or  else  treated 
renaissance  in  a  way  of  his  own,  though  shortly  after,  at 
Belem  again,  he  came  to  use  renaissance  details  more  and 
more  fully.  A  little  later  at  Thomar,  having  a  free  hand— 
for  at  Belem  he  had  had  to  follow  out  the  lines  laid  down  by 
Boutaca — he  discarded  Manoelino  and  Gothic  alike  in  favour 
of  renaissance. 

In  this  final  adoption  of  the  renaissance  he  was  soon 
followed  by  many  others,  even  before  he  laid  down  his  charge 
at  Thomar  in  i  55  i. 

In  most  of  these  buildings,  however,  it  is  not  so  much  his 
work  at  Thomar  which  is  followed — except  in  the  case  of 
cloisters — but  rather  the  chapel  of  the  Concei(;ao,  also  at 
Thomar.  Like  it  they  are  free  from  the  more  exuberant 
details  so  common  in  France  and  in  Spain,  and  yet  they  cannot 
be  called  Italian. 

There  is  unfortunately  no  proof  that  the  Concei^Jo  chapel  Thomar, 
is   Joiio's   work  ;    indeed    the   date   inscribed   inside   is    1572,  tJomci^ao. 


232       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

twenty-one  years  after  his  retirement,  and  nineteen  after  his 
death.  Still  this  date  is  probably  a  mistake,  and  some  of  the 
detail  is  so  like  what  is  found  in  the  great  convent  on  the  hill 
above  that  probably  it  was  really  designed  by  him. 

This  small  chapel  stands  on  a  projecting  spur  of  the  hill 
half-way  down  between  the  convent  and  the  town. 

Inside  the  whole  building  is  about  sixty  feet  long  by  thirty 
wide,  and  consists  of  a  nave  with  aisles  about  thirty  feet  long, 
a  transept  the  width  of  the  central  aisle  but  barely  projecting 
beyond  the  walls,  a  square  choir  with  a  chapel  on  each  side, 
followed  by  an  apse  ;  east  of  the  north  choir  chapel  is  a  small 
sacristy,  and  east  of  the  south  a  newel-less  stair — like  that  in 
the  Claustro  de  Sta.  Barbara — leading  up  to  the  roof  and 
down  to  some  vestries  under  the  choir.  Owing  to  the  sacristy 
and  stair  the  eastern  part  of  the  chancel,  which  is  rather 
narrower  than  the  nave,  is  square,  showing  outside  no  signs 
of  the  apse. 

The  outside  is  very  plain  :  Ionic  pilasters  at  the  angles 
support  a  simple  cornice  which  runs  round  the  whole  building  ; 
the  west  end  and  transepts  have  pediments  with  small  semi- 
circular windows.  The  tile  roofs  are  surmounted  by  a  low 
square  tower  crowned  by  a  flat  plastered  dome  at  the  crossing 
and  by  the  domed  stair  turret  at  the  south-east  corner.  The 
west  door  is  plain  with  a  simple  architrave.  The  square- 
headed  windows  have  a  deep  splay — the  wall  being  very  thick 
— their  architraves  as  well  as  their  cornices  and  pediments  rest 
on  small  brackets  set  not  at  right  angles  with  the  wall,  but 
crooked  so  as  to  give  an  appearance  of  talse  perspective. 

The  inside  is  very  much  more  pleasing,  indeed  it  is  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  interiors  to  be  found  anywhere.     (Fig.  88.) 

On  each  side  of  the  central  aisle  there  are  three  Corinthian 
columns,  with  very  correct  proportions,  and  exquisite  capitals, 
beautifully  carved  if  not  quite  orthodox.  Corresponding 
pilasters  stand  against  the  walls,  as  well  as  at  the  entrance 
to  the  choir,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  apse.  These  and  the 
columns  support  a  beautifully  modelled  entablature,  enriched 
only  with  a  dentil  course.  Central  aisle,  transepts  and  choir 
are  all  roofed  with  a  larger  and  the  side  aisles  with  a  smaller 
barrel  vault,  divided  into  bays  by  shallow  arches.  In  choir 
and  transepts  the  vault  is  coffered,  but  in  the  nave  each  bay  is 
ornamented  with  three  sets  of  four  square  panels,  set  in  the 
shape  of  a  cross,  each  panel   having   in   it   another   panel   set 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC  233 

diagonally  to  form  a  diamond.  At  the  crossing,  which  is 
crowned  by  a  square  coffered  dome,  the  spandrils  are  filled 
with  curious  winged  heads,  while  the  semi-dome  of  the  apse  is 
covered  with  narrow  ribs.  The  windows  are  exactly  like 
those  outside,  but  the  west  door  has  over  it  a  very  refined 
though  plain  pediment. 

So  far,  beyond  the  great  refinement  of  the  details,  there 
has  been  nothing  very  characteristic  of  Joao  de  Castilho,  but 
when  we  find  that  the  pilasters  of  the  choir  and  apse,  as  well  as 
the  choir  and  transept  arches,  are  panelled  in  that  very  curious 
way — with  strips  crossing  each  other  at  long  intervals  to  form 
diamonds — which  Joao  employed  in  the  passage  arches  in  the 
Thomar  dormitory  and  in  the  loggia  at  Batalha,  it  would  be 
natural  enough  to  conclude  that  this  chapel  is  his  work,  and 
indeed  the  best  example  of  what  he  could  do  with  classic 
details. 

Now  under  the  west  window  of  the  north  aisle  there  is  a 
small  tablet  with  the  following  inscription  in  Portuguese^  : — 
'This  chapel  was  erected  in  a.d.  1572,  but  profaned  in 
1 8  10  was  restored  in  1848  by  L.  L.  d'Abreu,'  etc. 

Of  course  in  1572  Joao  de  Castilho  had  been  long  dead, 
but  the  inscription  was  put  up  in  1848,  and  it  is  quite  likely 
that  by  then  L.  L.  d'Abreu  and  his  friends  had  forgotten  or 
did  not  know  that  even  as  late  as  the  sixteenth  century  dates 
were  sometimes  still  reckoned  by  the  era  of  Cssar,  so  finding 
it  recorded  that  the  chapel  had  been  built  in  the  year  1572 
they  took  for  granted  that  it  was  a.d.  1572,  whereas  it  may 
just  as  well  have  been  e.g.  1572,  that  is  a.d.  1534,  just 
the  very  time  when  Joao  de  Castilho  was  building  the  dormi- 
tory in  the  convent  and  using  there  the  same  curious  panelling. 
Besides  in  1572  this  form  of  renaissance  had  long  been  given 
up  and  been  replaced  by  a  heavier  and  more  classic  style  brought 
from  Italy.  It  seems  therefore  not  unreasonable  to  claim  this 
as  Joao  de  Castilho's  work,  and  to  see  in  it  one  of  the  earliest  as 
well  as  the  most  complete  example  ot  this  form  of  renaissance 
architecture,  a   form  which   prevailed   side    bv  side  with   the 

'  Foi  erecta  csta  cap. 
No  A.D.  1572  scd  prol. 
E.  1 8 10  toi  restaur  E. 
18+8  por  L.  L.  d'.Abreii 
Mollis.  Serrao,  E.  P'.  D 
Roure,  Pietra  concr". 
Muitas  Pessoas  ds.  cid*. 


234       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

work  of  the  Frenchmen  and  their  pupils  for  about  fifteen 
years. 

Now  in  some  respects  this  chapel  recalls  some  of  the 
earlier  renaissance  buildings  in  Italy,  and  yet  no  part  of  it  is 
quite  Italian,  nor  can  it  be  called  Spanish.  The  barrel  vault 
here  and  in  the  dormitory  chapel  in  the  convent  are  Italian 
features,  but  they  have  not  been  treated  exactly  as  was  done 
there,  or  as  was  to  be  done  in  Portugal  some  fifty  years  later, 
so  that  it  seems  more  likely  that  Joao  de  Castilho  got  his 
knowledge  of  Italian  work  at  second-hand,  perhaps  from  one 
of  the  men  sent  there  by  Dom  Manoel,  and  not  by  having 
been  there  himself. 

No  other  building  in  this  style  can  be  surely  ascribed  to 
him,  and  no  other  is  quite  so  pleasing,  yet  there  are  several  in 
which  refined  classic  detail  of  a  similar  nature  is  used,  and  one 
of  the  best  of  these  is  the  small  church  of  the  Milagre  at 
Santarem.  As  for  the  cloisters  which  are  mentioned  later, 
they  have  much  in  common  with  Joao  de  Castilho's  work 
at  Thomar,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  Claustros  da  Micha,  or 
the  Claustro  da  Hospedaria  ;  in  the  latter  especially  the 
upper  story  suggests  the  arrangement  which  became  so 
common. 

This  placing  of  a  second  story  with  horizontal  architrave 
on  the  top  of  an  arched  cloister  is  very  common  in  Spain,  and 
might  have  been  suggested  by  such  as  are  found  at  Lupiana  or 
at  Alcala  de  Henares,^  but  these  are  not  divided  into  bays  by 
buttresses,  so  it  is  more  likely  that  they  were  borrowed  from 
such  a  cloister  as  that  of  Sta.  Cruz  at  Coimbra,  where  the 
buttresses  run  up  to  the  roof  of  the  upper  story  and  where 
the  arches  of  that  story  are  almost  flat. 
Santarem,  Xhe  Milagre  or  Miracle  church  at  Santarem  is  so   called 

because  it  stands  near  where  the  body  of  St.  Irene,  martyred 
by  the  Romans  at  Nabantia,  now  Thomar,  after  floating  down 
the  Nabao,  the  Zezere,  and  the  Tagus,  came  to  shore  and  so 
gave  her  name  to  Santarem. 

The  church  is  small,  being  about  sixty-five  feet  long  by 
forty  wide.  It  has  three  aisles,  wooden  panelled  roofs,  an 
arcade  resting  on  Doric  columns,  and  at  the  east  a  sort  of 
transept  followed  by  an  apse.      The  piers  to    the  west   side 

'  Ferguson  [History  of  MoJern  Architecture,  vol.  ii.  p.  287)  says  that  some  ot 
the  cloisters  at  Goa  reminded  him  of  Lupiana,  so  no  doubt  they  are  not  unlike  those 
here  mentioned. 


Mila 


gre. 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC   235 

of  this  transept  are  made  up  of  four  pilasters,  all  of  different 
heights.  The  highest,  the  one  on  the  west  side,  has  a  Corinthian 
capital  and  is  enriched  in  front  by  a  statue  under  a  canopy 
standing  on  a  corbel  upheld  by  a  slender  baluster  shaft.  The 
second  in  height  is  plain,  and  supports  the  arch  which  crosses 
the  central  aisle.  The  arches  opening  from  the  aisles  into  the 
transept  chapel  are  lower  still,  and  rest,  not  on  capitals,  but  on 
corbels.  Like  the  nave  arch,  on  their  spandrels  heads  are 
carved  looking  out  of  circles.  Lowest  of  all — owing  to  the 
barrel  vault  which  covers  the  central  aisle  at  the  crossing — are 
the  arches  leading  north  and  south  to  the  chapels.  They  too 
spring  from  corbels  and  are  quite  plain. 

Up  in  the  town  on  the  top  of  the  hill  the  nave  of  the  santarcm, 
church  of  the  Marvilla — whose  Manoelino  door  and  chancel  Marviila. 
have  already  been  mentioned — is  of  about  the  same  date. 
This  nave  is  about  one  hundred  feet  long  by  fifty-five  wide, 
has  three  aisles  with  wooden  ceilings  ;  the  arcades  of  round 
arches  with  simple  moulded  architrave  rest  on  the  beautiful 
Ionic  capitals  of  columns  over  twenty-six  feet  high.  These 
capitals,  of  Corinthian  rather  than  of  Ionic  proportions,  with 
simple  fluting  instead  of  acanthus  leaves,  have  curious  double 
volutes  at  each  angle,  and  small  winged  heads  in  the  middle  of 
each  side  of  the  abacus. 

Altogether  the  arcades  are  most  statelv,  and  the  beauty  of 
the  church  is  further  enhanced  by  the  exceptionally  fine  tiles 
with  which  the  walls  as  well  as  the  spandrels  above  the  arches 
are  lined.  Up  to  about  the  height  of  fifteen  feet,  above  a 
stone  bench,  the  tiles,  blue,  yellow,  and  orange,  are  arranged 
in  panels,  two  difl^erent  patterns  being  used  alternatively,  with 
beautiful  borders,  while  in  each  spandrel  towards  the  central 
aisle  an  Emblem  of  the  Virgin,  Tower  of  Ivory,  Star  of  the  Sea, 
and  so  on,  is  surrounded  by  blue  and  yellow  intertwining 
leaves.  Above  these,  as  above  the  panels  on  the  walls,  the 
whole  is  covered  with  dark  and  light  tiles  arranged  in  checks, 
and  added  as  stated  by  a  date  over  the  chancel  arch  in  1617. 
The  lower  tiles  are  probably  of  much  the  same  date  or  a  little 
earlier. 

Against  one  of  the  nave  columns  there  stands  a  very 
elegant  little  pulpit.  It  rests  on  the  Corinthian  capital  of  a 
very  bulbous  baluster,  is  square,  and  has  on  each  side  four 
beautiful  little  Corinthian  columns,  fluted  and  surrounded  with 
large  acanthus  leaves  at  the  bottom.      Almost  exactly  like  it, 


236        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

but  round  and  with  balusters  instead  of  columns,  is  the  pulpit  in 

the  church  of  Nossa  Senhora  dosOlivaes  at  Thomar.    (Fig.  89.) 

Elvas,  Ss..  The  most  original  in  plan  as  well  as  in  decoration  of  all  the 

Domingo^.       huildinfjs  of  this  time    is  the  church  of  the  nunnery  of  Sao 


Domingos  at  Elvas,  like  nearly  all  nunneries  in  the  kingdom 
now  fast  falling  to  pieces.  In  plan  it  is  an  octagon  about 
forty-two  feet  across  with  three  apses  to  the  east  and  a  smaller 
octagonal  dome  in  the  middle  standing  on  eight  white  marble 
columns  with  Doric  capitals.  The  columns,  the  architrave 
below  the  dome,  the  arches  of  the  apses  and  their  vaults,  are  all 
of  white  marble  covered  with  exquisite  carved  ornament  partly 
gilt,  while  all  the  walls  and  the  other  vaults  are  lined  with 
tiles,  blue  and  yellow  patterns  on  a  white  ground.  The  abacus 
of  each  column  is  set  diagonally  to  the  diameter  of  the  octagon, 
and  between  it  and  the  lower  side  of  the  architrave  are  inter- 
posed thin  blocks  of  stone  rounded  at  the  ends. 

Like  the  Conceicao  at  Thomar  this  too  dates  from  near  the 

end  of  Dom  Joao's  reign,  having  been  founded  about  1550. 

Cintra,  Capitals  very  like  those  in  the  nave  of  the  Marvilla,  but 

Penha  Longa   with  a  ring  of  leavcs  instead  of  flutes,  are  found  in  the  cloister 

Verde.  °^  ^^^  church  at  Penha  Longa  near  Cintra,  and  in  the  little 

round  chapel  at  Penha  Verde  not  tar  off,  where  lies  the  heart 

of  Dom  Joao  de  Castro,  fourth  viceroy  of  India.     Built  about 

1535,  it  is  a  simple  little  round  building  with  a  square  recess 

for  the  altar  opposite  the  door.    Inside,  the  dome  springs  from 

a  cornice  resting  on  six  columns  whose  capitals  are  of  the  same 

kind. 

Others  nearly  the  same  are  found  in  the  house  of  the  Conde 
de  Sao  Vicente  at  Lisbon,  only  there  the  volutes  are  replaced 
by  winged  figures,  as  is  also  the  case  in  the  arcades  of  the 
Misericordia  at  Tavira,  the  door  of  which  has  been  mentioned 
above. 
Vizeu.CIoistcr.  Still  morc  like  the  Marvilla  capitals  are  those  of  the  lower 
cloister  of  the  cathedral  of  Vizeu.  This,  the  most  pleasing  of 
all  the  renaissance  cloisters  in  Portugal,  has  four  arches  on  each 
side  resting  on  fluted  columns  which  though  taller  than  usual 
in  cloisters,  have  no  entasis.  The  capitals  are  exactly  like  those 
at  Santarem,  but  being  of  granite  are  much  coarser,  with  roses 
instead  of  winged  heads  on  the  unmoulded  abaci.  At  the 
angles  two  columns  are  placed  together  and  a  shallow  strip  is 
carried  up  above  them  all  to  the  cornice.  Somewhere  in  the 
lower  cloister  are  the  arms  of  Bishop  Miguel  da  Silva,  who  is 


H 
i/i 

B 
D  6 

N      ^ 
"^      < 

>    as 

Q 


< 


t^  o 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC    2 


37 


said  to  have  built  it  about  1524,  but  that  is  an  impossibly 
early  date,  as  even  in  far  less  remote  places  such  classical 
columns  were  not  used  till  at  least  ten  years  later.  Yet 
the  cloister  must  probably  have  been  built  some  time  before 
1550.  An  upper  unarched  cloister,  with  an  architrave  resting 
on  simple  Doric  columns,  was  added,  sede  vacante,  between 
1720  and  1742,  and  greatly  increases  the  picturesqueness  of 
the  whole.     (Fig.  90.) 

A  similar  but  much  lower  second  story  was  added  by 
Bishop  Manoel  Noronha'  in  1557  to  the  cloister  of  Lamego 
Cathedral.  The  lower  cloister  with  its  round  arches  and  eight- 
sided  shafts  is  interesting,  as  most  of  its  capitals  are  late  Gothic, 
some  moulded,  a  few  with  leaves,  though  some  have  been 
replaced  by  very  good  capitals  of  the  Corinthian  type  but 
retaining  the  Gothic  abacus. - 

Most,  however,  of  the  cloisters  of  this  period  do  not  have 
a  continuous  arcade  like  that  of  Vizeu,  but  have  arches  set 
in  pairs  in  the  lower  story  with  big  buttresses  between  each 
pair.  Such  is  the  cloister  of  the  college  of  Sao  Thomaz  at 
Coimbra,  founded  in  1540,  where  the  arches  of  the  lower 
cloister  rest  on  Ionic  capitals,  while  the  architrave  of  the 
upper  is  upheld  by  thin  Doric  columns  ;  of  the  Carmo,  also 
at  Coimbra,  founded  in  1542,  where  the  cloister  is  almost 
exactly  like  that  of  Sao  Thomaz,  except  that  there  are  twice 
as  many  columns  in  the  upper  story ;  of  Penha  Longa  near 
Cintra,  where  the  two  stories  are  of  equal  height  and  the 
lower,  with  arches,  has  moulded  and  the  upper,  with  hori- 
zontal architrave,  Ionic  capitals,  and  of  Sao  Bento  at  Faro, 
where  the  lower  capitals  are  like  those  in  the  Marvilla,  but 
without  volutes,  while  the  upper  are  Ionic.  In  all  these  the 
big  square  buttress  is  carried  right  up  to  the  roof  of  the  upper 
cloister,  as  it  was  also  at  Lorvao  near  Coimbra.  There  the 
arches  below  are  much  wider,  so  that  above  the  number  of 
supports  has  been  doubled.^ 

In  one  of  the  cloisters  of  Siio  Gon9alvo  at  Amarante  on 


Lamego, 
Cloister. 


