Portuguese Architecture

by Walter Crum Watson

A few miles north of Oporto on the banks of the clear stream of the Leça a monastery for men and women had been founded in 986. In the course of the next hundred years it had several times fallen into decay and been restored, till about the year 1115 when it was handed over to the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem and so became their headquarters in Portugal. The church had been rebuilt by Abbot Guntino some years before the transfer took place, and had in time become ruinous, so that in 1336 it was rebuilt by Dom Frei Estevão Vasques Pimentel, the head of the Order. This church still stands but little altered since the fourteenth century, and though not a large or splendid building it is the most complete and unaltered example of that thoroughly national plan and style which, developed in the previous century, was seen at Thomar and will be seen again in many later examples. The church consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, transepts higher than the side but lower than the centre aisle of the nave, three vaulted apses to the east, and at the south-west corner a square tower. Like many Portuguese buildings Sta. Maria de Leça do Balio looks at first sight a good deal earlier than is really the case. The west and the south doors, which are almost exactly alike, except that the south door is surmounted by a gable, have three shafts on each side with early-looking capitals and plain moulded archivolts, and within these, jambs moulded at the angles bearing an inner order whose flat face is carved with a series of circles enclosing four and five-leaved flowers. Above the west door runs a projecting gallery whose parapet, like all the other parapets of the church, is defended by a close-set row of pointed battlements. Above the gallery is a large rose-window in which twelve spokes radiate from a cusped circle in the middle to the circumference, where the lights so formed are further enriched by cusped semicircles. The aisle and clerestory windows show an unusual attempt to include two lancets into one window by carrying on the outer framing of the window till it meets above the mullion in a kind of pendant arch.[70]

The square tower is exceedingly plain, without string course or buttress to mitigate its severity. Half-way up on the west side is a small window with a battlemented balcony in front projecting out on three great corbels; higher up are plain belfry windows. At the top, square balconies or bartizans project diagonally from the corners; the whole, though there are but three pyramidal battlements on each side, being even more strongly fortified than the rest of the church. Now in the fourteenth century such fortification of a church can hardly have been necessary, and they were probably built rather to show that the church belonged to a military order than with any idea of defence. The inside is less interesting, the pointed arches are rather thin and the capitals poor, the only thing much worthy of notice being the font, belonging to the time of change from Gothic to Renaissance, and given in 1512.[71]

Chancel, Sé, Lisbon.

Of the other buildings of the time of Dom Affonso iv. who succeeded his father Diniz in 1328 the most important

has been the choir of the cathedral at Lisbon; the church had been much injured by an earthquake in 1344 and the whole east end was at once rebuilt on the French plan, otherwise unexampled in Portugal except by the twelfth-century choir at Alcobaça. Unfortunately the later and more terrible earthquake of 1755 so ruined the whole building that of Dom Affonso's work only the surrounding aisle and its chapels remain. The only point which calls for notice is that the chapels are considerably lower than the aisle so as to admit of a window between the chapel arch and the aisle vault. All the chapels have good vaulting and simple two-light windows, and capitals well carved with naturalistic foliage. In one chapel, that of SS. Cosmo and Damião, screened off by a very good early wrought-iron grill, are the tombs of Lopo Fernandes Pacheco and of his second wife Maria Rodrigues. Dona Maria, lying on a stone sarcophagus, which stands on four short columns, and whose sides are adorned with four shields with the arms of her father, Ruy di Villa Lobos, has her head protected by a carved canopy and holds up in her hands an open book which, from her position, she could scarcely hope to read.[72]

Royal tombs, Alcobaça. ([Fig. 31].)

