Portuguese Architecture Part 20

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 strapwork pediments line the chapels, and at the entrance to the chancel are two pulpits, for the Gospel and Epistle. These are rather like Joo de Ruo'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 s.p.a.ce 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.[134]

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earlier stalls at Santa Cruz and at Funchal, and the later at Evora, these are almost the only ones left which have not been replaced by rococo extravagances.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. 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 of 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 untraceried 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 b.u.t.tresses 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 pilasters, 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 pilasters either do not quite fit those of the fluted strips behind, or else are cut off against them, as are also the 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 b.u.t.tresses were not quite strong enough for their work, and this too would account for the purely renaissance 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 pleasing 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 b.u.t.tresses 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 disturbed 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 So 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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 66.

BELEM.

CLOISTER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 67.

BELEM.

LOWER CLOISTER.]

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.

[Sidenote: Conceico, Velha.]

There can be little doubt that the transept front of the church of the Conceico Velha was also designed by Joo de Castilho. The church was built after 1520 on the site of a synagogue, and was almost entirely destroyed by the earthquake 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 mouldings 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 near the ground, and that much of the detail is coa.r.s.e. 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 they were driven from the country by the Marques de Pombal.

CHAPTER XIV

THE COMING OF THE FOREIGN ARTISTS

If Joo 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 Joo III.

Yet the earlier work of Joo 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.

[Sidenote: Santa Cruz, Coimbra.]

A great house of the Canon Regular of St. Augustine had been founded at Coimbra by Dom Affonso Henriques for his friend So Theotonio in 1131.

But with the pa.s.sage 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 Lourenco 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 Joo III., 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, polygonal

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 68.

LISBON.

CONCEIcO VELHA.]

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 pa.s.sage from sacristy to cloister behind the chancel.

By 1518 the church must have been already well advanced, for in January of that year Gregorio Lourenco 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 royal palace, now the university at Coimbra, and being older may have had more experience than Marcos Pires, the designer of the monastery--who had it sh.o.r.ed 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.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF STA. CRUZ]

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 of their importance in the history of their country.

In 1521 Dom Manoel died, and next year Gregorio tells his successor what his father had ordered; after speaking of the pavement, the vault of So 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$000 have been paid,' leaving some money still due.