Coimbra, 
Sao  Thomaz. 


Carmo. 


Cintra, 
Penha  Longa. 


Faro, 
Slo  Bento. 


Lorvlo. 


Amarante. 


'   An  inscription  over  a  door  outside  says: 

dns.  emanvel 

noronha   epvs 

lamacen.  1557. 

•  Oi\e  chapel,  that  of  Sao  Martin,  has  an  iron  screen  like  a  poor  Spanish  reja. 

'  It    has    been   pulled   down   quite   lately.     Lorvao,   in   a   beaiititiil    valley   some 

fifteen   miles  from  Coimbra,  was  a  very  tamous  nunnery.     The  church   was  rebuilt 

in  the  eighteenth  centur)-,  has  a  dome,  a  nuns'  choir  to  the  west  full  of  stalls,  but 

in  style,  except  the  ruined  cloister,  which  was  older,  all  is  very  rococo. 


238        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Santarem, 
Sta.  Clara. 


Guarda, 
Reredos. 


the  Tamega — famous  for  the  battle  on  the  bridge  during  the 
French  invasion — there  is  only  one  arch  to  each  bay  below, 
and  it  springs  from  jambs,  not  from  columns,  and  is  very 
plain.  The  buttresses  do  not  rise  above  the  lower  cornice 
and  have  Ionic  capitals,  as  have  also  the  rather  stout  columns 
of  the  upper  story.  The  lower  cloister  is  roofed  with  a 
beautiful  three-centred  vault  with  many  ribs,  and  several  of 
the  doors  are  good  examples  of  early  renaissance. 

More  like  the  other  cloisters,  but  probably  somewhat  later 
in  date,  is  that  of  Sta.  Clara  at  Santarem,  fast  falling  to  pieces. 
In  it  there  are  three  arches,  here  three-centred,  to  each  bay, 
and  instead  of  projecting  buttresses  wide  pilasters,  like  the 
columns,  Doric  below,  Ionic  above. 

On  first  seeing  the  great  reredos  in  the  cathedral  of 
Guarda,  the  tendency  is  to  attribute  it  to  a  pieriod  but  little 
later  than  the  works  of  Master  Nicolas  at  Sao  Marcos  or  of 
Joao  de  Ruao  at  Coimbra.  But  on  looking  closer  it  is  seen 
that  a  good  deal  of  the  ornament — the  decoration  of  the 
pilasters  and  of  the  friezes — as  well  as  the  appearance  of  the 
figures,  betray  a  later  date — a  date  perhaps  as  late  as  the  end 
of  the  reign  of  Dom  Joao  in.     (Fig.  91.) 

Though  the  reredos  is  very  much  larger  and  of  finer 
design,  the  figures  have  sufficient  resemblance  to  those  in  the 
chapel  of  the  Holy  Sacrament  in  the  Se  Velha  at  Coimbra, 
put  up  in  1566,  to  show  that  they  must  be  more  or  less  con- 
temporary, the  Guarda  reredos  being  probably  the  older.' 

Filling  the  whole  of  the  east  end  of  the  apse  of  the  Capella 
Mor,  the  structure  rises  in  a  curve  up  to  the  level  of  the 
windows.  Without  the  beautiful  colouring  of  Master  Vlimer's 
work  at  Coimbra,  or  the  charm  of  the  reredos  at  Funchal, 
with  figures  distinctly  inferior  to  those  by  Master  Nicolas  at 
Sao  Marcos,  this  Guarda  reredos  is  yet  a  very  fine  piece  of 
work,  and  is  indeed  the  only  large  one  of  its  kind  which  still 
survives. 

It  is  divided  into  three  stories,  each  about  ten  feet  high, 
with  a  half-story  below  resting  on  a  plain  plinth. 

Each  story  is  divided  into  large  square  panels  by  pilasters 
or  columns  set  pretty  close  together,  the  topmost  story  having 
candelabrum  shafts,  the  one  below  it  Corinthian  columns,  the 
lowest  Doric  pilasters,  and  the  half-story  below  pedestals  for 
these  pilasters.     Entablatures  with  ornamental  friezes  divide 

'_This  reredos  is  in  the  chapel  on  the  south  ot  the  Capella  Mor. 


CASTILHO  AND  THE  EARLIER  CLASSIC    239 

each  story,  while  at  the  top  the  centre  is  raised  to  admit  of 
an  arch,  an  arrangement  probably  copied  from  Joao  de  Ruao's 
altar-piece. 

In  the  half-story  at  the  bottom  are  half-figures  of  the 
twelve  Apostles,  four  under  each  of  the  square  panels  at  the 
sides,  and  one  between  each  pair  of  pilasters. 

Above  is  represented,  on  the  left  the  Annunciation,  on  the 
right  the  Nativity  ;  in  the  centre,  now  hidden  by  a  hideous 
wooden  erection,  there  is  a  beautiful  little  tabernacle  between 
two  angels.  Between  the  pilasters,  as  between  the  columns 
above,  stand  large  figures  of  prophets. 

In  the  next  story  the  scenes  are,  on  the  left  the  Magi,  on 
the  right  the  Presentation,  and  in  the  centre  the  Assumption 
of  the  Virgin. 

The  whole  of  the  top  is  taken  up  with  the  Story  of  the 
Crucifixion,  our  Lord  bearing  the  Cross  on  the  left,  the 
Crucifixion  under  the  arch,  and  the  Deposition  on  the  right. 

Although  the  whole  is  infinitely  superior  in  design  to 
anything  by  Master  Nicolas,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
sculpture  is  very  inferior  to  his,  and  also  to  Joao  de  Ruao's. 
The  best  are  the  Crucifixion  scenes,  where  the  grouping  is 
better  and  the  action  freer,  but  everywhere  the  faces  are  rather 
expressionless  and  the  figures  stiff. 

As  everything  is  painted,  white  for  the  background  and 
an  ugly  yellow  for  the  figures  and  detail,  it  is  not  possible  to 
see  whether  stone  or  terra  cotta  is  the  material  ;  if  terra  cotta 
the  sculptor  may  have  been  a  pupil  of  Filipe  Eduard,  who  in 
the  time  of  Dom  Manoel  wrought  the  Last  Supper  in  terra 
cotta,  fragments  of  which  still  survive  at  Coimbra. 


240       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


CHAPTER    XVII 

THE     LATER     RENAISSANCE     AND    THE    SPANISH     USURPATION 

This  earlier  style  did  not,  however,  last  very  long.  Even 
before  the  death  of  Dom  Joao  more  strictly  classical  forms 
began  to  come  in  from  Italy,  brought  by  some  of  the  many 
pupils  who  had  been  sent  to  study  there.  Once  when  staying 
at  Almeirim  the  king  had  been  much  interested  in  a  model  of 
the  Colosseum  brought  to  him  by  Gonijaio  Bayao,  whom  he 
charged  to  reproduce  some  of  the  monuments  he  had  seen  in 
Rome. 

Whether    he    did    reproduce    them    or   not   is    unknown, 
but  in  the  Claustro  dos   Filippes  at   Thomar    this   new  and 
thoroughly  Italian  style  is  seen  fully  developed. 
Thomar,  Diogo   dc    Torralva    had    been    nominated    to   direct   the 

FHippes'*"'  works  in  Thomar  in  1554,  but  did  nothing  to  this  cloister 
till  1557  after  Dom  Joao's  death,  when  his  widow.  Dona 
Catharina,  regent  for  her  grandson,  Dom  Sebastiao,  ordered 
him  to  pull  down  what  was  already  built,  as  it  was  unsafe,  and 
to  build  another  of  the  same  size  about  one  hundred  and  fifteen 
feet  square,  but  making  the  lower  story  rather  higher. 

The  work  must  have  been  carried  out  quickly,  since  on 
the  vault  of  the  upper  cloister  there  is  the  date  1562 — a  date 
which  shows  that  the  whole  must  have  been  practically  finished 
some  eighteen  years  before  Philip  of  Spain  secured  the  throne 
of  Portugal,  and  that  therefore  the  cloister  should  rather  be 
called  after  Dona  Catharina,  who  ordered  it,  than  after  the 
'  Reis  Intrusos,'  whose  only  connection  with  Thomar  is  that 
the  first  was  there  elected  king. 

Between  each  of  the  three  large  arches  which  form  a  side 
of  the  lower  cloister  stand  two  Roman  Doric  columns  of  con- 
siderable size.  They  are  placed  some  distance  apart  leaving 
room  between  them  for  an  opening,  while  another  window-like 
opening  occurs   above  the  moulding   from   which  the  arches 


52 


f^    a! 


3 
-1 

u 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  241 

spring.  In  the  four  corners  the  space  between  the  columns, 
as  well  as  the  entablature,  Is  set  diagonally,  leaving  room  in 
one  instance  for  a  circular  stair.  The  cornice  is  enriched  with 
dentils  and  the  frieze  with  raised  squares.  On  the  entablature 
more  columns  of  about  the  same  height  as  those  below,  but 
with  Ionic  capitals,  stand  in  pairs.  Stairs  lead  up  in  each  corner 
to  the  flat  roof,  above  which  they  rise  in  a  short  dome-bearing 
drum.  In  this  upper  cloister  the  arches  are  much  narrower, 
springing  from  square  Ionic  pilasters,  two  on  each  side,  set 
one  behind  the  other,  and  leaving  an  open  space  beyond  so 
that  the  whole  takes  the  form  of  a  \'enetian  window.  The 
small  upper  window  between  the  columns  is  round  instead  of 
square,  and  the  cornice  is  carried  on  large  corbels.  In  front 
of  all  the  openings  is  a  balustrade.  Two  windows  look  south 
down  the  hillside  over  rich  orchards  and  gardens,  while 
immediately  below  them  a  water  channel,  the  end  of  a  great 
aqueduct  built  under  Philip  i.  of  Portugal,  ii.  of  Spain,  by  the 
Italian  Filippo  Terzi,'  cools  the  air,  and,  overflowing,  clothes 
the  arches  with  maidenhair  fern.  Another  window  opening 
on  to  the  Claustro  de  Sta.  Barbara  gives  a  very  good  view  of 
the  curious  west  front  of  the  church.  There  is  not  and 
there  probably  never  was  any  parapet  to  the  flat  paved  roof, 
from  where  one  can  look  down  on  the  surrounding  cloisters, 
and  on  the  paved  terrace  before  the  church  door  where  Philip 
was  elected  king  in  April  1580.     (Fig-  9~-) 

This  cloister,  the  first  example  in  Portugal  ot  the  matured 
Italian  renaissance,  is  also,  with  the  exception  of  the  church  of 
S'lo  Vicente  de  Fora  at  Lisbon,  the  most  successful,  for  all  is 
well  proportioned,  and  shows  that  Diogo  de  Torralva  really 
understood  classic  detail  and  how  to  use  it.  He  was  much 
less  successful  in  the  chancel  of  Belem,  while  about  the 
cathredral  which  he  built  at  Miranda  de  Douro  it  is  difficult 
to  find  out  anything,  so  remote  and  inaccessible  is  it,  except 
that  it  stands  magnificently  on  a  high  rock  above  the  river.'- 

The  reigns  of  Dom  Sebastiao  and  ot  his  grand-uncle,  the 
Cardinal-King,  were  noted  for  no  great  activity  in  building. 
Only  at  Evora,  where  he  so  long  filled  the  position  ot  arch- 
bishop before  succeeding  to  the  throne,  was  the  cardinal  able 

'  This  aqueduct  begun  by  Terzi  in  i  595  was  finished  in  161 ",  by  Pedro  Femandcs 
de  Torres,  who  also  dc^igllcd  the  fountain  in  the  centre  of  the  cloister. 

'  It  was  here  that  Wellington  was  slung  across  the  river  in  a  basket  on  his  way  to 
confer  with  the  Portuguese  general  during  the  advance  on  Salamanca. 

Q 


242        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

to  do  much.  The  most  important  architectural  event  in  Dom 
Sebastiao's  reign  was  the  coming  of  Filippo  Terzi  from  Italy  to 
build  Sao  Roque,  the  church  of  the  Jesuits  in  Lisbon,  and  the 
consequent  school  of  architects,  the  Alvares,  Tinouco,  Turianno, 
and  others  who  were  so  active  during  the  reign  of  Philip. 

But  before  speaking  of  the  work  of  this  school  some  of 
Cardinal  Henry's  buildings  at  Evora  must  be  mentioned,  and 
then  the  story  told  of  how  Philip  succeeded  in  uniting  the 
whole  Peninsula  under  his  rule. 
Evora,  Gra^a.  A  little  to  the  south  of  the  cathedral  of  Evora,  and  a  little 

lower  down  the  hill,  stands  the  Gra^a  or  church  of  the  canons 
of  St.  Augustine.  Begun  during  the  reign  of  Dom  Joao  in., 
the  nave  and  chancel,  in  which  there  is  a  fine  tomb,  have  many 
details  which  recall  the  Conceicao  at  Thomar,  such  as  windows 
set  in  sham  perspective.  But  they  were  long  in  building,  and 
the  now  broken  down  barrel  vault  and  the  curious  porch  were 
not  added  till  the  reign  of  Dom  Sebastiao,  while  the  monastic 
buildings  were  finished  about  the  same  time. 

This  porch  is  most  extraordinary.  Below,  there  are  in 
front  four  well-proportioned  and  well-designed  Doric  columns  ; 
beyond  them  and  next  the  outer  columns  are  large  projecting 
pilasters  forming  buttresses,  not  unlike  the  buttresses  in  some  of 
the  earlier  cloisters.  Above  the  entablature,  which  runs  round 
these  buttresses,  there  stand  on  the  two  central  columns  two  tall 
Ionic  semi-columns,  surmounted  by  an  entablature  and  pointed 
pediment,  and  enclosing  a  large  window  set  back  in  sham 
perspective.  On  either  side  large  solid  square  panels  are  filled 
by  huge  rosettes  several  feet  across,  and  above  them  half- 
pediments  filled  with  shields  reach  up  to  the  central  pedi- 
ment but  at  a  lower  level.  Above  these  pediments  another 
raking  moulding  runs  up  supported  on  square  blocks,  while 
on  the  top  of  the  upper  buttresses  there  sit  figures  of  giant 
boys  with  globes  on  their  backs  ;  winged  figures  also  kneel  on 
the  central  pediment. 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  is  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
erections  in  the  world.  Though  built  of  granite  some  of  the 
detail  is  quite  fine,  and  the  lower  columns  are  well  propor- 
tioned ;  but  the  upper  part  is  ridiculously  heavy  and  out  of 
keeping  with  the  rest,  and  inconceivably  ill-designed.  The 
different  parts  also  are  ill  put  together  and  look  as  if  they  had 
belonged  to  distinct  buildings  designed  on  a  totally  different 
kale. 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  243 

Not  much  need  be  said  of  the  Jesuit  University  founded  Evora  Uni- 
at  Evora  by  the  Cardinal  in  1559  and  suppressed  by  the  ^"^'^y- 
Marques  de  Pombal.  Now  partly  a  school  and  partly  an 
orphanage,  the  great  hall  for  conferring  degrees  is  in  ruins,  but 
the  courtyard  with  its  two  ranges  of  galleries  still  stands. 
The  court  is  very  large,  and  the  galleries  have  round  arches 
and  white  marble  columns,  but  is  somehow  wanting  in  interest. 
The  church  too  is  very  poor,  though  the  private  chapel  with 
barrel  vault  and  white  marble  dome  is  better,  yet  the  whole 
building  shows,  like  the  Gra<;a  porch,  that  classic  architecture 
was  not  yet  fully  understood,  for  Diogo  de  Torralva  had  not 
yet  finished  his  cloister  at  Thomar,  nor  had  Terzi  begun  to 
work  in  Lisbon. 

When  Dom  Jofio  in.  died  in  1557  he  was  succeeded  by 
his  grandson  Sebastiao,  who  was  then  only  three  years  old.  At 
first  his  grandmother,  Dona  Catharina,  was  regent,  but  she  was 
thoroughly  Spanish,  and  so  unpopular.  For  five  years  she 
withstood  the  intrigues  of  her  brother-in-law.  Cardinal  Henry, 
but  at  last  in  1562  retired  to  Spain  in  disgust.  The  Cardinal 
then  became  regent,  but  the  country  was  really  governed  by 
two  brothers,  of  whom  the  elder,  Luis  Gonsalves  da  Camara, 
a  Jesuit,  was  confessor  to  the  young  king. 

Between  them  Dom  Sebastiao  grew  up  a  dreamy  bigot 
whose  one  ambition  was  to  lead  a  crusade  against  the  Moors — 
an  ambition  in  which  popular  rumour  said  he  was  encouraged 
by  the  Jesuits  at  the  instigation  of  his  cousin,  Philip  ot  Spain, 
who  would  profit  so  much  by  his  death. 

Since  the  wealth  of  the  Indies  had  begun  to  fill  the  royal 
treasury,  the  Cortes  had  not  been  summoned,  so  there  was  no 
one  able  to  oppose  his  will,  when  at  last  an  expedition  sailed  in 

At  this  time  the  country  had  been  nearly  drained  ot  men 
by  India  and  Brazil,  so  a  large  part  of  the  army  consisted 
of  mercenaries  ;  peculation  too  had  emptied  the  treasury, 
and  there  was  great  difficulty  in  finding  money  to  pay  the 
troops. 

Yet  the  expedition  started,  and  landing  first  at  Tangier 
afterwards  moved  on  to  Azila,  which  Mulay  Ahmed,  a  pre- 
tender to  the  Moorish  umbrella,  had  handed  over. 

On  July  29th,  Dom  Sebastiao  rashly  started  to  march 
inland  from  Azila.  The  army  suffered  terribly  from  heat  and 
thirst,  and   was  quite   worn    out   before   it    met    the   reigning 


244       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

amir,  Abd-el-Melik,  at  Alcacer-Qiiebir,  or  El-Kasar-el-Kebir, 
'  the  great  castle,'  on  the  3rd  of  August. 

Next  morning  the  battle  began,  and  though  Abd-el-Melik. 
died  almost  at  once,  the  Moors,  surrounding  the  small  Christian 
army,  were  soon  victorious.  Nine  thousand  were  killed,  and 
of  the  rest  all  were  taken  prisoners  except  fifty.  Both  the 
Pretender  and  Dom  Sebastiao  fell,  and  with  his  death  and  the 
destruction  of  his  army  the  greatness  of  Portugal  disappeared. 

For  two  years,  till  1580,  his  feeble  old  grand-uncle  the 
Cardinal  Henry  sat  on  the  throne,  but  when  he  died  without 
nominating  an  heir  none  of  Dom  Manoel's  descendants  were 
strong  enough  to  oppose  Philip  11.  of  Spain.  Philip  was 
indeed  a  grandson  of  Dom  Manoel  through  his  mother  Isabel, 
but  the  duchess  of  Braganza,  daughter  of  Dom  Duarte,  duke 
of  Guimanles,  Cardinal  Henry's  youngest  brother,  had  really 
a  better  claim. 

