Portuguese Architecture Part 31

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 at 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 ma.s.s, 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 off 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.

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 ma.s.sive 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 s.p.a.ces 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. 101.)

The whole church measures about 200 feet long by 100 wide, with a nave also 100 feet long. The central aisle is over 40 feet 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 by 40 wide, is remarkable only for the splendid slabs of Brazil wood which form the tables, and for the beautiful bra.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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,

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 100.

MAFRA.

W. FRONT OF PALACE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 101.

MAFRA.

INTERIOR OF CHURCH.]

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 Vedras, 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.

[Sidenote: Evora, Capella Mor.]

Just about the time that Joo V. was beginning his great palace at Mafra, the chapter of the cathedral of Evora came to 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 27,000.

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 Joo V. died in 1750 after a long and prosperous reign. Besides building Mafra he gave great sums of money to the Pope, and obtained in return the division of Lisbon into two bishoprics, and the t.i.tle 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 1st of November, when the population of Lisbon was a.s.sembled 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 ruined, and only So Roque and So Vicente de Fora--which lost its dome--remained to show what manner of churches were built at the end of the sixteenth century.

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 n.o.bles, 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 Praca 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 any of the buildings erected in Portugal since the earthquake; the palaces of the Necessidades and the Ajuda are but great ma.s.ses of pink-washed plaster pierced with endless windows, and without any beauty of detail or of design.

[Sidenote: Lisbon, Estrella.]

Nor does the church of the Coraco de Jesus, usually 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.

[Sidenote: Oporto, Torre dos Clerigos.]

More vicious, indeed, than the Estrella, but much more 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 misuse--of pieces of cla.s.sic detail, forming a whole often more Chinese than Western in appearance, but at the same time not unpicturesque.[171]

[Sidenote: Oporto, Quinta do Freixo.]

A much more pleasing example of the same school--a school doubtless influenced by the bad example of Churriguera 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 walls, 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 sh.e.l.l grottoes of the garden.

[Sidenote: Queluz.]

Though less picturesque and fantastic, the royal palace at Queluz, between Lisbon and Cintra, is another really pleasing example of the more sober rococo. Built by Dom Pedro III. about 1780, the palace is a long building with a low tiled roof, and the gardens are rich in fountains and statues.

[Sidenote: Guimares, Quinta.]

Somewhat similar, but unfinished, and enriched with niches and statues, is a Quinta near the station at Guimares. 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.

[Sidenote: Oporto, Hospital and Factory.]

Much more correct, and it must be said commonplace, are the hospital and the English factory--or club-house--in Oporto. 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 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 only thing, apart from its unfinished condition, which shows that the hospital is not in England, are some colossal figures of 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 anywhere 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 II. 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 were 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 Alcobaca is being, saved from ruin. The Se Velha at Coimbra has been purged--too drastically perhaps--of all the additions and disfigurements 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.