Portuguese Architecture Part 26

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 semicircular 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 false 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 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 Joo 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 Joo employed in the pa.s.sage 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 cla.s.sic details.

Now under the west window of the north aisle there is a small tablet with the following inscription in Portuguese[154]:--'This chapel was erected in A.D. 1572, but profaned in 1810 was restored in 1848 by L. L.

d'Abreu,' etc.

Of course in 1572 Joo 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 Caesar, 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.C. 1572, that is A.D. 1534, just the very time when Joo de Castilho was building the dormitory 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 cla.s.sic style brought from Italy. It seems therefore not unreasonable to claim this as Joo de Castilho's work, and to see in it one of the earliest as well as the most complete example of this form of renaissance architecture, a form which prevailed side by side with the 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 Joo 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 cla.s.sic 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 Joo 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,[155]

but these are not divided into bays by b.u.t.tresses, so it is more likely that they were borrowed from such a cloister as that of Sta. Cruz at Coimbra, where the b.u.t.tresses run up to the roof of the upper story and where the arches of that story are almost flat.

[Sidenote: Santarem, Milagre.]

The 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 Nabo, the Zezere, and the Tagus, came to sh.o.r.e 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 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 bal.u.s.ter 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.

[Sidenote: Santarem, Marvilla.]

Up in the town on the top of the hill the nave of the church of the Marvilla--whose Manoelino door and chancel 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 stately, 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 different 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 bal.u.s.ter, 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, but round and with bal.u.s.ters instead of columns, is the pulpit in the church of Nossa Senhora dos Olivaes at Thomar. (Fig. 89.)

[Sidenote: Elvas, So Domingos.]

The most original in plan as well as in decoration of all the buildings of this time is the church of the nunnery of So 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 interposed thin blocks of stone rounded at the ends.

Like the Conceico at Thomar this too dates from near the end of Dom Joo's reign, having been founded about 1550.

[Sidenote: Cintra, Penha Longa and Penha Verde.]

Capitals very like those in the nave of the Marvilla, but with a ring of leaves instead of flutes, are found in the cloister of the church at Penha Longa near Cintra, and in the little round chapel at Penha Verde not far off, where lies the heart of Dom Joo 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 So 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.

[Sidenote: Vizeu, Cloister.]

Still more 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 coa.r.s.er, 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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 89.

SANTAREM.

CHURCH OF THE MARVILLA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 90.

VIZEU.

CATHEDRAL CLOISTER.]

said to have built it about 1524, but that is an impossibly early date, as even in far less remote places such cla.s.sical 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.)

[Sidenote: Lamego, Cloister.]

A similar but much lower second story was added by Bishop Manoel Noronha[156] 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.[157]

[Sidenote: Coimbra, So Thomaz.]

[Sidenote: Carmo.]

[Sidenote: Cintra, Penha Longa.]

[Sidenote: Faro, So Bento.]

[Sidenote: Lorvo.]

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 b.u.t.tresses between each pair. Such is the cloister of the college of So 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 So 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 horizontal architrave, Ionic capitals, and of So 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 b.u.t.tress is carried right up to the roof of the upper cloister, as it was also at Lorvo near Coimbra. There the arches below are much wider, so that above the number of supports has been doubled.[158]

[Sidenote: Amarante.]

In one of the cloisters of So Goncalvo at Amarante on 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 b.u.t.tresses 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.

[Sidenote: Santarem, Sta. Clara.]

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 b.u.t.tresses wide pilasters, like the columns, Doric below, Ionic above.

[Sidenote: Guarda, Reredos.]

On first seeing the great reredos in the cathedral of Guarda, the tendency is to attribute it to a period but little later than the works of Master Nicolas at So Marcos or of Joo de Ruo 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 Joo III. (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 contemporary, the Guarda reredos being probably the older.[159]

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 So 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.