But  the  spirit  of  the  nation  was  changed,  she  dared  not 
press  her  claims,  and  hw  supported  the  prior  of  Crato,  whose 
right  was  at  least  as  good  as  had  been  that  of  Dom  Joao  i., 
and  so  Philip  was  elected  at  Thomar  in  April  1580. 

Besides  losing  her  independence  Portugal  lost  her  trade, 
for  Holland  and  England  both  now  regarded  her  as  part  of 
their  great  enemy,  Spain,  and  so  harried  her  ports  and  captured 
her  treasure  ships.  Brazil  was  nearly  lost  to  the  Dutch,  who 
also  succeeded  in  expelling  the  Portuguese  from  Ceylon  and 
from  the  islands  of  the  East  Indies,  so  that  when  the  sixty 
years'  captivity  was  over  and  the  Spaniards  expelled,  Portugal 
found  it  impossible  to  recover  the  place  she  had  lost. 

It  is  then  no  wonder  that  almost  before  the  end  of  the 
century  money  for  building  began  to  fail,  and  that  some  of 
the  churches  begun  then  were  never  finished  ;  and  yet  for 
about  the  first  twenty  or  thirty  years  of  the  Spanish  occupation 
building  went  on  actively,  especially  in  Lisbon  and  at  Coimbra, 
where  many  churches  were  planned  by  Filippo  Terzi,  or  by 
the  two  Alvares  and  others.  FiHppo  Terzi  seems  first  to  have 
been  employed  at  Lisbon  by  the  Jesuits  in  building  their 
church  of  Sao  Roque,  begun  about  1570.' 
Lisbon  Outside  the  church  is  as  plain  as  possible  ;    the  front  is 

Sao  Roque.  divided  into  three  by  single  Doric   pilasters  set  one  on  each 
side   of   the    main   door   and    two    at   each  corner.      Similar 

'  Terzi  was  taken  prisoner  at  Alcacer-Qiiebir  in   1578   and  ransomed   by  King 
Henry,  who  made  him  court  architect,  a  position  he  held  till  his  death  in  1598. 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  245 

pilasters  stand  on  these,  separated  from  them  only  by  a  shallow 
cornice.  The  main  cornice  is  larger,  but  the  pediment  is 
perfectly  plain.  Three  windows,  one  with  a  pointed  and  two 
with  round  pediments,  occupy  the  spaces  left  between  the 
upper  pilasters.  The  inside  is  richer  ;  the  wooden  ceiling  is 
painted,  the  shallow  chancel  and  the  side  chapels  vaulted  with 
barrel  vaults,  of  which  those  in  the  chapels  are  enriched  with 
elaborate  strapwork.  Above  the  chapels  are  square-headed 
windows,  and  then  a  corbelled  cornice.  Even  this  is  plain, 
and  it  owes  most  of  its  richness  to  the  paintings  and  to  the 
beautiful  tiles  which  cover  part  of  the  walls. ^ 

The  three  other  great  churches  which  were  probably  also 
designed  by  Terzi  are  Santo  Antao,  Sta.  Maria  do  Desterro, 
and  Sao  Vicente  de  Fora. 

Of  these  the  great  earthquake  of  1755  almost  entirely 
destroyed  the  first  two  and  knocked  down  the  dome  of  the 
last. 

Though  not  the  first  to  be  built,  Sao  Vicente  being  the  Sao  Vicente 
least  injured  may  be  taken  before  the  others.  It  is  a  large  ''^  f^"''^- 
church,  being  altogether  about  236  feet  long  by  75  wide,  and 
consists  of  a  nave  of  three  bays  with  connected  chapels  on 
each  side,  a  transept  with  the  tallen  dome  at  the  crossing,  a 
square  chancel,  a  retro-choir  for  the  monks  about  45  feet 
deep  behind  the  chancel,  and  to  the  west  a  porch  between  two 
tall  towers. 

On  the  south  side  are  two  large  square  cloisters  of  no 
great  interest  with  a  sacristy  between — in  which  all  the  kings 
of  the  House  of  Braganza  lie  in  velvet-covered  coffins — and 
the  various  monastic  buildings  now  inhabited  bv  the  patriarch 
of  Lisbon. 

The  outside  is  plain,  except  for  the  west  front,  which  stands 
at  the  top  of  a  great  flight  of  steps.  On  the  west  front  two 
orders  of  pilasters  are  placed  one  above  the  other.  Of  these 
the  lower  is  Doric,  of  more  slender  proportions  than  usual, 
while  the  upper  has  no  true  capitals  beyond  the  projecting 
entablature  and  corbels  on  the  frieze.  Smgle  pilasters  divide 
the  centre  of  the  front  into  three  equal  parts  and  coupled 
pilasters  stand  at  the  corners  of  the  towers.  In  the  central 
part  three  plain  arches  open  on  to  the  porch,  with  a  pedimented 
niche  above  each.  In  the  tower  the  niches  are  placed  lower 
with  oblong  openings  above  and  below. 

'  Some  of  the  most  elaborate  dated  1584  are  by  Fran  Imo  de  .M.tttos. 


246       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Above  the  entablature  of  the  lower  order  there  are  three 
windows  in  the  middle  flanked  by  Ionic  pilasters  and  sur- 
mounted by  pediments,  while  in  the  tower  are  large  round- 
headed  niches  with  pediments.     (Fig.  93.) 

The  entablature  of  the  upper  order  is  carried  straight 
across  the  whole  front,  with  nothing  above  it  in  the  centre  but 
a  balustrading  interrupted  by  obelisk-bearing  pedestals,  but  at 

the  ends  the  towers  rise 
in  one  more  square  story 
flanked  with  short  Doric 
pilasters.  Round-arched 
openings  for  bells  occur 
on  each  side,  and  within 
the  crowning  balustrade 
with  its  obelisks  a  stone 
dome  rises  to  an  eight- 
sided  domed  lantern. 

Like  all  the  church, 
the  front  is  built  of 
beautiful  limestone,  ri- 
valling Carrara  marble 
in  whiteness,  and  seen 
down  the  narrow  street 
which  runs  uphill  from 
across  the  small  pra^a 
the  whole  building  is 
mostimposing.  It  would 
have  been  even  more 
satisfactory  had  the  cen- 
FEieT  tral  part  been  a  little 
narrower,  and  had  there 
been  something  to  mark 
the  barrel  vault  within  ;  the  omission  too  of  the  lower  order, 
which  is  so  much  taller  than  the  upper,  would  have  been  an 
improvement,  but  even  with  these  defects  the  design  is  most 
stately,  and  refreshingly  free  of  all  the  fussy  over-elaboration 
and  the  fantastic  piling  up  of  pediments  which  soon  became 
too  common. 

But  if  the  outside  deserves  such  praise,  the  inside  is 
worthy  of  far  more.  The  great  stone  barrel  vault  is  simply 
coffered  with  square  panels.  The  chapel  arches  are  singularly 
plain,  and  spring  from  a  good  moulding  which  projects  nearly 


PLAN    OF    SAO    VICENTE 


53 


■i-       '^' 


'^      hJ    Id 


^   u: 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  247 

to  the  face  of  the  pilasters.  Two  of  these  stand  between  each 
chapel,  and  have  very  beautiful  capitals  founded  on  the  Doric 
but  with  a  long  fluted  neck  ornamented  in  front  by  a  bunch 
of  crossed  arrows  and  at  the  corners  with  acanthus  leaves,  and 
with  egg  and  tongue  carved  on  the  moulding  below  the 
Corinthian  abacus.  Of  the  entablature,  only  the  frieze  and 
architrave  is  broken  round  the  pilasters  ;  for  the  cornice  with 
its  great  mutules  runs  straight  round  the  whole  church, 
supported  over  the  chapels  by  carving  out  the  triglyphs — 
of  which  there  is  one  over  each  pilaster,  and  two  in  the 
space  between  each  pair  of  pilasters — so  as  to  form  corbels. 

Only  the  pendentives  of  the  dome  and  the  panelled  drum 
remain  ;  the  rest  was  replaced  after  the  earthquake  by  wooden 
ceiling  pierced  with  skylights.     (Fig.  94.) 

Though  so  simple — there  is  no  carved  ornament  except 
in  the  beautiful  capitals — the  interior  is  one  of  the  most 
imposing  to  be  seen  anywhere,  and  though  not  really  very 
large  gives  a  wonderful  impression  of  space  and  size,  being  in 
this  respect  one  ot  the  most  successful  of  classic  churches. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  compare  Sao  Vicente  de  Fora  with 
the  great  clumsy  cathedral  which  Herrera  had  begun  to  build 
five  years  earlier  at  Valladolid  to  see  how  immensely  superior 
Terzi  was  to  his  Spanish  contemporary.  Even  in  his  master- 
piece, the  church  of  the  Escorial,  Herrera  did  not  succeed  in 
giving  such  spacious  greatness,  tor,  though  half  as  large  again, 
the  Escorial  church  is  imposing  rather  from  its  stupendous 
weight  and  from  the  massiveness  of  its  granite  piers  than  from 
the  beauty  of  its  proportions. 

Philip  took  a  great  interest  in  the  building  of  the  Escorial, 
and  also  had  the  plans  of  Sfio  Vicente  submitted  to  him  in 
1590.  This  plan,  signed  by  him  in  November  1590,  was 
drawn  by  Joao  Nunes  Tinouco,  so  that  it  is  possible  that 
Tinouco  was  the  actual  designer  and  not  Terzi,  but  Tinouco  was 
still  alive  sixty  years  later  when  he  published  a  plan  of  Lisbon, 
and  so  must  have  been  very  young  in  1590.  It  is  probable, 
therefore,  that  tradition  is  right  in  assigning  Sfio  Vicente  to 
Terzi,  and  even  it  it  be  actually  the  work  of  Tinouco,  he  has 
here  done  little  but  copy  what  his  master  had  already  done 
elsewhere. 

After  Sfio  Roque  the  first  church  begun  by  Terzi  was  Santo    Lisboi 
Antao,  now  attached  to  the  hospital   of  Sfio  Jose.     Begun  in 
1579  it  was  not  finished   till    1652,   only  to  be  destroyed  by 


Santo  Antlo. 


248 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Lisbon, 
Santa  Maria 
do  Desterro. 


Torreao 
do  Pa^o. 


Coimbra, 
Se  Nova. 


the  earthquake  in  1755.  As  at  Sao  Vicente,  the  west  front 
has  a  lower  order  of  huge  Doric  pilasters  nearly  fifty  feet 
high.  There  is  no  porch,  but  three  doors  with  poor  windows 
above  which  look  as  if  they  had  been  built  after  the  earthquake. 

Unfortunately,  nearly  all  above  the  lower  entablature  is 
gone,  but  enough  is  left  to  show  that  the  upper  order  was 
Ionic  and  very  short,  and  that  the  towers  were  to  rise  behind 
buttress-like  curves  descending  from  the  central  part  to  two 
obelisks  placed  above  the  coupled  corner  pilasters. 

The  inside  was  almost  exactly  like  Sfio  Vicente,  but  larger. 

Santa  Maria  do  Desterro  was  begun  later  than  either  of  the 
last  two,  in  1591.  Unlike  them  the  two  orders  of  the  west 
front  are  short  and  of  almost  equal  size,  Doric  below  and 
Ionic  above.  The  arches  of  the  porch  reach  up  to  the  lower 
entablature,  and  the  windows  above  are  rather  squat  ;  it 
looks  as  if  there  was  to  have  been  a  third  order  above,  but  it 
is  all  gone. 

The  inside  was  of  the  usual  pattern,  except  that  the 
pilasters  were  not  coupled  between  the  chapels,  that  they  were 
panelled,  and  that  above  the  low  chapel  arches  there  are 
square  windows  looking  into  a  gallery. 

Besides  these  churches  Terzi  built  for  Philip  a  large 
addition  to  the  royal  palace  in  the  shape  of  a  great  square 
tower  or  pavilion,  called  the  Torreao.  The  palace  then  stood 
to  the  west  of  what  is  now  called  the  Pra^a  do  Commercio, 
and  the  Torreao  jutted  out  over  the  Tagus.  It  seems  to  have 
had  five  windows  on  the  longer  and  four  on  the  shorter  sides, 
to  have  been  two  stories  in  height,  and  to  have  been  covered 
by  a  great  square  dome-shaped  roof,  with  a  lantern  at  the  top 
and  turrets  at  the  corners.  Pilasters  stood  singly  between 
each  window  and  in  pairs  at  the  corners,  and  the  windows  all 
had  pediments.  Now,  not  a  stone  of  it  is  left,  as  it  was  in  the 
palace  square,  the  Terreno  do  Pago  da  Ribeira,  that  the 
earthquake  was  at  its  worst,  swallowing  up  the  palace  and 
overwhelming  thousands  of  people  in  the  waves  of  the  river. 

Meanwhile  the  great  Jesuit  church  at  Coimbra,  now  the 
Se  Nova  or  new  cathedral,  had  been  gradually  rising.  Founded 
by  Dom  Joao  iii.  in  1552,  and  dedicated  to  the  Onze  mil 
Virgems,  it  cannot  have  been  begun  in  its  present  form  till 
.Tiuch  later,  till  about  1580,  while  the  main,  or  south,  front 
seems  even  later  still. ^ 


It  was  handed   over  to  the  cathedral   chapter  on  the  expulsion  ot  the  Jesuits 


in  1772 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  249 

Inside,  the  church  consists  of  a  nave  of  four  bays  with 
side  chapels — in  one  of  which  there  is  a  beautiful  Manoel- 
ino  font — transepts  and  chancel  with  a  drumless  dome 
over  the  crossing.  In  some  respects  the  likeness  to  Sao 
Vicente  is  very  considerable  ;  there  are  coupled  Doric 
pilasters  between  the  chapels,  the  barrel  vault  is  coffered, 
and  the  chapel  arches  are  extremely  plain.  But  here  the 
likeness  ends.  The  pilasters  are  panelled  and  have  very 
simple  moulded  capitals  ;  the  entablature  is  quite  ordinary, 
without  triglyphs  or  mutules,  and  is  broken  round  each  pair 
of  pilasters  ;  the  coffers  on  the  vault  are  very  deep,  and  are 
scarcely  moulded  ;  and,  above  all,  the  proportions  are  quite 
different  as  the  nave  is  too  wide  for  its  height,  and  the  drum 
is  terribly  needed  to  lift  up  the  dome.  In  short,  the  architect 
seems  to  have  copied  the  dispositions  of  Santo  Antao  and  has 
done  his  best  to  spoil  them,  and  yet  he  has  at  the  same  time 
succeeded  in  making  the  interior  look  large,  though  with  an 
almost  Herrera-like  clumsiness. 

The  south  front  is  even  more  like  Santo  Antao.  As  there, 
three  doors  take  the  place  of  the  porch,  and  the  only  difference 
below  is  that  each  Doric  pilaster  is  flanked  by  half  pilasters. 
Above  the  entablature  the  front  breaks  out  into  a  wild  up- 
piling  of  various  pediments,  but  even  here  the  likeness  to 
Santo  Antao  is  preserved,  in  that  a  great  curve  comes  down 
from  the  outer  Ionic  pilasters  of  the  central  part,  to  end,  how- 
ever, not  in  obelisks,  but  in  a  great  volute  :  the  small  towers 
too  are  set  much  further  back.  Above,  as  below,  the  central 
part  is  divided  into  three.  Of  these  the  two  outer,  flanked 
by  Ionic  pilasters  on  pedestals,  are  finished  off  above  with 
curved  pediments  broken  to  admit  of  obelisks.  The  part 
between  these  has  a  large  window  below,  a  huge  coat  of  arms 
above,  and  rises  high  above  the  sides  to  a  pediment  so 
arranged  that  while  the  lower  mouldings  form  an  angle  the 
upper  form  a  curve  on  which  stand  two  finials  and  a  huge 
cross.     (Fig.  95.) 

Very  soon  this  fantastic  way  of  piling  up  pieces  of  pedi-  Oporto, 
ment  and  of  entablature  became  only  too  popular,  being  <•  o'lfg'" •'*'o^''>- 
copied  for  instance  in  the  Collegio  Novo  at  Oporto,  where, 
however,  the  design  is  not  quite  so  bad  as  the  towers  are 
brought  forward  and  are  carried  up  considerably  higher.  But 
apart  from  this  horrid  misuse  of  classic  details  the  greatest 
fault  of  the  facade  at  Coimbra  is  the  disproportionate  size  of 


250 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Coimbra, 
Misericordi; 


Coimbra, 
Episcopal 
Palace. 


some  of  the  details  ;  the  obelisks  and  the  cherubs'  heads  on 
which  they  stand,  the  statues  at  the  ends,  and  the  central 
cross,  and  above  all  the  colossal  acanthus  leaves  in  the  great 
scrolls  are  of  such  a  size  as  entirely  to  dwarf  all  the  rest. 

From  what  remains  of  the  front  of  Santo  Antao,  it  looks 
as  if  it  and  the  front  of  the  Se  Velha  had  been  very  much 
alike.  Santo  Antao  was  not  quite  finished  till  1652,  so  that 
it  is  probable  that  the  upper  part  of  the  west  front  dates  from 
the  seventeenth  century,  long  after  Terzi's  death,  and  that 
the  Se  Nova  at  Coimbra  was  finished  about  the  same  time,  and 
perhaps  copied  from  it. 

But  it  was  not  only  Terzi's  churches  which  were  copied  at 
Coimbra.  While  the  Se  Nova,  then,  and  for  nearly  two 
hundred  years  more,  the  church  of  the  Jesuits,  was  still  being 
built,  the  architect  of  the  chief  pateo  of  the  Misericordia  took 
Diogo  de  Torralva's  cloister  at  Thomar  as  his  model. 

It  was  in  the  year  1590  that  Cardinal  Affonso  de  Castello 
Branco  began  to  build  the  headquarters  of  the  Misericordia  of 
Coimbra,  founded  in  1500  as  a  simple  confraternity.  The 
various  offices  of  the  institution,  including  a  church,  the  halls 
whose  ceilings  have  been  already  mentioned,  and  hospital 
dormitories — all  now  turned  into  an  orphanage — are  built 
round  two  courtyards,  one  only  of  which  calls  for  special 
notice,  for  nearly  everything  else  has  been  rebuilt  or  altered. 
In  this  court  or  cloister,  the  plan  of  the  Claustro  dos  Filippes 
has  been  followed  in  that  there  are  three  wide  arches  on  each 
side,  and  between  them — but  not  in  the  corners,  and  further 
apart  than  at  Thomar — a  pair  of  columns.  In  this  case  the 
space  occupied  by  one  arch  is  scarcely  wider  than  that  occupied 
by  the  two  fluted  Doric  columns  and  the  square-headed  open- 
ings between  them.  Another  change  is  that  the  complete 
entablature  with  triglyphs  and  metopes  is  only  found  above 
the  columns,  for  the  arches  rise  too  high  to  leave  room  for 
more  than  the  cornice.     (Fig-  96.) 

The  upper  story  is  quite  different,  for  it  has  only  square- 
headed  windows,  though  the  line  of  the  columns  is  carried  up 
by  slender  and  short  Ionic  columns  ;  a  sloping  tile  roof  rests 
immediately  on  the  upper  cornice,  above  which  rise  small 
obelisks  placed  over  the  columns. 

