Two of these stand between each chapel, and have very beautiful capitals founded on the Doric but with a long fluted neck ornamented in front by a bunch of crossed arrows and at the corners with acanthus leaves, and with egg and tongue carved on the moulding below the Corinthian abacus. Of the entablature, only the frieze and architrave is broken round the pilasters; for the cornice with its great mutules runs straight round the whole church, supported over the chapels by carving out the triglyphs—of which there is one over each pilaster, and two in the space between each pair of pilasters—so as to form corbels.
Only the pendentives of the dome and the panelled drum remain; the rest was replaced after the earthquake by wooden ceiling pierced with skylights. ([Fig. 94].)
Though so simple—there is no carved ornament except in the beautiful capitals—the interior is one of the most imposing to be seen anywhere, and though not really very large gives a wonderful impression of space and size, being in this respect one of the most successful of classic churches. It is only necessary to compare São Vicente de Fora with the great clumsy cathedral which Herrera had begun to build five years earlier at Valladolid to see how immensely superior Terzi was to his Spanish contemporary. Even in his masterpiece, the church of the Escorial, Herrera did not succeed in giving such spacious greatness, for, though half as large again, the Escorial church is imposing rather from its stupendous weight and from the massiveness of its granite piers than from the beauty of its proportions.
Philip took a great interest in the building of the Escorial, and also had the plans of São Vicente submitted to him in 1590. This plan, signed by him in November 1590, was drawn by João Nunes Tinouco, so that it is possible that Tinouco was the actual designer and not Terzi, but Tinouco was still alive sixty years later when he published a plan of Lisbon, and so must have been very young in 1590. It is probable, therefore, that tradition is right in assigning São Vicente to Terzi, and even if it be actually the work of Tinouco, he has here done little but copy what his master had already done elsewhere.
Lisbon, Santo Antão.
After São Roque the first church begun by Terzi was Santo Antão, now attached to the hospital of São José. Begun in 1579 it was not finished till 1652, only to be destroyed by the earthquake in 1755. As at São Vicente, the west front has a lower order of huge Doric pilasters nearly fifty feet high. There is no porch, but three doors with poor windows above which look as if they had been built after the earthquake.
Unfortunately, nearly all above the lower entablature is gone, but enough is left to show that the upper order was Ionic and very short, and that the towers were to rise behind buttress-like curves descending from the central part to two obelisks placed above the coupled corner pilasters.
The inside was almost exactly like São Vicente, but larger.
Lisbon, Santa Maria do Desterro.
Santa Maria do Desterro was begun later than either of the last two, in 1591. Unlike them the two orders of the west front are short and of almost equal size, Doric below and Ionic above. The arches of the porch reach up to the lower entablature, and the windows above are rather squat; it looks as if there was to have been a third order above, but it is all gone.