Portuguese Architecture Part 13

At one end of the town on the slope of the hill stands the castle, and not far off 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 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 Baukunst 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 was the castle which, according to Vasari, was built by Andrea da Sansovino for Dom Joo II. 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 Joo 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 renaissance 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.

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 Baro 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 Joo II. and finished in the time of Dom Manoel, was built by Dom Diogo Lobo, Baro d'Alvito.[97]

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 pa.s.sage leading to the chapel in the westernmost corner, are in any way remarkable except for their windows.

The ceilings of the princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sage--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 s.p.a.ce between each embrasure is far longer than usual; the four corner towers rise a good 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 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.[98]

[Sidenote: Evora.]

[Sidenote: Pacos Reaes.]

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, one round 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 So 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 sc.r.a.ped 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.

[Sidenote: Morgado de Cordovis.]

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 horseshoe 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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 47.

CASTLE, ALVITO.

COURTYARD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 48.

EVORA.

CHAPTER HOUSE DOOR OF SO JOO, EVANGELISTA.]

[Sidenote: Sempre Noiva.]

Portugal, archbishop of Evora, built himself a small country 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 preserved. The plan is simple; a rectangle with a chapel projecting 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 b.u.t.tresses 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.

[Sidenote: So Joo Evangelista, Evora.]

Just to the north of the cathedral of Evora, Rodrigo Affonso de Mello, count of Olivenca, in 1485 founded 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 bra.s.ses--and great tile pictures covering the walls. These give the life of So Lorenzo Giustiniani, patriarch of Venice, and canon of San Giorgio in Alga, where the founder of the 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 1711.'

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 Affonso de Mello on Azila in Morocco.[99] 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 workman to copy the interpenetration of late Gothic. (Fig. 48.)

[Sidenote: So Francisco, Evora.]

Not much need be said here of the church of So Francisco or of the chapel of So Braz, both begun at about the same time. So 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 s.p.a.ce between them and the nave wall. This was probably done to support the main vault, but the result is 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 by Gothic b.u.t.tresses 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 battlements 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.

[Sidenote: So Braz, Evora.]

So Braz stands outside the town near the railway station. 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 b.u.t.tresses 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 b.u.t.tresses 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 So Braz, but with aisles and brick flying b.u.t.tresses at Vianna d'Alemtejo near Alvito.

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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 Olival 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.

[Sidenote: Caminha.]

The roofs at Caminha and at Funchal are rather different. At Caminha the roof is divided into bays of such a size that each of 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce. All these s.p.a.ces 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 cla.s.sic 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.

[Sidenote: Funchal.]