At  about  the  same  time  the  Cardinal  built  a  long  loggia 
on  the  west  side  of  the  entrance  court  of  his  palace  at 
Coimbra.     The   hill   on  which  the  palace   is  built  being  ex- 


54 


^     O    a 
U    2 


'      '^'^ 


*l'^^r'«^  M 


o 
u 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  251 

tremely  steep,  an  immense  retaining  wall,  some  fifty  or  sixty 
feet  high,  bounds  the  courtyard  on  the  west,  and  it  is  on  the 
top  of  this  wall  that  the  loggia  is  built  forming  a  covered  way 
two  stories  in  height  and  uniting  the  iManoelino  palace  on  the 
north  with  some  offices  which  bound  the  yard  on  the  south. 
This  covered  way  is  formed  by  two  rows  of  seven  arches,  each 
resting  on  Doric  columns,  with  a  balustrading  between  the 
outer  columns  on  the  top  of  the  great  wall.  The  ceiling  is 
of  wood  and  forms  the  floor  of  the  upper  story,  where  the 
columns  are  Ionic  and  support  a  continuous  architrave.  The 
whole  is  quite  simple  and  unadorned,  but  at  the  same  time 
singularly  picturesque,  since  the  view  through  the  arches,  over 
the  old  cathedral  and  the  steeply  descending  town,  down  to 
the  convent  of  Santa  Clara  and  the  wooded  hills  beyond  the 
Mondego,  is  most  beautiful  ;  besides,  the  courtyard  itself  is 
not  without  interest.  In  the  centre  stands  a  fountain,  and  on 
the  south  side  a  stair,  carried  on  a  flying  half-arch,  leads  up 
to  a  small  porch  whose  steep  pointed  root  rests  on  two  walls, 
and  on  one  small  column. 

The  same  bishop  also  built  the  sacristy  of  the  old  Coimbra, 
cathedral.  Entered  by  a  passage  from  the  south  transept,  and  s^^itty^ 
built  across  the  back  of  the  apse,  it  is  an  oblong  room  with 
coffered  barrel  vault,  lit  by  a  large  semicircular  window  at  the 
north  end.  The  cornice,  of  which  the  frieze  is  adorned  with 
eight  masks,  rests  on  corbels.  On  a  black-and-white  marble 
lavatory  is  the  date  1593  and  the  Cardinal's  arms.  The  two 
ends  are  divided  into  three  tiled  panels  by  Doric  columns,  and 
on  the  longer  sides  are  presses. 

Altogether  it  is  very  like  the  sacristy  of  Santa  Cruz  built 
some  thirty  years  later,  but  plainer. 

By  1590  or  so  several  Portuguese  followers  of  Terzi  had 
begun  to  build  churches,  founded  on  his  work,  but  in  some 
respects  less  like  than  is  the  Se  Nova  at  Coimbra.  Such 
churches  are  best  seen  at  Coimbra,  where  many  were 
built,  all  now  more  or  less  deserted  and  turned  to  base  uses. 
Three  at  least  of  these  stand  on  either  side  of  the  long  Rua 
Sophia  which  leads  northwards  from  the  town. 

The   oldest  seems  to   be  the   church   of   Sao    Domingos,  Coimbra, 
founded   by  the  Jukes  of  Avciro,  but  never   finished.     Only  saoDomingos. 
the  chancel  with  its  flanking  chapels  and  the  transept   have 
been  built.      Two  of  the  churches  at  Lisbon  and  the  Se   Nova 
of  Coimbra  are  noted  for  their  extremely  long  Doric  pilasters. 


25: 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Coimbra, 
Carmo. 


Coimbra, 
Gracja. 

Sao  Bento. 


Here,  in  the  chancel  the  pilasters  ami  the  half  columns  in 
the  transept  are  Ionic,  and  even  more  disproportionately  tall. 
The  architrave  is  unadorned,  the  frieze  has  corbels  set  in 
pairs,  and  between  the  pairs  curious  shields  and  strapwork, 
and  the  cornice  is  enriched  with  dentils,  egg  and  tongue  and 
modillions.  Most  elaborate  of  all  is  the  barrel  vault,  where 
each  coffer  is  filled  with  round  or  square  panels  surrounded 
with  strapwork. 

This  vault  and  the  cornice  were  probably  not  finished  till 
well  on  in  the  seventeenth  century,  for  on  the  lower,  and 
probably  earlier  vaults,  of  the  side  chapels  the  ornamentation 
is  much  finer  and  more  delicate. 

The  transepts  were  to  have  been  covered  with  groined 
vaults  of  which  only  the  springing  has  been  built.  In  the 
north  transept  and  in  one  of  the  chapels  there  still  stand 
great  stone  reredoses  once  much  gilt,  but  now  all  broken  and 
dusty  and  almost  hidden  behind  the  diligences  and  cabs  with 
which  the  church  is  filled.  The  great  fault  in  Sao  Domingos 
is  the  use  of  the  same  order  both  for  the  tall  pilasters  in  the 
chancel,  and  for  the  shorter  ones  in  the  side  chapels  ;  so  that 
the  taller,  which  are  twice  as  long  and  of  about  the  same 
diameter,  are  ridiculously  lanky  and  thin. 

Almost  opposite  Sao  Domingos  is  the  church  of  the 
Carmo,  begun  by  Frey  Amador  Arraes,  bishop  of  Portalegre 
about  1597.  The  church  is  an  oblong  hall  about  135  feet 
long,  including  the  chancel,  by  nearly  40  wide,  roofed  with  a 
coffered  barrel  vault.  On  each  side  of  the  nave  are  two 
rectangular  and  one  semicircular  chapel ;  the  vaults  of  the 
chapel  are  beautifully  enriched  with  sunk  panels  of  various 
shapes.  The  great  reredos  covers  the  whole  east  wall  with 
two  stories  of  coupled  columns,  niches  and  painted  panels. 

Almost  exactly  the  same  is  the  Grai;a  church  next  door, 
both  very  plain  and  almost  devoid  of  interest  outside. 

Equally  plain  is  the  unfinished  front  of  the  church  of  Sao 
Bento  up  on  the  hill  near  the  botanical  gardens.  It  was 
designed  by  Baltazar  Alvares  for  Dom  Diogo  de  Mur^a,  rector 
of  the  University  in  1600,  but  not  consecrated  till  thirty-four 
years  later.  The  church,  which  inside  is  about  164  feet  long, 
consists  of  a  nave  with  side  chapels,  measuring  60  feet  by 
about  35,  a  transept  of  the  same  width,  and  a  square  chancel. 
Besides  there  is  a  deep  porch  in  front  between  two  oblong 
towers,  which  have  never  been  carried  up  above  the  roof. 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  253 

The  porch  is  entered  by  three  arches,  one  in  the  middle 
wider  and  higher  than  the  others.  Above  are  three  niches 
with  shell  heads,  and  then  three  windows,  two  oblong  and  one 
round,  all  set  in  rectangular  frames.  At  the  sides  there  are 
broad  pilasters  below,  with  the  usual  lanky  Doric  pilasters  above 
reaching  to  the  main  cornice,  above  which  there  now  rises 
only  an  unfinished  gable  end.  The  inside  is  much  more 
pleasing.  The  barrel  vaults  of  the  chapels  are  beautifully 
panelled  and  enriched  with  egg  and  tongue  ;  between  each, 
two  pilasters  rise  only  to  the  moulding  from  which  the  chapel 
arches  spring,  and  support  smaller  pilasters  with  a  niche 
between.  In  the  spandrels  of  the  arches  are  rather  badly 
carved  angels  holding  shields,  and  on  the  arches  themselves, 
as  at  Siio  Marcos,  are  cherubs'  heads.  A  plain  entablature 
runs  along  immediately  above  these  arches,  and  from  it  to 
the  main  cornice,  the  walls,  covered  with  blue  and  white  tiles, 
are  perfectly  blank,  broken  only  by  square-headed  windows. 
Only  at  the  crossing  do  pilasters  run  up  to  the  vault,  and 
they  are  of  the  usual  attenuated  Doric  form.  As  usual  the 
roof  is  covered  with  plain  coffers,  as  is  also  the  drumless  dome. 

This  is  very  like  the  Carmo  and  the  Gra^a,  which  repeat 
the  fault  of  leaving  a  blank  tiled  wall  above  the  chapels,  and 
it  is  quite  possible  that  they  too  may  have  been  built  by 
Alvares  ;  the  plan  is  evidently  founded  on  that  of  one  of 
Terzi's  churches,  as  Sao  Vicente,  or  on  that  of  the  Se  Nova, 
but  though  some  of  the  detail  is  charming  there  is  a  want  of 
unity  between  the  upper  and  lower  parts  which  is  found  in 
none  of  Terzi's  work,  nor  even  in  the  heavier  Se  Nova.' 

Baltazar  Alvares  seems  to   have  been   specially  employed   Libbon, 
by  the  order  of  St.  Benedict,  for  not  only  did   he  build  their   ^^"^  ^'"*°' 
monasteries  at  Coimbra  but  also  Sao  Bento,  now  the  Cortes 
in   Lisbon,  as  well  as  Sao  Bento  da  Victoria  at  Oporto,  his 
greatest  and  most  successful  work. 

The  plan  is  practically  the  same  as  that  of  Sao  Bento  at  Oporto, 
Coimbra,  but  larger.  Here,  however,  there  are  no  windows  ^'^  '"'°' 
over  the  chapel  arches,  nor  any  dome  at  the  crossing.  Built 
of  grey  granite,  a  certain  heaviness  seems  suitable  enough,  and 
the  great  coffered  vault  is  not  without  grandeur,  while  the 
gloom  of  the  inside  is  lit  up  by  huge  carved  and  gilt  altar- 
pieces  and  by  the  elaborate  stalls  in  the  choir  gallery. 

'  Slo  Bento  is  now  used  as  a  store  tor  drain-pipes. 


254        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Castello, 
Misericordia 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

OTHER    BUILDINGS     OF    THE     LATER    RENAISSANCE,    TILL    THE 
EXPULSION    OF    THE    SPANIARDS 

In  the  last  chapter  the  most  important  works  of  Terzi  and  of 
his  pupils  have  been  described,  and  it  is  now  necessary  to  go 
back  and  tell  of  various  buildings  which  do  not  conform  to 
l.s  plan  of  a  great  barrel-vaulted  nave  with  flanking  chapels, 
though  the  designers  of  some  of  these  buildings  have  copied 
such  peculiarities  as  the  tall  and  narrow  pilasters  of  which 
his  school  was  so  fond,  and  which,  as  will  be  seen,  ultimately 
degenerated  into  mere  pilaster  strips, 
viannado  But  before   speaking  of  the  basilican  and  other  churches 

of  this  time,  the  Misericordia  at  Vianna  do  Castello  must  be 
described.^ 

The  Misericordia  of  Vianna  stands  on  the  north  side  of 
the  chief  square  of  the  town,  and  was  built  in  1589  by  one 
Joao  Lopez,  whose  father  had  designed  the  beautiful  fountain 
which  stands  near  by. 

It  is  a  building  of  very  considerable  interest,  as  there  seems 
to  be  nothing  else  like  it  in  the  country.  The  church  of  the 
Misericordia,  a  much  older  building  ruined  by  later  alteration, 
is  now  only  remarkable  for  the  fine  blue  and  white  tile  decora- 
tion with  which  its  walls  are  covered.  Just  to  the  west  of  it,  and 
at  the  corner  of  the  broad  street  in  which  is  a  fine  Manoelino 
house  belonging  to  the  Visconde  de  Carreira,  stands  the  build- 
ing designed  by  Lopez.  The  front  towards  the  street  is  plain, 
but  that  overlooking  the  square  highly  decorated. 

At  the  two  corners  are  broad  rusticated  bands  which  run 
up  uninterrupted  to  the  cornice  ;  between  them  the  front  is 
divided  into  three  stories  of  open  loggias.  Of  these  the 
lowest  has  five   round  arches  resting   on    Ionic   columns  ;  in 

'  The  Matriz  at  Vianna  ha>  a  hfteentli-century  pointed  door,  with  halt'  figures  on 
the  voiissoirs  arranged  as  are  the  four-and-twenty  elders  on  the  great  door  at  Santiago, 
a  curious  arrangement  found  also  at  Orense  and  at  Noya. 


\'1ANNA    1)0   CamKI.LO. 
MiSKKlCORDIA. 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  255 

the  second,  on  a  solid  parapet,  stand  four  whole  and  two  half 
'  terms '  or  atlantes  which  support  an  entablature  with  wreath- 
enriched  frieze  ;  corbels  above  the  heads  of  the  figures  cross 
the  frieze,  and  others  above  them  the  low  blocking  course,  and 
on  them  are  other  terms  supporting  the  main  cornice,  which 
is  not  of  great  projection.  A  simple  pediment  rises  above  the 
four  central  figures,  surmounted  by  a  crucifix  and  containing 
a  carving  of  a  sun  on  a  strapwork  shield.     (Fig.  97.) 

The  whole  is  of  granite  and  the  figures  and  mouldings  are  dis- 
tinctly rude,  and  yet  it  is  eminently  picturesque  and  original,  and 
shows  that  Lopez  was  a  skilled  designer  if  but  a  poor  sculptor. 

Coming   now  to   the   basilican   churches.      That    of   Sao  Bcja, 
Thiago  at  Beja  was  begun  in   1590  by  Jorge  Rodrigues  for  Sao  Thiago. 
Archbishop  Theotonio  of  Evora.      It  has  a  nave  and  aisles  of 
six  bays  covered  with  groined  vaults  resting  on  Doric  columns, 
a  transept  and  three  shallow  rectangular  chapels  to  the  east. 
The  clerestory  windows  are  round. 

Much  the  same  plan  had  been  followed  a  little  earlier  by  Azeitao, 
Affbnso  de  Albuquerque,  son  of  the  great  viceroy  of  India,  ^°  "^''°' 
when  about  1570  he  built  the  church  of  Sao  Simao  close  to 
his  country  house  of  Bacalhoa,  at  Azeitao  not  far  from 
Setubal.  Sao  Simao  is  a  small  church  with  nave  and  aisles 
of  five  bays,  the  latter  only  being  vaulted,  with  arcades 
resting  on  Doric  columns  ;  at  first  there  was  a  tower  at  each 
corner,  but  they  fell  in  1755,  and  only  one  has  been  rebuilt. 
Most  noticeable  in  the  church  are  the  very  fine  tiles  put  up 
in  1648,  with  saintly  figures  over  each  arch.  They  are  prac- 
tically the  same  as  those  in  the  parish  church  of  Alvito. 

Another  basilican  church  of  this  date  is  that  of  the  Cartuxa  Evora, 
or  Charter  House,'  founded  by  the  same  Archbishop  Theo-  ^^""''^■ 
tonio  in  1587,  a  few  miles  out  of  F.vora.  Only  the  west 
front,  built  about  1594  of  black  and  white  marble,  deserves 
mention.  Below  there  is  a  porch,  spreading  beyond  the 
church,  and  arranged  exactly  like  the  lower  Cl.mstro  dos 
Filippes  at  Thomar,  with  round  arches  separated  by  two 
Doric  columns  on  pedestals,  but  with  a  continuous  entabla- 
ture carried  above  the  arches  on  large  corbelled  keystones. 
Behind  rises  the  front  in  two  stories.  The  lower  has  three 
windows,  square-headed  and  separated  by  Iot)ic  columns,  two 
on  each  side,  with  niches  between.  Single  Ionic  columns  also 
stand  at  the  outer  angles  of  the  aisles.      In  the  upper  story 

'  There  was  only  one  other  house  of  this  onlcr  in  Portugal,  at  Laveiras. 


256        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

the  central  part  is  carried  up  to  a  pediment  hv  Corinthian 
columns  resting  on  the  Ionic  below  ;  between  them  is  a  large 
statued  niche  surrounded  by  panels. 

Unfortunately  the  simplicity  of  the  design  is  spoilt  by  the 
broken  and  curly  volutes  which  sprawl  across  the  aisles,  by 
ugly  finials  at  the  corners,  and  by  a  rather  clumsy  balustrading 
to  the  porch. 
Beja,  The  interior  of  the  Misericordia  at  Beja,  a  square,  divided 

isencoRia.  j^^j.^  ^-^^^  Smaller  vaulted  squares  by  arches  resting  on  fine 
Corinthian  columns,  with  altar  recesses  beyond,  looks  as  if  it 
belonged  to  the  time  of  Dom  Jofio  in.,  but  if  so  the  front 
must  have  been  added  later.  This  is  very  simple,  but  at  the 
same  time  strong  and  unique.  The  triple  division  inside  is 
marked  by  three  great  rusticated  Doric  pilasters  on  which 
rest  a  simple  entablature  and  parapet.  Between  are  three 
round  arches,  enclosing  three  doors  of  which  the  central  has 
a  pointed  pediment,  while  over  the  others  a  small  round 
window  lights  the  interior. 
Oporto,  But  by  far  the  most  original  of  all  the  buildings  of  this 

Nossa  Senhora  later  renaissance  is  the  monasterv  of  Nossa  Senhora  da  Serra  do 
Pilar  "  Pilar  in  Villa  Nova  de  Gaya,  the  suburb  of  Oporto  which  lies 
south  of  the  Douro.  Standing  on  a  high  granite  knoll,  which 
rises  some  fifty  feet  above  the  country  to  the  south,  and 
descends  by  an  abrupt  precipice  on  the  north  to  the  deep- 
flowing  river,  here  some  two  hundred  yards  wide,  and  run- 
ning in  a  narrow  gorge,  the  monasterv  and  its  hill  have  more 
than  once  played  an  important  part  in  history.  From  there 
Wellington,  in  1809,  was  able  to  reconnoitre  the  French 
position  across  the  river  while  his  army  lay  hidden  behind 
the  rocks  ;  and  it  was  from  a  creek  just  a  little  to  the  east 
that  the  first  barges  started  for  the  north  bank  with  the  men 
who  seized  the  unfinished  seminary  and  held  it  till  enough  were 
across  to  make  Soult  see  he  must  retreat  or  be  cut  off.  Later, 
in  1832,  the  convent,  defended  for  Queen  Maria  da  Gloria,  was 
much  knocked  about  by  the  besieging  army  of  Dom  Miguel. 

The  Augustinians  had  begun  to  build  on  the  hill  in  i  540, 
but  none  of  the  present  monastery  can  be  earlier  than  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  date  1602  being  found  in  the  cloister. 
The  plan  of  the  whole  building  is  most  unusual  and 
original :  the  nave  is  a  circle  some  seventy-two  feet  in  dia- 
meter, surmounted  by  a  dome,  and  surrounded  by  eight  shallow 
chapels,  of  ^hich   one  contains  the  entrance  and   another  is 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE 


257 


prolonged  to  form  a  narrow  chancel.  This  chancel  leads  to 
a  larger  square  choir  behind  the  high  altar,  and  east  of  it  is 
a  round  cloister  sixty-five  feet  across.  The  various  monastic 
buildings  are  grouped  round  the  choir  and  cloister,  leaving 
the  round  nave  standing  free.  The  outside  of  the  circle  is 
two  stories  in  height,  divided  by  a  plain  cornice  carried  round 
the  pilasters  which  mark  the  recessed  chapels  within.  The 
face  of  the  wall  above  this 
cornice  is  set  a  little  back,  and 
the  pilaster  strips  are  carried  up 
a  short  distance  to  form  a  kind 
of  pedestal,  and  are  then  set  back 
with  a  volute  and  obelisk  mask- 
ing the  offset.  The  main  cornice 
has  two  large  corbels  to  each 
bay,  and  carries  a  picturesque 
balustrading  within  which  rises  a 
tile  roof  covering  the  dome  and 
crowned  by  a  small  lantern  at 
the  top.  The  west  door  has 
two  Ionic  columns  on  each  side  ; 
a  curious  niche  with  corbelled 
sides  rises  above  it  to  the  lower 
cornice  ;  and  the  church  is  lit  by 
a  square-headed  window  pierced 
through  the  upper  part  of  each 
bay.    Only  the  pilasters,  cornices, 

door  and    window  dressings  are  of  granite  ashlar,  all  the  rest 
being  of  rubble  plastered  and  whitewashed. 

