Portuguese Architecture Part 29

The same bishop also built the sacristy of the old cathedral. Entered by a pa.s.sage from the south transept, and 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.

[Sidenote: Coimbra, So Domingos.]

The oldest seems to be the church of So Domingos, founded by the dukes of Aveiro, but never finished. Only 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. Here, in the chancel the pilasters and 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 So 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.

[Sidenote: Coimbra, Carmo.]

Almost opposite So 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.

[Sidenote: Coimbra, Graca.]

Almost exactly the same is the Graca church next door, both very plain and almost devoid of interest outside.

[Sidenote: So Bento.]

Equally plain is the unfinished front of the church of So Bento up on the hill near the botanical gardens. It was designed by Baltazar Alvares for Dom Diogo de Murca, 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 porch is entered by three arches, one in the middle wider and higher than the others. Above are three niches with sh.e.l.l 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 So 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 Graca, 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 So 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.[165]

[Sidenote: Lisbon, So Bento.]

Baltazar Alvares seems to have been specially employed by the order of St. Benedict, for not only did he build their monasteries at Coimbra but also So Bento, now the Cortes in Lisbon, as well as So Bento da Victoria at Oporto, his greatest and most successful work.

[Sidenote: Oporto, So Bento.]

The plan is practically the same as that of So Bento at 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.

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 his 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.

[Sidenote: Vianna do Castello, Misericordia.]

But before speaking of the basilican and other churches of this time, the Misericordia at Vianna do Castello must be described.[166]

The Misericordia of Vianna stands on the north side of the chief square of the town, and was built in 1589 by one Joo 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 decoration 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 building 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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 97.

VIANNA DO CASTELLO.

MISERICORDIA.]

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 distinctly rude, and yet it is eminently picturesque and original, and shows that Lopez was a skilled designer if but a poor sculptor.

[Sidenote: Beja, So Thiago.]

Coming now to the basilican churches. That of So Thiago at Beja was begun in 1590 by Jorge Rodrigues for 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.

[Sidenote: Azeito, So Simo.]

Much the same plan had been followed a little earlier by Affonso de Albuquerque, son of the great viceroy of India, when about 1570 he built the church of So Simo close to his country house of Bacalhoa, at Azeito not far from Setubal. So Simo 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 practically the same as those in the parish church of Alvito.

[Sidenote: Evora, Cartuxa.]

Another basilican church of this date is that of the Cartuxa or Charter House,[167] founded by the same Archbishop Theotonio in 1587, a few miles out of Evora. 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 Claustro dos Filippes at Thomar, with round arches separated by two Doric columns on pedestals, but with a continuous entablature 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 Ionic columns, two on each side, with niches between. Single Ionic columns also stand at the outer angles of the aisles. In the upper story the central part is carried up to a pediment by 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 bal.u.s.trading to the porch.

[Sidenote: Beja, Misericordia.]

The interior of the Misericordia at Beja, a square, divided into nine smaller vaulted squares by arches resting on fine Corinthian columns, with altar recesses beyond, looks as if it belonged to the time of Dom Joo III., 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.

[Sidenote: Oporto, Nossa Senhora da Serra do Pilar.]

But by far the most original of all the buildings of this later renaissance is the monastery of Nossa Senhora da Serra do 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 running in a narrow gorge, the monastery 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 1540, 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 diameter, surmounted by a dome, and surrounded by eight shallow chapels, of which one contains the entrance and another is 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 masking the offset. The main cornice has two large corbels to each bay, and carries a picturesque bal.u.s.trading 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.