Far more interesting both historically and artistically than these memorials at Lisbon are the royal tombs in the small chapel opening off the south transepts of the abbey church at Alcobaça. This vaulted chapel, two bays deep and three wide, was probably built about the same time as the cloister, and has good clustered piers and well-carved capitals. On the floor stand three large royal tombs and two smaller for royal children, and in deep recesses in the north and south walls, four others. Only the three larger standing clear of the walls call for notice; and of these one is that of Dona Beatriz, the wife of Dom Affonso iii., who died in 1279, the same lady who married Dom Affonso while his wife the countess of Boulogne was still alive. Her tomb, which stands high above the ground on square columns with circular ringed shafts at the corners, was clearly not made for Dona Beatriz herself, but for some one else at least a hundred years before. It is of a white marble, sadly mutilated at one corner by French treasure-seekers, and has on each side a romanesque arcade with an apostle, in quite archaic style, seated under each arch; at the ends are large groups of seated figures, and on the sloping lid Dona Beatriz herself, in very shallow relief, evidently carved out of the old roof-shaped cover, which not being very thick did not admit of any deep cutting. Far richer, indeed more elaborate than almost any other fourteenth-century tombs, are those of Dom Pedro i. who died in 1367, and of Inez de Castro who was murdered in 1355. When only sixteen years old Dom Pedro, to strengthen his father Affonso the Fourth's alliance with Castile, had been married to Dona Costança, daughter of the duke of Penafiel. In her train there came as a lady-in-waiting Dona Inez de Castro, the daughter of the high chamberlain of Castile, and with her Dom Pedro soon fell in love. As long as his wife, who was the mother of King Fernando, lived no one thought much of his connection with Dona Inez, or of that with Dona Thereza Lourenço, whose son afterwards became the great liberator, King João i., but after Dona Costança's death it was soon seen that he loved Dona Inez more than any one had imagined, and he was believed even to have married her. This, and his refusal to accept any of the royal princesses chosen by his father, so enraged Dom Affonso that he determined to have Dona Inez killed, and this was done by three knights on 7th January 1355 in the Quinta das Lagrimas—that is, the Garden of Tears—near Coimbra. Dom Pedro, who was away hunting in the south, would have rebelled against his father, but was persuaded by the queen to submit after he had devastated all the province of Minho. Two years later Dom Affonso died, and after Dom Pedro had caught and tortured to death two of the murderers—the third escaped to Castile—he in 1361 had Dona Inez's body removed from its grave, dressed in the royal robes and crowned, and swearing that he had really married her, he compelled all the court to pay her homage and to kiss her hand: then the body was placed on a bier and carried by night to the place prepared for it at Alcobaça, some seventy miles away. When six years later, in 1367, he came to die himself he left directions that they should be buried with their feet towards one another, that at the resurrection the first thing he should see should be Dona Inez rising from her tomb. Unfortunately the French soldiers in 1810 broke open both tombs, smashing away much fine carved work and scattering their bones.[73] The two tombs are much alike in design and differ only in detail; both rest on four lions; the sides, above a narrow border of sunk quatrefoils, are divided by tiny buttresses rising from behind the gables of small niches into six parts, each of which has an arch under a gable whose tympanum is filled with the most minute tracery. Each of these arches is cusped and foliated differently according to the nature of the figure subject it contains. Behind the tops of the gables and pinnacles of the buttresses runs a small arcade with beautiful little figures only a few inches high: above this a still more delicate arcade runs round the whole tomb, interrupted at regular intervals by shields, charged on Dom Pedro's tomb with the arms of Portugal and on that of Dona Inez with the same and with those of the Castros alternately. At the foot of Dom Pedro's is represented the Crucifixion, and facing it on that of Dona Inez the Last Judgment. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and beauty of the figure sculpture, the drapery is all good, and the smallest heads and hands are worked with a care not to be surpassed in any country. ([Fig. 32].)

On the top of one lies King Pedro with his head to the north, on the other Dona Inez with hers to the south; both are life size and are as well wrought as are the smaller details below. Both have on each side three angels who seem to be just about to lift them from where they lie or to have just laid them down. These angels, especially those near Dom Pedro's head, are perhaps the finest parts of either tomb, with their beautiful drapery, their well-modelled wings, and above all with the outstretching of their arms towards the king and Dona Inez. There seems to be no record as to who worked or designed these tombs, but there can be little or no doubt that he was a Frenchman, the whole feeling, alike of the architectural detail and the figures themselves, is absolutely French; there had been no previous figure sculpture in the country in any way good enough to lead up to the skill in design and in execution here shown, nor, with regard to the mere architectural detail, had Gothic tracery and ornament yet been sufficiently developed for a native workman to have invented the elaborate cuspings, mouldings, and other enrichments which make both tombs so pre-eminent above all that came before them.[74] These tombs, as indeed the whole church, as well as the neighbouring convent of Batalha, are constructed of a wonderfully fine limestone, which seems to be practically the same as Caen Stone, and which, soft and easy to cut when first quarried, grows harder with exposure and in time, when not in a too shady or damp position, where it gets black, takes on a most beautiful rich yellow colour.