Now  the  eucalyptus-trees  planted  round  the  church  have 
grown  so  tall  that  only  the  parapet  can  be  seen  rising  above 
the  tree-tops. 

Though  much  ot  the  detail  of  the  outside  is  far  from 
being  classical  or  correct,  the  whole  is  well  proportioned  and 
well  put  together,  but  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  the  inside. 
Pilasters  of  inordinate  height  have  been  seen  in  some  of  the 
Lisbon  churches,  but  compared  with  these  which  here  stand 
in  couples  between  the  chapels  they  are  short  and  well  pro- 
portioned. These  pilasters,  which  are  quite  seventeen  dia- 
meters high,  have  for  capitals  coarse  copies  of  those  in  S;lo 
Vicente  de  Fora  in  Lisbon.  In  Silo  Vicente  the  cornice  was 
carried  on  corbels  crossing  the  frieze,  and  so  was  continuous 

R 


rECT 
PLAN    OF    NOSSA    SEN'HORA    DO    PILAR 


258 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Coimbra, 
Santa  Cm? 
Sacristy. 


and  unbroken.  Here  all  the  lower  mouldings  of  the  cornice 
are  carried  round  the  corbels  and  the  pilasters  so  that  only 
the  two  upper  are  continuous,  an  arrangement  which  is  any- 
thing but  an  improvement.  Another  unpleasing  feature  are 
the  three  niches  which,  with  hideous  painted  figures,  are 
placed  one  above  the  other  between  the  pilasters.  The  chancel 
arch  reaches  up  to  the  main  cornice,  but  those  of  the  door  and 
chapel  recesses  are  low  enough  to  leave  room  for  the  windows. 
The  dome  is  divided  into  panels  of  various  shapes  by  broad  flat 
ribs  with  coarse  mouldings.  The  chancel  and  choir  beyond 
have  barrel  vaults  divided  into  simple  square  panels. 

The  church  then,  though  interesting  from  its  plan,  is — 
itiside  especially — remarkably  unpleasing,  though  it  is  perhaps 
only  fair  to  attribute  a  considerable  part  of  this  disagreeable 
effect  to  the  state  of  decay  into  which  it  has  fallen — a  state 
which  has  only  advanced  far  enough  to  be  squalid  and  dirty 
without  being  in  the  least  picturesque.  Far  more  pleasing 
than  the  church  is  the  round  cloister  behind.  In  it  the  thirty- 
six  Ionic  columns  are  much  better  proportioned,  and  the  capitals 
better  carved  ;  on  the  cornice  stands  an  attic,  rendered  neces- 
sary by  the  barrel  vault,  heavy  indeed,  but  not  too  heavy  for 
the  columns  below.  This  attic  is  panelled,  and  on  it  stand 
obelisk-bearing  pedestals,  one  above  each  column,  and  between 
them  pediments  of  strapwork.     (Fig.  98.) 

Had  this  cloister  been  square  it  would  have  been  in  no  way 
very  remarkable,  but  its  round  shape  as  well  as  the  fig-trees 
that  now  grow  in  the  garth,  and  the  many  plants  which  sprout 
from  joints  in  the  cornice,  make  it  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
buildings  in  the  country.  The  rest  of  the  monastic  buildings 
have  been  in  ruins  since  the  siege  of  1832. 

The  sacristy  of  Santa  Cruz  at  Coimbra  must  have  been 
begun  before  Nossa  Senhora  da  Serra  had  been  finished. 
Though  so  much  later — for  it  is  dated  1622 — the  architect  of 
this  sacristy  has  followed  much  more  closely  the  good  Italian 
forms  introduced  by  Terzi.  Like  that  of  the  Se  Velba,  the 
sacristy  of  Santa  Cruz  is  a  rectangular  building,  and  measures 
about  52  feet  long  by  26  wide  ;  each  of  the  longer  sides  is 
divided  into  three  bays  by  Doric  pilasters  which  have  good 
capitals,  but  are  themselves  cut  up  into  many  small  panels. 
The  cornice  is  partly  carried  on  corbels  as  in  the  Serra  church, 
but  here  the  effect  is  much  better.  There  are  large  semi- 
circular windows,  divided  into  three  lights  at  each  end,  and 


56 


si* 


Eh 

o 


o 


5 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE 


259 


the  barrel  vault  is  covered  with  deep  eight-sided  coffers.  One 
curious  feature  is  the  way  the  pilasters  in  the  north-east  corner 
are  carried  on  corbels,  so  as  to  leave  room  for  two  doors, 
one  of  which  leads  into  the  chapter-house  behind  the  chancel. 

(Fig-  99-) 

Twenty  years  later  was  begun  the  church  of  Santa  Engracia  Lisbon,  Santa 
in  Lisbon.  It  was  planned  on  a  great  scale  ;  a  vast  dome  in  Engracia. 
the  centre  surrounded  by  four  equal  apses,  and  by  four  square 
towers.  It  has  never  been  finished,  and  now  only  rises  to  the 
level  of  the  main  cornice  ;  but  had  the  dome  been  built  it 
would  undoubtedly  have  been  one  of  the  very  finest  of  the 
renaissance  buildings  in  the  country. 

Like  the  Serra  church  it  is,  outside,  two  stories  in  height 
having  Doric  pilasters  below — coupled  at  the  angles  of  the 
towers — and  Ionic  above.  In  the  western  apse,  the  pilasters 
are  replaced  by  tall  detached  Doric  columns,  and  the  Ionic 
pilasters  above  by  buttresses  which  grow  out  of  voluted  curves. 
Large,  simply  moulded  windows  are  placed  between  the  upper 
pilasters,  with  smaller  blank  windows  above  them,  while  in  the 
western  apse  arches  with  niches  set  between  pediment-bearing 
pilasters  lead  into  the  church. 

Here,  in  Santa  Engracia,  is  a  church  designed  in  the 
simplest  and  most  severe  classic  form,  and  absolutely  free  of  all 
the  fantastic  misuse  of  fragments  of  classic  detail  which  had  by 
that  time  become  so  common,  and  which  characterise  such 
fronts  as  those  of  the  Se  Nova  at  Coimbra  or  the  Collegio  Novo 
at  Oporto.  The  niches  over  the  entrance  arches  are  severe  but 
well  designed,  as  are  the  wind(n\s  in  the  towers  and  all  the 
mouldings.  Perhaps  the  only  fault  of  the  detail  is  that  the 
Doric  pilasters  and  columns  are  too  tall. 

Now  in  its  unfinished  state  the  whole  is  heavy  and  clumsy, 
but  at  the  same  time  imposing  and  stately  from  its  great  size  ; 
but  it  is  scarcely  fair  to  judge  so  unfinished  a  building,  which 
would  have  been  very  different  had  its  dome  and  four  encom- 
passing towers  risen  high  above  the  surrounding  apses  and  the 
red  roofs  of  the  houses  which  climb  steeply  up  the  hillside. 

The  new  convent  of  Santa  Clara  at  Coimbra  was  begun   Coimbra, 
about  the  same  time — in    1640 — on  the  hillside  overlooking  =>*""*-=■" 
the  Mondcgo  and  the  old  church  which  the  stream    has  almost 
buried  ;  and,  more  fortunate  than  Santa  I'jigracia,  it   has  been 
finished,  but  unlike  it  is  a  building  of  little  interest. 

The   church   is  a  rectangle  with   huge   Doric   pilasters  on 


26o       PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

either  side  supporting  a  heavy  coffered  roof.    There  are  no  aisles, 

but  shallow  altar  recesses  with  square-headed  windows  above. 
The  chancel  at  the  south  end  is  like  the  nave  but  narrower  ; 
the  two-storied  nuns'  choir  is  to  the  north.  As  the  convent 
is  still  occupied  it  cannot  be  visited,  but  contains  the  tomb  of 
St.  Isabel,  brought  from  the  old  church,  in  the  lower  choir,  and 
her  silver  shrine  in  the  upper.  Except  for  the  cloister,  which, 
designed  after  the  manner  of  the  Claustro  dos  Filippes  at 
Thomar,  has  coupled  Doric  columns  between  the  arches,  and 
above,  niches  flanked  by  Ionic  columns  between  square  windows, 
the  rest  of  the  nunnery  is  even  heavier  and  more  barrack-like 
than  the  church.  Indeed  almost  the  only  interest  of  the 
church  is  the  use  of  the  huge  Doric  pilasters,  since  from  that 
time  onward  such  pilasters,  usually  as  clumsy  and  as  large,  are 
found  in  almost  every  church. 

This  fondness  for  Doric  is  probably  due  to  the  influence 
of  Terzi,  who  seems  to  have  preferred  it  to  all  the  other 
orders,  though  he  always  gave  his  pilasters  a  beautiful  and 
intricate  capital.  In  any  case  from  about  1580  onwards 
scarcely  any  other  order  on  a  large  scale  is  used  either 
inside  or  outside,  and  by  1640  it  had  grown  to  the  ugly  size 
used  in  Santa  Clara  and  in  nearly  all  later  buildings,  the  only 
real  exception  being  perhaps  in  the  work  of  the  German  who 
designed  Mafra  and  rebuilt  the  Capella  Mor  at  Evora.  Such 
pilasters  are  found  forming  piers  In  the  church  built  about 
1600  to  be  the  cathedral  of  Leiria,  In  the  west  front  of  the 
cathedral  of  Portalegre,  where  they  are  piled  above  each  other 
in  three  stories,  huge  and  tall  below,  short  and  thinner  above, 
and  In  endless  churches  all  over  the  country.  Later  still  they 
degenerated  Into  mere  angle  strips,  as  In  the  cathedral  of  Angra 
do  Heroismo  in  the  Azores  and  elsewhere. 

Such  a  building  as  Santa  Engracia  Is  the  real  ending  of 
Architecture  in  Portugal,  and  its  unfinished  state  Is  typical  of 
the  poverty  which  had  overtaken  the  country  during  the 
Spanish  usurpation,  when  robbed  of  her  commerce  by  Holland 
and  by  England,  united  against  her  will  to  a  decaying  power, 
she  was  unable  to  finish  her  last  great  work,  while  such 
buildings  as  she  did  herself  finish — for  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  Mafra  was  designed  by  a  foreigner — show  a  meanness 
of  invention  and  design  scarcely  to  be  equalled  in  any  other 
land,  a  strange  contrast  to  the  exuberance  of  fancy  lavished  on 
the  buildings  of  a  happier  age. 


THE  RESTORATION  261 


CHAPTER    XIX 

THE     RESTORATION     AND    THE     EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 

When  elected  at  Thomar  in  1580,  Philip  ir.  of  Spain  had 
sworn  to  govern  Portugal  only  through  Portuguese  ministers, 
a  promise  which  he  seems  to  have  kept.  He  was  fully  alive 
to  the  importance  of  commanding  the  mouth  of  the  Tagus 
and  the  splendid  harbour  of  Lisbon,  and  had  he  fixed  his 
capital  there  instead  of  at  Madrid  it  is  quite  possible  that  the 
two  countries  might  have  remained  united. 

For  sixty  years  the  people  endured  the  ever-growing 
oppression  and  misgovernment.  The  duque  de  Lerma, 
minister  to  Philip  in.,  or  ii.  of  Portugal,  and  still  more  the 
Conde  duque  de  Olivares  under  Philip  iv.,  treated  Portugal  as 
if  it  were  a  conquered  province. 

In  1640,  the  very  year  in  which  Santa  Engracia  was 
begun,  the  regent  was  Margaret  of  Savoy,  whose  ministers, 
with  hardly  an  exception,  were  Spaniards. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  when  Philip  ii.  was  elected  in 
1580,  Dona  Catharina,  duchess  of  Braganza  and  daughter  ot 
Dom  Manoel's  sixth  son,  Uuarte,  duke  of  Guimarfies,  had 
been  the  real  heir  to  the  throne  of  her  uncle,  the  Cardinal 
King.  Her  Philip  had  bought  off  by  a  promise  of  the 
sovereignty  of  Brazil,  a  promise  which  he  never  kept,  and 
now  in  1640  her  grandson  Dom  Jofio,  eighth  duke  of 
Braganza  and  direct  descendant  of  Affonso,  a  bastard  son  of 
Dom  Joiio  I.,  had  succeeded  to  all  her  rights. 

He  was  an  unambitious  and  weak  man,  fond  only  of 
hunting  and  music,  so  Olivares  had  thought  it  safe  to  restore 
to  him  his  ancestral  lands  ;  and  to  bind  him  still  closer  to 
Spain  had  given  him  a  Spanish  wife,  Luisa  Guzman,  daughter 
of  the  duke  of  Medina  Sidonia.  Matters,  however,  turned 
out  very  dift'erently  from  what  he  had  expected.  A  gypsy  had 
once  told  Dona  Luisa  that  she  would  be  a  queen,  and   a  queen 


262         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

she  was  determined  to  be.  With  difficulty  she  persuaded  her 
husband  to  become  the  nominal  head  of  the  conspiracy  for  the 
expulsion  of  the  Spaniards,  and  on  the  ist  of  December  1640 
the  first  blow  was  struck  by  the  capture  of  the  regent  and  her 
ministers  in  the  palace  at  Lisbon.  Next  day,  December  2nd, 
the  duke  of  Braganza  was  saluted  as  King  Dom  Joao  iv.  at 
Villa  Vigosa,  his  country  home  beyond  Evora. 

The  moment  of  the  revolution  was  well  chosen,  for  Spain 
was  at  that  time  struggling  with  a  revolt  which  had  broken 
out  in  Catalufia,  and  so  was  unable  to  send  any  large  force  to 
crush  Dom  Joao.  All  the  Indian  and  African  colonies  at 
once  drove  out  the  Spaniards,  and  in  Brazil  the  Dutch 
garrisons  which  had  been  established  there  by  Count  Maurice 
of  Nassau  were  soon  expelled. 

Though  a  victory  was  soon  gained  over  the  Spaniards  at 
Montijo,  the  war  dragged  on  for  twenty-eight  years,  and  it 
was  only  some  years  after  Don  John  of  Austria  ^  had  been 
defeated  at  Almeixial  by  Schomberg  (who  afterwards  took 
service  under  William  of  Orange)  that  peace  was  finally  made 
in  1668.  Portugal  then  ceded  Ceuta,  and  Spain  acknow- 
ledged the  independence  of  the  revolted  kingdom,  and  granted 
to  its  sovereign  the  title  of  Majesty. 

It  is  no  great  wonder,  then,  that  with  such  a  long-continued 
war  and  an  exhausted  treasury  a  building  like  Santa  Engracia 
should  have  remained  unfinished,  and  it  would  have  been  well 
for  the  architecture  of  the  country  had  this  state  of  poverty 
continued,  for  then  far  more  old  buildings  would  have 
survived  unaltered  and  unspoiled. 

Unfortunately  by  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
trade  had  revived,  and  the  discovery  of  diamonds  and  of  gold 
in  Brazil  had  again  brought  much  wealth  to  the  king. 

Of  the  innumerable  churches  and  palaces  built  during  the 
eighteenth  century  scarcely  any  are  worthy  of  mention,  for 
perhaps  the  great  convent  palace  of  Mafra  and  the  Capelia 
Mor  of  the  Se  at  Evora  are  the  only  exceptions. 

In  the  early  years  of  that  century  King  Joao  v.  made 
a  vow  that  if  a  son  was  born  to  him,  he  would,  on  the  site  of 
the  poorest  monastery  in  the  country,  build  the  largest  and  the 
richest.  At  the  same  time  anxious  to  emulate  the  glories  of 
the  Escorial,  he  determined  that  his  building  should  contain 
a  palace  as  well  as  a  monastery — indeed  it  may  almost  be  said 

'  Not  of  course  the  famous  son  of  Charles  v.,  but  a  son  of  Philip  iv. 


THE  RESTORATION  263 

to  contain  two  palaces,  one  for  the  king  on  the  south,  and  one 
on  the  north  for  the  queen. 

A  son  was  born,  and  the  poorest  monastery  in  the  Mafra. 
kingdom  was  found  at  Mafra,  where  a  few  Franciscans  lived 
in  some  miserable  buildings.  Having  found  his  site.  King 
Joao  had  next  to  find  an  architect  able  to  carry  out  his  great 
scheme,  and  so  low  had  native  talent  fallen,  that  the  architect 
chosen  was  a  foreigner,  Frederic  Ludovici  or  Ludwig,  a 
German. 

The  first  stone  of  the  vast  building  was  laid  in  171 7,  and 
the  church  was  dedicated  thirteen  years  later,  in  1730.^ 

The  whole  building  may  be  divided  into  two  main  parts. 
One  to  the  east,  measuring  some  560  feet  by  350,  and  built 
round  a  large  square  courtyard,  was  devoted  to  the  friars,  and 
contained  the  convent  entrance,  the  refectory,  chapter-house, 
kitchen,  and  cells  for  two  hundred  and  eighty  brothers,  as  well 
as  a  vast  library  on  the  first  floor. 

The  other  and  more  extensive  part  to  the  west  comprises 
the  king's  apartments  on  the  south  side,  the  queen's  on  the 
north,  and  between  them  the  church. 

It  is  not  without  interest  to  compare  the  plan  of  this 
palace  or  monastery  with  the  more  famous  Escorial.  Both 
cover  almost  exactly  the  same  area,-  but  while  in  the  Escorial 
the  church  is  thrust  back  at  the  end  of  a  vast  patio,  here  it  is 
brought  torward  to  the  very  front.  There  the  royal  palace 
occupies  only  a  comparatively  small  area  in  the  north-west 
corner  of  the  site,  and  the  monastic  part  the  whole  lying  south 
of  the  entrance  patio  and  of  the  church  ;  here  the  monastic 
part  is  thrust  back  almost  out  of  sight,  and  the  palace  stretches 
all  along  the  west  front  except  where  it  is  interrupted  in  the 
middle  by  the  church. 

Indeed  the  two  buildings  differ  from  one  another  much  as 
did  the  characters  ot  their  builders.  The  gloomy  fanaticism 
of  Philip  of  Spain  is  exemplified  by  the  preponderance  of  the 
monastic  buildings  no  less  than  by  his  own  small  dark  bed- 
closet  opening  only  to  the  church  close  to  the  high  altar. 
Joao  v.,  pleasure- loving  and  luxurious,  pushed  the  friars  to 
the  back,  and  made  his  own  and  the  queen's  rooms  the  most 

'  In  tliat  year  trom  June  to  October  45,000  men  are  inscribed  as  working  on  the 
building,  .Tnd  ii65  oxen  were  bojght  to  haul  stones  ! 

*  The  area  ot  the  ENCorial,  excluding  the  many  patios  and  cloisters,  is  over 
300,000  M|uarc  teet  ;  that  ut  Mat'ra,  also  excluding  all  open  spaces,  is  nearly  290,000. 


264        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

prominent  part  of  the  whole  building,  and  one  cannot  but  feel 
that,  though  a  monastery  had  to  be  built  to  fulfil  a  vow,  the 
king  was  actuated  not  so  much  by  religious  zeal  as  by  an 
ostentatious  megalomania  which  led  him  to  try  and  surpass 
the  size  of  the  Escorial. 

To  take  the  plan  rather  more  in  detail.      The  west  front, 


iaLlJiJJli.LLLLLl,,llJmaiEILLEiaj 
rarrjrrnmiTraj 


j]  tlLLLLLl  linUU  tE^k 


ruN^sTCjn 


i^i        i'i       *''i       t  »__ — — ^-'v-— ■ 


I    FEET 


PLAN    OF    MAFRA 


about  740  feet  long,  is  flanked  by  huge  square  projecting 
pavilions.  The  king's  and  the  queen's  apartments  are  each 
entered  by  rather  low  and  insignificant  doorways  in  the  middle 
of  the  long  straight  blocks  which  join  these  pavilions  to  the 
church.  These  doors  lead  under  the  palace  to  large  square 
courtyards,    one  on  each  side  of  the  church,  and  forming  on 


THE  RESTORATION  265 

the  ground  floor  a  cloister  with  a  well-designed  arcading  of 
round  arches,  separated  by  Roman  Doric  shafts.  The  king's 
and  the  queen's  blocks  are  practically  identical,  except  that  in 
the  king's  a  great  oval  hall  called  the  Sala  dos  actos  takes  the 
place  of  some  smaller  rooms  between  the  cloister  and  the 
outer  wall. 

Between  these  blocks  stands  the  church  reached  by  a  great 
flight  of  steps.  It  has  a  nave  and  aisles  of  three  large  and 
one  small  bay,  a  dome  at  the  crossing,  and  transepts  and 
chancel  ending  in  apses.  In  front,  flanking  towers  projecting 
beyond  the  aisles  are  united  by  a  long  entrance  porch. 

Between  the  secular  and  the  monastic  parts  a  great  corridor 
runs  north  and  south,  and  immediately  beyond  it  a  range  of 
great  halls,  including  the  refectory  at  the  north  end  and  the 
chapter-house  i!  the  south.  Further  east  the  great  central 
court  with  its  surrounding  cells  divides  the  monastic  entrance 
and  great  stair  from  such  domestic  buildings  as  the  kitchen,  the 
bakery,  and  the  lavatory.  Four  stories  of  cells  occupy  the 
whole  east  side. 

Though  some  parts  of  the  palace  and  monastery  such  as  the 
two  entrance  courts,  the  library,  and  the  interior  of  the  church, 
may  be  better  than  might  have  been  expected  from  the  date,  it 
is  quite  impossible  to  speak  at  all  highly  of  the  building  as  a 
whole. 

It  is  nearly  all  of  the  same  height  with  flat  paved  roofs  ; 
indeed  the  only  breaks  are  the  corner  pavilions  and  the  towers 
and  dome  of  the  church. 

The  west  side  consists  of  two  monotonous  blocks,  one  on 
each  side  of  the  church,  with  three  stories  of  windows.  At 
either  end  is  a  great  square  projecting  mass,  rusticated  on  the 
lowest  floor,  with  short  pilaster  strips  between  the  windows  on 
the  first,  and  Corinthian  pilasters  on  the  second.  The  poor 
cornice  is  surmounted  by  a  low  attic,  within  which  rises  a 
hideous  ogee  plastered  roof.     (Fig.  100.) 

The  church  in  the  centre  loses  much  by  not  rising  above 
the  rest  of  the  front,  and  the  two  towers,  though  graceful 
enough  in  outline,  are  poor  in  detail,  and  are  finished  ofl  with 
a  very  ugly  combination  of  hollow  curves  and  bulbous  domes. 

The  centre  dome,  too,  is  very  poor  in  outline  with  a  drum 
and  lantern  far  too  tall  for  its  size  ;  though  of  course,  had  the 
drum  been  of  a  better  proportion,  it  would  hardly  have  shown 
above  the  palace  roof. 


266         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Still  more  monotonous  are  the  other  sides  with  endless 
rows  of  windows  set  in  a  pink  plastered  wall. 

Very  different  is  the  outline  of  the  Escorial,  whose  very 
plainness  and  want  of  detail  suits  well  the  rugged  mountain 
side  in  which  it  is  set.  The  main  front  with  its  high  corner 
towers  and  their  steep  slate  roofs,  and  with  its  high  centre- 
piece, is  far  more  impressive,  and  the  mere  reiteration  of  its 
endless  featureless  windows  gives  the  Escorial  an  appearance  of 
size  quite  wanting  to  Mafra.  Above  all  the  great  church  with 
massive  dome  and  towers  rises  high  above  all  the  rest,  and 
gives  the  whole  a  sense  of  unity  and  completeness  which  the 
smaller  church  of  Mafra,  though  in  a  far  more  prominent 
place,  entirely  fails  to  do. 

Poor  though  the  church  at  Mafra  is  outside,  inside  there  is 
much  to  admire,  and  but  little  to  betray  the  'late  date.  The 
porch  has  an  effective  vault  of  black  and  white  marble,  and 
domes  with  black  and  white  panels  cover  the  spaces  under  the 
towers.  Inside  the  church  is  all  built  of  white  marble  with 
panels  and  pilasters  of  pink  marble  from  Pero  Pinheiro  on  the 
road  to  Cintra.      (Fig.  lOi.) 

The  whole  church  measures  about  200  teet  long  by  100 
wide,  with  a  nave  also  100  feet  long.  The  central  aisle  is  over 
40  teet  wide,  and  has  two  very  well-proportioned  Corinthian 
pilasters  between  each  bay.  Almost  the  only  trace  of  the 
eighteenth  century  is  found  in  the  mouldings  of  the  pendentive 
panels,  and  in  the  marble  vault,  but  on  the  whole  the  church  is 
stately  and  the  detail  refined  and  restrained. 

The  refectory,  a  very  plain  room  with  plastered  barrel 
vault,  160  feet  long  bv  40  wide,  is  remarkable  only  for  the 
splendid  slabs  of  Brazil  wood  which  form  the  tables,  and  for 
the  beautiful  brass  lamps  which  hang  from  the  ceiling. 

Much  more  interesting  is  the  library  which  occupies  the 
central  part  of  the  floor  above.  Over  200  feet  long,  it  has  a 
dome-surmounted  transept  in  the  middle,  and  a  barrel  vault 
divided  into  panels.  All  the  walls  are  lined  with  bookcases 
painted  white  like  the  barrel  vault  and  like  the  projecting 
gallery  from  which  the  upper  shelves  are  reached.  One  half  is 
devoted  to  religious,  and  one  half  to  secular  books,  and  in  the 
latter  each  country  has  a  space  more  or  less  large  allotted  to 
it.  As  scarcely  any  books  seem  to  have  been  added  since 
the  building  was  finished,  it  should  contain  many  a  rare  and 
valuable  volume,  and  as  all  seem  to  be  in  excellent  condition, 


57 


5      <" 


THE  RESTORATION  267 

they   might   well   deserve   a   visit   from   some    learned   book- 
lover. 

Mafra  does  not  seem  to  have  ever  had  any  interesting 
history.  Within  the  lines  of  Torres  V'edras,  the  palace 
escaped  the  worst  ravages  of  the  French  invasion.  In  1834 
the  two  hundred  and  eighty  friars  were  turned  out,  and  since 
then  most  of  the  vast  building  has  been  turned  into  barracks, 
while  the  palace  is  but  occasionally  inhabited  by  the  king  when 
he  comes  to  shoot  in  the  great  wooded  tapada  or  enclosure 
which  stretches  back  towards  the  east. 

Just  about  the  time  that  Joao  v.  was  beginning  his  great  Evom, 
palace  at  Mafra,  the  chapter  of  the  cathedral  of  Evora  came  to  '-'='P^"^  '*^°^- 
the  conclusion  that  the  old  Capella  Mor  was  too  small,  and 
altogether  unworthy  of  the  dignity  of  an  archiepiscopal  see. 
So  they  determined  to  pull  it  down,  and  naturally  enough 
employed  Ludovici  to  design  the  new  one.  The  first  stone 
was  laid  in  1717,  and  the  chancel  was  consecrated  in  1746  at 
the  cost  of  about  £11,000. 

The  outside,  of  white  marble,  is  enriched  with  two  orders  of 
pilasters,  Corinthian  and  Composite.  Inside,  white,  pink  and 
black  marbles  are  used,  the  columns  are  composite,  but  the 
whole  design  is  far  poorer  than  anything  at  Mafra. 

King  Joao  v.  died  in  1750  after  a  long  and  prosperous 
reign.  Besides  building  Mafra  he  g.ive  great  sums  of  money 
to  the  Pope,  and  obtained  in  return  the  division  of  Lisbon  into 
two  bishoprics,  and  the  title  of  Patriarch  for  the  archbishop  of 
Lisboa  Oriental,  or  Eastern  Lisbon. 

When  he  died  he  was  succeeded  by  Dom  Jose,  whose  reign 
is  noted  for  the  terrible  earthquake  of  1755,  and  for  the 
administration  of  the  great  Marques  de  Pombal. 

It  was  on  the  ist  of  November,  when  the  population  of 
Lisbon  was  assembled  in  the  churches  for  the  services  of  All 
Saints'  day,  that  the  first  shock  was  felt.  This  was  soon 
followed  by  two  others  which  laid  the  city  in  ruins,  killing 
many  people.  Most  who  had  escaped  rushed  to  the  river  bank, 
where  they  with  the  splendid  palace  at  the  water's  edge  were  all 
overwhelmed  by  an  immense  tidal  wave. 

The  damage  done  to  the  city  was  almost  incalculable. 
Scarcely  a  house  remained  uninjured,  and  of  the  churches 
nearly  all  were  ruined.  The  cathedral  was  almost  entirely 
destroyed,  leaving  only  the  low  chapels  and  the  romanesque 
nave  and  transepts  standing,  and  of  the  later  churches  all  were 


268        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

ruined,  and  only  Sao  Roque  and  Sao  Vicente  de  Fora — which 
lost  its  dome — remained  to  show  what  manner  of  churches 
were  built  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  cvsrr 

This  is  not  the  place  to  tell  of  the  administration  of  the 
Marques  de  Pombal,  who  rose  to  eminence  owing  to  the  great 
ability  he  showed  after  this  awful  calamity,  or  to  give  a  history 
of  how  he  expelled  the  Jesuits,  subdued  the  nobles,  attempted 
to  make  Portugal  a  manufacturing  country,  abolished  slavery 
and  the  differences  between  the  Old  and  the  New  Christians, 
reformed  the  administration  and  the  teaching  of  the  University 
of  Coimbra,  and  robbed  the  Inquisition  of  half  its  terrors  by 
making  its  trials  public.  In  Lisbon  he  rebuilt  the  central 
part  of  the  town,  laying  out  parallel  streets,  and  surrounding 
the  Pra9a  do  Commercio  with  great  arcaded  government 
offices  ;  buildings  remarkable  rather  for  the  fine  white  stone 
of  which  they  are  made,  than  for  any  architectural  beauty. 
Indeed  it  is  impossible  to  admire  anv  of  the  buildings  erected 
in  Portugal  since  the  earthquake  ;  the  palaces  of  the  Necessi- 
dades  and  the  Ajuda  are  but  great  masses  of  pink-washed 
plaster  pierced  with  endless  windows,  and  without  any  beauty 
of  detail  or  of  design. 
Lisbon,  Nor    does    the  church  of   the  Cora9ao  de  Jesus,  usually 

Estrella.       called  the    Estrella,    call   for  any  admiration.      It  copies  the 
faults  of  Mafra,  the  tall  drum,  the  poor  dome,  and  the  towers 
with  bulbous  tops. 
Oporto,  More  vicious,  indeed,  than  the  Estrella,  but  much  more 

Cierieos°^  original  and  picturesque,  is  the  Torre  dos  Clerigos  at  Oporto, 
built  by  the  clergy  in  1755.  It  stands  at  the  top  of  a  steep  hill 
leading  down  to  the  busiest  part  of  the  town.  The  tower  is  a 
square  with  rounded  corners,  and  is  of  very  considerable  height. 
The  main  part  is  four  stories  in  height,  of  which  the 
lowest  is  the  tallest  and  the  one  above  it  the  shortest. 
All  are  adorned  with  pilasters  or  pilaster  strips,  and  the  third, 
in  which  is  a  large  belfry  window,  has  an  elaborate  cornice, 
rising  over  the  window  in  a  rounded  pediment  to  enclose  a 
great  shield  of  arms.  The  fourth  story  is  finished  by  a  globe- 
bearing  parapet,  within  which  the  tower  rises  to  another 
parapet  much  corbelled  out.  The  last  or  sixth  story  is  set 
still  further  back  and  ends  in  a  fantastic  dome-shaped  roof. 
In  short,  the  tower  is  a  good  example  of  the  wonderful  and 
ingenious  way  in  which  the  eighteenth-century  builders  of 
Portugal  often  contrived  the  strangest  results  by  a  use — or 


THE  RESTORATION  269 

misuse — -of  pieces  of  classic  detail,  forming  a  whole  often 
more  Chinese  than  Western  in  appearance,  but  at  the  same 
time  not  unpicturesque.^ 

A  much  more  pleasing  example  of  the  same  school — a  oporto, 
school  doubtless  influenced  by  the  bad  example  of  Churrieuera  '■^"'."'^  ''" 
in  Spain— is  the  house  called  the  Quinta  do  Freixo  on  the 
Douro  a  mile  or  so  above  the  town.  Here  the  four  towers 
with  their  pointed  slate  roofs  rise  in  so  picturesque  a  way  at 
the  four  corners,  and  the  whole  house  blends  so  well  with  the 
parapets  and  terraces  of  the  garden,  that  one  can  almost 
forgive  the  broken  pediments  which  form  so  strange  a  gable 
over  the  door,  and  the  still  more  strange  shapes  of  the 
windows.  Now  that  factory  chimneys  rise  close  on  either 
side  the  charm  is  spoiled,  but  once  the  house,  with  its  turrets, 
its  vase-laden  parapets,  its  rococo  windows,  and  the  slates 
painted  pale  blue  that  cover  its  wails,  must  have  been  a  fit: 
setting  for  the  artificial  civilisation  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago,  and  for  the  ladies  in  dresses  of  silk  brocade  and 
gentlemen  in  flowered  waistcoats  and  powdered  hair  who  once 
must  have  gone  up  and  down  the  terrace  steps,  or  sat  in  the 
shell  grottoes  of  the  garden. 

Though  less  picturesque  and  fantastic,  the  royal  palace  at  i^ueluz. 
Queluz,  between  Lisbon  and  Cintra,  is  another  really  pleasing 
example  of  the  more  sober  rococo.     Built  by  Dom  Pedro  in. 
about  1780,  the  palace  is  a  long  building  with  a  low  tiled  roof, 
and  the  gardens  are  rich  in  fountains  and  statues. 

Somewhat    similar,    but    unfinished,    and     enriched    with  Guimarscs 
niches  and  statues,  is  a  Quinta  near  the  station  at  Guimaraes.  '^"'"'^ 
Standing    on    a    slope,   the    garden    descends   northwards    in 
beautiful  terraces,  whose  fronts  are  covered  with  tiles.     Being 
well  cared  for,  it  is  rich  in  beautiful  trees  and  shrubs. 

Much  more  correct,  and  it  must  be  said  commonplace,  are  oporto, 
the  hospital  and  the  English  factory — or  club-house— in  Oporto,  p^"*,!,^'"'  ^"'^ 
The  plans  of  both  have  clearly  been  sent  out  from  England, 
the  hospital  especially  being  thoroughly  English  in  design. 
Planned  on  so  vast  a  scale  that  it  has  never  been  completed, 
with  the  pediment  of  its  Doric  portico  unfinished,  the  hospital 
is  yet  a  fine  building,  simple  and  severe,  not  unlike  what 
might  have  been  designed  by  some  pupil  of  Chambers. 

The  main  front  has  a  rusticated  ground  floor  with  round- 
headed  windows  and  doors.     On  this  in  the  centre  stands  a 

'  Compare  also  the  front  of  the  Misericordia  in  Oporto. 


270         PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 

Doric  portico  of  six  columns,  and  at  the  ends  narrower 
colonnades  of  four  shafts  each.  Between  them  stretches  a 
long  range  of  windows  with  simple,  well-designed  architraves. 
The  onlv  thing,  apart  from  its  unfinished  condition,  which 
shows  that  the  hospital  is  not  in  England,  are  some  colossal 
figures  ot  saints  which  stand  above  the  cornice,  and  are  entirely 
un-English  in  style. 

Of  later  buildings  little  can  be  said.  Many  country 
houses  are  pleasing  from  their  complete  simplicity  ;  plastered, 
and  washed  pink,  yellow,  or  white,  they  are  devoid  of  all 
architectural  pretension,  and  their  low  roofs  of  red  pantiles 
look  much  more  natural  than  do  the  steep  slated  roofs  of 
some  of  the  more  modern  villas. 

The  only  unusual  point  about  these  Portuguese  houses  is 
that,  as  a  rule,  they  have  sash  windows,  a  form  of  window  so 
rare  in  the  South  that  one  is  tempted  to  see  in  them  one  of 
the  results  of  the  Methuen  Treaty  and  of  the  long  intercourse 
with  England.  The  chimneys,  too,  are  often  interesting. 
Near  Lisbon  they  are  long,  narrow  oblongs,  with  a  curved  top 
— not  unlike  a  tombstone  in  shape — from  which  the  smoke 
escapes  by  a  long  narrow  slit.  Elsewhere  the  smoke  escapes 
through  a  picturesque  arrangement  of  tiles,  and  hardly  any- 
where is  there  to  be  seen  a  simple  straight  shaft  with  a 
chimney  can  at  the  top. 

For  twenty  years  after  the  end  of  the  Peninsular  "War 
the  country  was  in  a  more  or  less  disturbed  state.  And  it 
was  only  after  Dom  Miguel  had  been  defeated  and  expelled, 
and  the  more  liberal  party  who  supported  Dona  Maria  11.  had 
won  the  day,  that  Portugal  again  began  to  revive. 

In  1834,  the  year  which  saw  Dom  Miguel's  surrender,  all 
monasteries  throughout  the  country  were  suppressed,  and  the 
monks  turned  out.  Even  more  melancholy  was  the  fate  of 
the  nuns,  for  they  uere  allowed  to  stay  on  till  the  last  should 
have  died.  In  some  cases  one  or  two  survived  nearly  seventy 
years,  watching  the  gradual  decay  of  their  homes,  a  decay 
they  were  powerless  to  arrest,  till,  when  their  death  at  last  set 
the  convents  free,  they  were  found,  with  leaking  roofs,  and 
rotten  floors,  almost  too  ruinous  to  be  put  to  any  use. 

The  Gothic  revival  has  not  been  altogether  without  its 
effects  in  Portugal.  Batalha  has  been,  and  Alcoba^a  is  being, 
saved  from  ruin.  The  Se  Velha  at  Coimbra  has  been  purged 
— too  drastically  perhaps — of  all  the  additions  and  disfigure- 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  271 

merits  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  same  is  being  done 
with  the  cathedral  of  Lisbon. 

Such  new  buildings  as  have  been  put  up  are  usually  much 
less  successful.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  ugliness  of  the  new 
domed  tower  of  the  church  of  Belem,  or  of  the  upper  story 
imposed  on  the  long  undercroft.  Nor  can  the  new  railway 
station  in  the  Manoelino  style  be  admired. 

Probably  the  best  of  such  attempts  to  copy  the  art  of 
Portugal's  greatest  age  is  found  at  Bussaco,  where  the  hotel, 
with  its  arcaded  galleries  and  its  great  sphere-bearing  spire,  is 
not  unworthy  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  where  the  carving, 
usually  the  spontaneous  work  of  uninstructed  men,  shows  that 
some  of  the  medieval  skill,  as  well  as  some  of  the  medieval 
methods,  have  survived  till  the  present  century. 


272        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


BOOKS    CONSULTED 

Hieronymi  Osorii  Lusitani,  Silvensis  in  Algarviis  Episcopi  :  De 
rebus  Emmanutlis,  etc.     Cologne,  1597. 

Padre  Ignacio  da  Piedade  e  Vascoiicellos :  Historia  de  Santarem 
Edificada.     Lisboa  Occidental,  I  790. 

J.  Murphy  :  History  and  Description  of  the  Royal  Convent  of  Batalha. 
London,  1792. 

Raczynski  ;   Les  Arts  en  Portugal.     Paris,  1846. 

Raczynsici  :   Diccionaire  Historico-Artistique  du  Portugal.     Paris,  1847. 

J.  C.  Robinson:  'Portuguese  School  of  Painting'  in  the  Fine  Arts 
Quarterly  Review.      1 866. 

Simoes,  A.  F. :   Architectura  Religiosa  em  Coimbra  na  Idade  Meia. 

Ignacio  de  Vilhena  Barbosa  :  Monumentos  de  Portugal  Historicos,  etc. 
Lisboa,  1886. 

Oliveira  Martims  :   Historia  de  Portugal, 

Pinho  Leal :    Diccionario  Geographico  de  Portugal. 

Albrecht  Haupt  :  Die  Baukunst  der  Renaissance  in  Portugal.  Frank- 
furt A.M.,   1890. 

Visconde  de  Condeixa :   0  Mosteiro  da  Batalha  em  Portugal.     Lisboa 

&  Paris. 
Justi  :    'Die  Portugiesische  Malerei   des    i6ten  Jahrhunderts '  in  the 

"Jahrbuch  der  K.  Preuss.  Kunstsammlung^  vol.  ix.      Berlin,  1888. 
Joaquim  Rasteiro  :   ^uinta  e  Palacio  de  Bacalhoa  em  Azeitao.     Lisboa, 

1895. 
Joaquim  de  Vasconcellos  :   'Batalha'  &  'Sao  Marcos'  from  A  Arte  e 

a  Natureza  em  Portugal.     Ed.  E.  Biel  e  Cie.      Porto. 
L.  R.  D.  :   Roteiro  lllustrado  do  Viajante  em  Coimbra.     Coimbra,  1894. 
Caetano  da  Camara  Manoel  :  Atravc%  a  Cidade  de  Evora,  etc.      Evora, 

1900. 
Conde  de  Sabugosa  :   0  Pa^o  de  Cintra.     Lisboa,  1903. 
Augusto    Fuschini  :      J    Architectura    Religiosa    da     Edade    Media. 

Lisboa,  1904. 
Jose  Oueiroz  :    Ceramica  Portuguez,a.      Lisboa,  1907. 


INDEX 


273 


INDEX 


Abd-el-Melik,  244. 
Abrantcs,  41,  103. 
Abreu,  L.  L.  d",  233. 
Abu-Zakarlah,  the  vezir,  44. 
Affonso  II.,  64,  65. 

HI.,  7,  64,67,  68,  75,  116. 

IV.,  43,  73,  74,  76. 

v.,    92,   loi,    102,   127,    134,    143, 

161,  171,  176. 

VI.,  24,  127. 

I.,  Henriques,  6,  31,  3S,  40,  41,  44, 

51,  117,  166,  196,  197. 

of  Portugal,  Bishop  of  Evora,  1 9. 

son  of  JoSo  I.,  261. 

son  of  JoSo  II.,  144. 

Atrica,  66,  144,  161. 
Aguas  Santas,  33,  136. 
Agua  lie  Pcixes,  131. 
Ahmedabad,  159,  176,  180. 
Albuquerque,  Atfonso  de,  25,   144,  158, 

170,  183,  255. 

Luis  dc,  I  So,  183  n. 

Alcacer-Qiiebir,  battle  of,  216,  244. 

Alcacer  Seguer,  102. 

Alcantara,  28. 

Alcobacja,  44,  45,  48,  55,  57,  58,  59,  60, 

68,  70,71,75-78,82,   166,  204,  206, 

223,  227,  231,  270. 
Al-Coraxi,  cinir,  42. 
Alemquer,  217. 

Alemtcjo,  i,  10,  51,  100,  129,  143. 
Alexander  vi.,  Pope,  158. 
Alfonso  VI.  of  Castile  and  Leon,  6,  117. 
VII.  of  Castile  and   Leon,  6,  7,  j8, 

39- 

X.  of  Castile  and  Leon,  68. 

Alga,  San  Giorgio  in,  i  33. 

Algarvc,  the,  7,  67,  68,  116,  219. 

Alhambra,  the,  120,  128. 

Aljubarrota,  battle  ot,  7,  18,  80,  93,  98. 

Almada,  Rodrigo  Ruy  de,  1  1. 

Almansor,  30,  42. 

Almeida,    Kisliop  Jorge  d',   21,48,206, 

208,  209,  2  10. 
Almeirim,  palace  ol,  122,  144,  229,  240. 
Almeixial,  battle  ot,  262. 
Almourol,  41. 
Almoravides,  the,  6. 


Alvares,  the,  49,  242,  244. 

Baltazar,  252,  253. 

Fernando,  19. 

Alvito,  27,  100,  129-13;,  255. 

Ainarante,  237. 

Amaro,  Sant",  27. 

Amboise,  Georges  d',  202. 

An^a,  204. 

Andalucia,  4. 

Andrade,  Fernfio  Peres  de,  144. 

Angra  do  Heroismo,  in  the  Azores,  260. 

Annes,  Canon  Gon^alo,  20  '/. 

Margarida,  91  n. 

Pedro,  197. 

Antimes,  Aleixo,  228. 

Antwerp,  1 1. 

Arabes,  Sala  dos,  Cintra,  23    24,  124. 

Aragon,  5. 

Arganil,  Counts  of,  206,  207. 

Arraes,  Frcy  Amador,  252. 

Arruda,  Diogo  de,  162. 

Astorga,  41. 

Asturias,  5. 

Enrique,  Prince  of  the.  Si. 

Augustus,  reign  of,  3. 
Ave,  river,  2,  29,  31,  107. 
Aveiro,  convent  at,  142. 

the  Duque  d',  140. 

Dukes  of,  251. 

Avignon,  161. 

Aviz,  House  of,  8. 

Azeitao,  255. 

Azila,  in  Morocco,  134,  243,  244. 

Azurara,  63,  107,  108,  136. 


B 


Bacalhoa,  Quinia  ilc,  22,  25,  27,  176  //., 
183,255. 

Barbosa,  Francisco,  212. 

Gonzalo  Gil,  212. 

Barcellos,  127. 

Barcelona,  5. 

Bataiha,  24,  61  «.,  62,  63,  65,  70,  78, 
80-92,  95,  96,  97,  99,  109,  159,  171- 
181,  193,  194.  204,  224,  227,  230-253, 


170. 
BaySo,  Uon^alo,  240. 
Bayona,  in  Galicia,  39. 


274        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Bcatriz,   Dona,  wife   of  Charles    in.  of 

Savoy,  14. 

Queen  of  Atfonso  in.,  68,  75. 

Art'onso  IV.,  II 7. 

Bebedim,  116,  16S  «. 

Beckford,  59. 

Beira,  i,  7,  64. 

Bcja,  7,  51,  69,  14S,  355,  256. 

Luis,  Duke  ot,  14. 

Belem,  14,  15,  16,  20,  2S,  100,  104,  i6a, 

16+,  166,  171,  172,  177,  183-195,  221, 

222,  227,  231,  241,  271. 
Tower  of  Sao  Vicente,    146,    179, 

1S1-1S3,  194. 
Bernardo  (of  Santiago),  36,  4S  «. 

Master,  48. 

Bernard,  St.,  of  Clairvaux,  59. 

Boeihe,  32. 

Bonacofu,  102. 

Boulogne,  Countess  of,  68,  75. 

Boutaca,  or  Boitaca,  147,  149,  184,  231. 

Braga,  2,   3,  18,  19,  31,  34-40,  52,  62, 

67,  98,  99,  104,  112-115. 
Braganza,  Archbishop  Jos^  de,  1 14  ». 

Catherine,  Duchess  ot,  244,  261. 

Duke  of,  143. 

Dukes  of,  127. 

Joao,  Duke  of,  261. 

Brandao,  Francisco,  1 1. 

Brazil,   S,   66,    144,    158,    160,   222,   243, 

244,  261,  262. 
Brazil,  Pedro  of,  8. 

BrazSes,  Salados,Cintra,  24, 1  26, 1 38, 15  i. 
Brites,  Dona,  daughter  of  Fernando  i.,  80. 
mother   of    D.   Manoel,   25, 

183  «. 
Buchanan,  George,  19S  n. 
Bugimaa,  j  16,  168  «. 
Burgos,  90. 
Burgundy,  Count  Henry  of,  6,  37,  41,  42, 

114,  117. 

Isabel,  Duchess  of,  11,  98  «.,  1 20. 

Bussaco,  271. 


Cabral,  Pedro  Alvares,   8,   101,  144,  15S, 

170,  206. 
Caldas  da  Rainha,  27,  146,  147. 
Gales,  6. 
Calicut,  Portuguese  at,  8,  144,  157,  158, 

183. 
Calixtus  III.,  Pope,  161. 
Camikra,  Luis  Gonsalves  de,  243. 
Caminha,   27,   109,    iio,    136,    137,   218, 

220. 
Cantabrian  Mountain.^  1,  5. 
Cantanhede,  215  >i. 
Canterbury  Cathedral,  82. 
Canton,  Portuguese  at,  144. 


Cao,  Diogo,  143. 

Cardiga,  229. 

Carlos,  Frey,  painter,  12. 

Carnide,  Pero  de,  149. 

Carreira,  house  of  Viscondc  de,  254. 

Carrciro,  Pero,  212. 

Carta,  Diogo  da,  192. 

Carvalho,  Pero,  229. 

Castello  Branco,  Cardinal  AfTonso  de,  1 9, 

20,  140,  250. 
Castile,  5,  6,  7,  44,  80. 

Constance  of,  So,  81. 

Castilho,  Diogo  de,  18S,  196,  198,  199. 

Joao  de,  22,  28,  72,  162,  164-166, 

169,  171,  172,  184,  195,  196,  199,  200, 
212,  222-239. 

Maria  de,  162. 

Castro  de  Avelans,  58. 

Guiomar  de,  213,  215. 

Inez  de,  38,  62,  76-78,  88. 

Isabel  de,  102. 

Castro-Marini,  161. 

Catalufia,  5,  262. 

Catharina,  queen  of  Joao  in.,  240,  243. 

Cavado,  river,  29. 

Cellas,  70. 

Ceras,  55. 

Cetobriga,  2,  4. 

Ceuta,  88,  100,  101,  262. 

Ceylon,  loss  of,  244. 

Chambers,  269. 

Chantranez,  Nicolas.   See  Nicolas,  Master. 

Chelb.     See  Silves. 

Chillenden,  Prior,  82. 

Chimneys,  270. 

China,  Portuguese  in,  15S. 

Christo  de  la  Luz,  1 16. 

Churriguera,  269. 

Cintra,   21,    22,   23,    28,   1 16-128,    130, 

136-138,  148,  184,  215,  216. 
Citania,  2,  3. 
Clairvaux,  59,  60. 
Claustro  Real,  Bataiha,  1 78-1  So. 
Clement  v.,  Pope,  161. 
Coca,  in  Spain,  1S3. 
Cochin,  Portuguese  in,  15S. 
Cogominho,  Pedro  Esteves,  94. 
Coimbra,  i6,  17,  19,  30,  40,  44,  79,  80, 

109,  184,  239,  244. 

Archdeacon  Joao  de,  1 14. 

Carino,  2^2. 

County  of,  6. 

Episcopal  palace,  250. 

Graija,  252. 

Misericordia,  140,  250. 

Pedro,  Duke  of,  88,  101. 

Sjo  Bento,  252. 

Sao  Domingos,  251. 

Sao  Thomaz,  237. 

Sta.  Clara,  72.     New,  259. 


INDEX 


275 


Colmbra,  Sta.  Cruz,  12,  13,  20,  151,  153, 
160,  188,  192,  196-200,  214,  215,  234, 
258. 

St  Nova,  248,  253,  259. 

ScVelha,  19,  23,  41,  45,  49-51,  54. 

62,  63,  71,  110,  206-210,  251,  270. 

University,  59,  141,  153,  198,  268. 

Columbus,  Christopher,  8,  143. 

Condeixa,  2,  3. 

Visconde  de,  89. 

Conimbriga,  2,  3. 

Conselbo,  Sala  do,  Cintra,  24,  121. 

Cordeiro,  Johan,  149. 

Cordoba,  1 16. 

Coro,  the,  Thomar,  1 61-170. 

Coiitiiiho,  Beatriz,  loi. 

Cralo,  Prior  of,  244. 

Cuiiha,  Jo5o  Louren^o  da,  74  «. 

TristSo  da,  170. 

Cyprus,  89. 

Cysnes,  Sala  dc.     See  Swan  Hall. 

D 
Dartmouth,  44. 
David,  Gerhard,  1  2. 
Delhi,  Old,  Kutub  at,  176. 
Diana,  Pateo  de,  Cintra,  24,  125. 
Diaz,  Bartholomeu,  143,  170. 
Diniz,  Dom,   King,  7,  59,   62,  69,  72, 
117,  161,  167,  223. 

son  of  Inez  de  Castro,  79. 

Diogo,  Duke  of  Vizen,  143,  161. 

D'ipri,  Jolo,  49,  287. 

Diu,  158. 

Domingues,  AfFonso,  71,  82,  90. 

Domingo,  71,  82. 

Douro,  river,  1,  2,  5,  6,  44,  256. 
Dralia,  Johannes,  13. 
Duarte,  Dom,  88,  91,  101,  122,  171,  172. 
Durando,  Bishop  of  Evora,  51,  54. 
Diirer,  Albert,  1  1. 


Eannes,  Afibnso,  98. 

Diogo,  109. 

Gon^alo,  98. 

Rodrigo,  98. 

Earthquake  at  Lisbon,  8,  98,   192,  267, 

268. 
Ebro,  river,  5. 

Eduard,  Felipe,  239.     See  t'duarte. 
Ega,  117. 

Egas  Moniz,  7,  38,  39,4"- 
Eja,_32. 

EI-Kasar-el-Kebir,  244. 
Elsden,  William,  60. 
Elvas,  28,  I  52,  236, 
English  influence,  supposed,  82-92. 
Entre  Minho  c  Douro,  29,  30. 


Escorial,  the,  247,  263-266. 

Escudos,  Sala  dos.    See  Sala  dos  BrazOcs. 

Espinheiro,  12. 

Essex,  Earl  of,  68. 

Esta^o,  Gaspar,  95  «. 

Esteves,  Pedro,  94 

Estrella,  Serra  d",  1. 

Estremadura,  1,  2,  64. 

Estremoz,  219. 

Eugenius  iv.,  Pope,  161. 

Evora,  2,  9/;.,  12,  51,  129,  143,  183,  198, 

241. 

Cartuxa,  255. 

Femao  d",  92. 

Gra^a,  242. 

Henrique,  Archbishop  of,  14,  20. 

Monte,  9. 

Morgado  de  Cordovis,  132. 

Pa^os  Reaes,  132. 

Resende,  House  of,  146,  14S,  179. 

SSo  Braz,  135. 

Sjo  Doniingos,  219. 

Sao  Francisco,  134,  163. 

Sc,  17,  19,  30,  51-55,  62,  64,  71,  72, 

89,  192,  260,  262,  267. 

Temple,  4. 

University,  243. 

Eyck,  J.  van,  1  1. 


FamilicSo,  32. 
Faro,  68  «.,  237. 
Felix,  the  goldsmith,  18. 
Fenacho,  Jo!lo,  1 54. 
Fernandes,  Antonius,  200. 

Diogo,  159. 

Louren^o,  184. 

Matheus,  sen.,  171,  172,  175,  zoo, 

222,  230. 
Matheus,  jun.,  171,  175,  17S,  179, 

200,  222,  230. 

Thomas,  159. 

Vasco,  1  2. 

Ferdinand    and     Isabella    (the    Catholic 

king),  87,  144,  1S9. 
Fernando  1.  of  Castile  and  Leon,  5,  6,  44, 

47- 

I.,  Dom,  7,  74,  76,  78,  79. 

son  of  JoJo  1.,  88. 

Dom  Duarte,  161. 

Figueira  de  Foz,  212. 

Figuercdo,  Cliristovlo  de,  198,  200,  201. 

Flanders,  Isabel  of.  See  Burgundy,  Duch- 
ess of. 

Fontenay,  59,  71. 

Fontfroide,  7 1 . 

Fumess,  59. 

Fimchal,  in  Madeira,  67,  no,  ij6,  IJ7, 
192,  Z06,  111. 


276        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Galicia,  2,  5,  6,  7,  29,  42,  44,  67. 
GaiTia,  Vasco  da,  S,  125,  143,  144,  157, 

170,  183,  1S5,  188,  195,  206. 
Gandara,  32. 

Garcia,  King  of  Galicia,  6. 
Gata,  Sierra  de,  i. 
Gaunt,  John  of,  80,  81. 

Philippa,  ilaiigliter  of.     See 

Lancaster,  Philippa  of. 

Gerez,  the,  i,  3,  29. 

Gilberto,  Bishop.     See  Hastings,  Gilbert 

of. 
Giraldo,  SSo,  i  8. 

Giiistiniani,  San  Lorenzo,  28,  133. 
Goa  (India),  20,  144,  158,  200,  234//. 
Goes,  219. 

•  Damiao  de,  11,  145. 

GollegS,  ^51,  152,  153. 
Gomes,  Gon(;alo,  149. 
Gonsalves,  Andre,  149. 

Eytor,  198. 

Goth,  Bertrand  de.     See  Clement  v. 

Granada,  116,  161. 

Guadiana,  river,  1. 

Guarda,  33,  61  «.,  62,  95-99,  151,  23S. 

Fernando,  Duke  of,  14. 

Guadelete,  5. 

Guimaraes,  2,  3,  7,  17,  18,  19,  20,  31,  38, 

41,  42,   63,   65,  70,   80,  93,  94,  103, 

127,  269. 

Duarte,  Dulce  of,  14,  244,  261. 

Gujerat,  159,  183. 

Guntino,  Abbot,  73. 

Guzman,  Beatriz  de,  68.      See   Beatriz, 

Queen  of  AtFonso  III. 
■ Luisa,  (^ueen  of  Joao  iv.,  261. 

H 

Haro,  Dona  Mencia  de,  67, 
Hastings,  Gilbert  of,  45,  55. 
Haupt,  Albrecht,  82,  85,  130,  159,  176, 

177,  183. 
Henares,  Alcahi  de,  234. 
Henriques,  Francisco,  135. 
Henry,   Cardinal   King,    14,   20,   59,  72, 

144,  222,  223,  241-244,  261. 

Prince,    the    Navigator,     Duke  of 

Vizen,  8,  70,   88,   102,   103,  161,  169, 
170,  183,  188,  195. 

vn.  of  England,  166. 

Herculano,  1  85. 

Herrera,  247. 

Hollanda,  Antonio  de,  16,  17. 

Francisco  de,  17. 

Holy  Constable.     See  Pereira,  Nuno  Al- 

vares. 
Huguet  (Ouguet,or  Huet),  82,  90,  91,  98, 

178. 


I 

Idacius,  4. 

Idanlia  a  Veiha,  57. 

India,  66,  144,  159,  243. 

Indian  influence,  supposed,  159,  183. 

Inquisition,  the,  222,  248. 

Isabel,  St.,  Queen,  19,20,72,  117,  260. 

Queen  of  D.  Manoel,  87,  144,  189. 

(^uecn  of  Charles  v.,  14,  244. 

Italian  influence,  219. 


Jantar,  Sala  de,  Cintra,  24,  123. 

Japan,  Portuguese  in,  158. 

Jeronymo,  203. 

Jews,  expulsion  of  the,  144. 

JoSo  I.,  I,  8,  II,  18,  23,  24,  42,  80,  8i, 

84,  88,  93,  95,  101,  117,  122,  123,  178, 

244. 
II.,  8,  25,  92,  97,  93,  130,  131,  143, 

144,  161,  171,  176,  179,  181. 

I"-.    '7,   95.    162.    '85.   •9''.    '98, 

216,  218,  219,  221,  222,  224,  225, 
236,  242,  243,  248,  251,  256. 

IV.,  59,  261,  262. 

v.,  262,  263,  267. 

Dom,  son  of  Inez  de  Castro,  79,  So. 

— — son  of  Jo5o  I.,  88. 

John,  Don,  of  Austria,  son  of  Philip  of 
Spain,  262. 

John  XXII.,  Pope,  161. 

Jos#,  Dom,  267. 

Junot,  Marshal,  8. 

Justi,  12,  13. 


Lagos,  SSo  Sebastiio  at,  219. 
Lagrimas,  Quinta  das,  76. 
Lamego,  4,  9  «.,  44,  1 11,  237. 
Lancaster,   Philippa   of.    Si,    84,  88,  89, 

100,  122. 
Le^a  do  Balio,  41,  42  «.,  63,  67,  73,  74, 

Leiria,  33,  69,  260. 

Leyre,  S.  Salvador  de,  35  «. 

Lemos  family,  219. 

Leo  X.,  Pope,  122. 

Leon,  1,  2,  5,  6,  7,  29,  44,  80. 

Leonor,  Queen  of  JoSo  11.,  146,  153,  171. 

Queen  of  D.  Manoel,  14,  189. 

Lerma,  Duque  de,  261. 
Lima,  river,  29. 
Lis,  river,  69. 

Lisbon,  6,  9,  65,  157,  158,  159,  192,227, 
251,  261,  267. 

Ajuda  Palace,  26S. 

Carmo,  98,  99,  206. 

Museum,  78,  99. 


INDEX 


277 


Lisbon  Catliedral,  58,  45-47,  49,  50,  52, 

54,  6'  «•,  7>,  72.  74.  27'- 

Concei^ao  Vclha,  195. 

Estrella,  268. 

Madre  lie  Deus,  26,  153,  155,   156. 

Necessidades,  Palace,  268. 

SJo  Bento,  253. 

Sao  Koque,  26,  242,  244,  245,  26S. 

Sao  Vicente  de  Fora,  241,  245,  247, 

253,257,268. 
house  of  Conde  de,  236. 

Santo  AntSo,  245,   247-248,   249, 

250. 

Sta.  Maria  do  Desterro,  245,  248. 

Torre  do  Tombo,  226  «. 

TorrcSo  do  Pa^o,  248. 

University,  24S. 

Attonso,  Archbisliop  of,  14. 

Lobo,  Diogo,  BarSo  d'Alvito,  131. 
Lobos,  Ruy  de  Villa,  75. 
Loches,  St.  Ours,  126. 
Lopez,  JoSo,  254-255. 
Lorvao,  20,  237. 
Longuim,  202. 

Louren^o,  Grcgorio,  196,  197,  198,  201, 
202. 

Thereza,  76,  80. 

Louza,  io«.,  219. 
Loyos,  the,  99,  133,  260. 
Ludovici,  Frederic,  263,  267. 
Lupiana,  Spain,  234//. 
Lusitania,  1,  4. 

M 

Madrid,  10,  261. 

Mafamedc,  1 16,  168. 

Mafra,  52,  260,  262,  263,  268. 

Malabar  Coast,  157. 

Malacca,  158. 

Manoel,  Dom,  11,  12,  14,  20,  24,  26,  54, 
56,  71,  S3,  87,  95,  97,  104,  105,  loS- 
III,  117-119,  144,  157,  159,  162-169, 
171-172,  189,  196,  198,  199,  205,216, 

2  18,   222,   244. 

Manuel,  Jorge,  226  «. 
Marao  Mts.,  i,  29. 
Marccana,  217. 
Maria  i.,  119,  121. 

II.,  da  Gloria,  8,  256,  270. 

Queen  ot  Dom  Manoel,  144,  189. 

Massena,  General,  180. 

Matsys,  Quentin,  1  3. 

Mattos,  Francisco  de,  22,  26,  28,  245  n. 

Mazagao,  Morocco,  227,  231. 

Meca,  Terreiro  da,  125,  127. 

Mecca,  158. 

Medina  del  Campo,  Spain,  185. 

Sidonia,  Duke  ot,  261. 

Mcllo,  family.  219. 


Mello,  Ro<lrigo  Aftonso  de,  133,  134. 

Melrose,  59. 

Mendes,  Hermengildo,  Count  of  Tuy  and 

Porto,  41. 
Mencndes,  Geda,  iS. 
Menezes,  Britcs  de,  212-215. 

Duarte  uc,  57,  101,  102. 

Fernao  Telles  de,  213. 

Dona  Leonor  Telles  de,  74  «.,  79. 

Leonor  de,  daughter  of  D.  Pedro, 

100. 

Pedro  de,  100,  101. 

Merida,  4. 

Mertola,  1 16. 

Miguel,  Dom,  8,  182,  256,  270. 

Prince,  son  of  D.  Manoel,  144. 

— —  bishop  ot  Coinibra,  1 8,  47,  48. 
Minho,  river,  1,  64,  109. 
Miranda  de  Douro,  241. 
Moissac,  72. 

Moncorvo,  220. 

Mondego,  river,  5,  30,  44,  73,  212,  251, 

259- 
Montenior-o-Velho,  217. 
Montijo,  battle  of,  262. 
Morocco,  5,  21,  55,  88,  100,   121,   143, 

171. 
Mulay-Aliined,  243. 
Mumadona,  Countess  of  Tuy  and  Porto, 

+'•  . 

Mufioz,  assistant  of  Olivel  ot  Ghent,  163. 

Murillo,  10. 

Mur(;a,  Diogo  de,  252. 

Murphy,  J.,  90«.,  177. 

N 

Nabantia.     See  Thomar. 
Nabao,  river,  66,  234. 
Napier,  Captain  Charles,  9. 
Nassau,  Maurice  of,  262. 
Navarre,  5,  35  n. 

Nicolas,  Master,  164,  1S4,  196,  198,  199, 
200,  215,  216,  21S,  221,  222,  223,  238, 

239- 

v..  Pope,  161. 

Noronha,  Bishop  Manoel,  237. 
Noya,  254  «. 


[   Oliva,  Antonio  ab,  28. 

1   Olivares,  Conde,  Duque  de,  261. 

1   Olivel  of  Ghent,  135,  163. 

Oporto,  6,  9,  22,  41,  73,  So. 

Cathedral,  37,  39,  71,  72. 

Ccdofeita,  5,  32. 

Collegio  Novo,  249,  259. 

Hospital  and  Factor)',  269, 

Miscricordia,  13,  19. 


278 


PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Oporto,  Nossa  Scniiurs  ila  Sena  do  Pilar, 
256-8. 

Quiiita  do  Freixo,  269. 

Sao  Bcnto,  253. 

Sao  Francisco,  63. 

Torre  dos  Clcrigos,  268. 

Order  of  Christ,  the.     Sec  Thomar. 
Orensc,  in  Galicia,  6,  66«.,  254. 
Orimiz,  Portuguese  in,  144,  158. 
Ouguet.     See  Huguet. 
Oureni,  Count  of,  100. 
Ourique,  7,  51. 
Ovidio,  Archbishop,  ig. 


Pacheco,  Lopo  Fernandes,  75. 

Maria  Rodrigues,  75. 

Pa^o  de  Souza,  jS,  40. 

Paes,  Gualdiin,  55,  56,  66,  1 17,  160,  167. 

Palmella,  28,  62. 

Pax  Juha,  the.     See  Beja. 

Payo,  Bishop,  of  Evora,  51  /;. 

Pedro  I.,  62,  76,  77,  79,  SS. 

II.,  25. 

III.,  269. 

son  of  Joao  I.,  Duke  of  Coimbra,  88. 

the  Cruel,  Constance,  daughter  of, 

80. 
Pegas,  Sala  das,  Cintra,  24,  122,  145,  152. 
Pekin,  Portuguese  in,  144. 
Pelayo,  Don,  5. 
Penafiel,  Constanta  de,  76. 
Penha  Longa,  236-237. 

Verde,  236. 

Pereira,  Nuno  Alvares,  11,  98. 

Pero  Pinheiro,  266. 

Persia,  124. 

Philip  I.  and  u.,  7,  14,  144,  222,  240-244, 

261,  263. 

III.  and  IV.,  261. 

Philippe  le  Bel,  161. 

Pimentel,  Frei  Estevao  Vasques,  73. 

Pinhal,  80. 

Pinheiro,  Diogo,  Bishop  of  Funchal,  211, 

212. 
Pires,  Marcos,  153,  196-19S,  200. 
Po,  Fernando,  143. 
Pombal,  Marques  de,  8,   122,   151,   195, 

243,  267. 
Pombeiro,  39,  40,  62. 
Ponza,  Carlos  de.     See  Captain  Napier,  9. 
Pontigny,  60. 
Portalegre,  219,  260. 
Ptolomeu,  Master,  18,  4S  n. 

Q 

Queluz,  269. 

Quintal,  Ayres  do,  166,  16S,  169. 


Rabat,  minaret  at,  168  «.,  180. 
Raczynski,  Count,  11,  13,  160  //.,  214. 
Raimundts,  Alfonso.     Sec  Alfonso  VII. 
Kanulph,  Abbot,  59. 
Kates,  Sio  Pedro  de,  3,  34,  36. 
Raymond,  Count  of  Toulouse,  6. 
Resendc,  Garcia  de,  146,  179,  181,  183. 
Restello,  Nossa  Senhoia  do,  183. 
Rio  Mau,  SSo  Christovao  do,  34. 
Robbia,  della,  26,  176  n. 
Robert,  Master,  49,  50. 
Roderick,  King,  5. 
Rodrigues,  Alvaro,  162. 

Jo5o,  171. 

Jorge,  255. 

Justa,  13,  147,  184. 

Roh\a,  battle  of,  62  n. 
Romans  in  Portugal,  2,  3,  4. 
Rome,  embassy  to,  15 14,  183. 
Rouen,  Jean  de.     See  next. 
Ruao,  Jo5o  de,  192,  202-205,  2'5>  -'^ 
238,  239. 


Sabrosa,  3. 

Salamanca,  54. 

Saldanha,  Manoel  de,  141. 

Sancha,  Dona,  64,  70. 

Sancho,  King  of  Castile,  6. 

Sancho  i.,  7,  51,  52,  59,  64,  95,  197. 

II.,  64,  67. 

Sansovino,  Andrea  da, 

198,  214. 
Sao  Marcos,  177,  184, 
Theotonio,  196. 

Thiago  d'Antas, 

Torquato,  iS,  33, 

Santa  Cruz.     See  Coimbra 

Maria  da  Victoria.     See  Batalha. 

Santarem,  6,  44,  55,  56,  229. 

Gra^a,  53,  100,  104,  105,  211,  212. 

Marvilla,  27,  152,  153,  156,  235. 

Milagre,  234. 

Sao  Francisco,  57,  65,  67,  7S,  83. 

Sao   Joao  de  Alporao,  56-57,   63, 

64,  lOI. 
Sta.  Clara,  2  3  8. 

Frey  Martmho  de,  101. 

Santiago,  36,  45,  47,  72,  254. 
Santos,  227  ». 

Santo  Thyrso,  70,  103. 
Sash  windows,  270. 
Savoy,  Margaret  of,  261. 
Schomberg,  Marshal,  262 
Sebastiao,  Dom,  100,  121, 
Sem  Pax'or,  Giraldo,  51. 
Sempre  Noiva,  123,  133 


:5>  '3°.  '44.  '64. 
85,  21 1-216. 

32- 
94- 


185,  240-244. 
.46. 


INDEX 


279 


Sereias,  Sala  das,  Ciiitra,  24,  122. 

Sesnando,  Count,  5,  47. 

Setubal,  2,  4,  13,  147,  148,  154-156,  184. 

Seville,  42,  116,  157,  197. 

Silvas,  the  da,  211-21  5. 

Silva,  Ayres  Gomes  da,  212,  213. 

Miguel  da.  Bishop  of  Vizeu,  236. 

Diogo  da,  213,  217. 

JoSo  da,  213,  2 1 S. 

Louren^o  da,  213,  216,  217. 

Silveira  family,  219. 

Silves,  63,  67,  68,  1 16. 

SimSo,  203. 

Sodre,  Vicente,  158 

Soeire,  4S. 

Soult,  Marshal,  17,  256. 

Soure,  55. 

Souza,  Diogo  dc.  Archbishop  of  Braga, 

19,  113. 

Gil  dc,  21  3. 

Sta.  Maria  a  Veiha,  59. 

St.  James,  3. 

St.  Vincent,  Cape,  battle  of,  9. 

Suevi,  2,  4,  5,  32. 

Swan    Hall,   the,   Cintra,   24,    119,    120, 

>37- 


Taipas,  3. 

Tagus,  river,  i,  2,  5,  6,  7,  30,  51,  72  «., 
129,  144,  261. 

Tangier,  243. 

Tarragona,  37,  55. 

Tavira,  219,  236. 

Telles,  Maria,  79. 

Templars,  the,  55,  117,  160,  161. 

Tcntugal,  212. 

Terzi,  Filippo,  241,  242,  243,  244-253, 
258,  260. 

Tetuan,  in  Morocco,  21. 

Theodomir,  Suevic  King,  5,  32. 

Theotonio,  Archbishop  ot  Evora,  255. 

Theresa,  Dona,  wife  of  Henry  of  Bur- 
gundy, 6,  37,  114. 

Thomar,  56,  116,  222,  244,  261. 

Convent  of  the  Order  of  Christ,  12, 

17,  28,  50,  51,  55,  70,  103,  151,  157- 
170,  194,  2o6,  224-230,  240,  250,  255, 
160. 

Concci(;Jo,  231-234,  242. 

Nossa  Senhora  <lo    Olival,    63,    66, 

68,  73.  74  "•.  ='  "• 

S3o  Jolo  Baplista,  13,  105. 

Tinouco,  JoSo  Nunes,  242,  247. 
Toledo,  6,  37,  48,  58,  116. 

Juan  Garcia  de,  42,  93,  94. 

Torralva,  Diogo  de,  185,  226,  240-243, 

250. 
Torre  de  Miirta,  1 1 7. 


Torre  dc  SSo  Vicente.     See  Belem. 
Torres,  Pero  de,  149. 

Pedro  Femandes  de,  241. 

Vedras,  267. 

Toulouse,  St.  Semin  at,  36,  45,  47. 

Trancoso,  33. 

Trava,  Fernando  Peres  de,  6,  7. 

Traz  OS  Montcs,  i,  29,  220. 

Trofa,  near  Agueda,  219,  220. 

Troya,  3. 

Tua,  river,  2. 

Turianno,  242. 

Tuy,  6,  41. 


U 


Urraca,    Queen  of  Castile  and  Leon,   6, 
4>- 

Queen  of  AfFonso  11.,  11,  65. 

Uduarte,  Philipo,  202. 


Vagos,  Lords.     See  the  da  Silvas,  211. 

Valladolid,  247. 

Vandals,  the,  4. 

Varziella,  215  «. 

Vasari,  130. 

Vasco,  GrSo,  11,  12,  14,  112,201. 

Vasconcellos,  Senhora  de,  174. 

Vasquez,  Master,  91. 

Vaz,  Leonardo,  1S5. 

Velasquez,  10. 

Vianna  d'Alemtejo,  135. 

do  Castello,  254. 

Vicente,  family  of  goldsmiths,  20. 

JoSo,  99. 

Vigo,  9. 

Viegas,  Godinho,  34. 

Vilhegas,    Diogo    Ortiz    de.    Bishop    of 

Vizeu,  16,  III. 
Vilhelmus,  Doftus,  27. 
Vilhena,  Antonia  de,  213,  216. 

Henrique  de,  1 17. 

Maria  de,  213. 

Villa  do  Conde,  29  «.,  63,  106-ioS,  109, 

136,  141,  142. 

da  Feira,  127,  12S. 

nova  de  Gaya,  256-258. 

Villa  Vi<;os.n,  202. 

Villar  de  Frades,  34-36,  99. 

Villarinho,  31. 

Vimaranes,  41. 

Visigoths  I,  4,  5- 

Viterbo,    San    .Martinu   al   C'iinino,  near 

60  n. 
Vizeu,  II,  14,  16,  44,  III,  112,  143,  161, 

206,  236,  237. 
Diogo,  Duke  ot,  143,  161. 


28o        PORTUGUESE  ARCHITECTURE 


Vizclla,  31 . 

V'limer,  Master,  49,  1 10,  207. 

Vouga,  river,  29. 


W 

Walls,  palace  of,  117. 

Wellin^on,   Duke    of,    61,    77  ».,    2+1, 

256.' 
Windsor,  Treaty  ot,  13S6,  80. 


Y 

Yakub,  Einir  of  Morocco,  51,  56. 
Yokes,  OK,  29  «. 
Ypres,  John  of.     See  D'ipri. 
Yusiif,  Emir  of  Morocco,  51. 


Zalaca,  battle  of,  6. 
Zezere,  river,  23+. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


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