This Dom Duarte de Menezes, third count of Viana, was, as an inscription tells, first governor of Alcacer Seguer, which with five hundred soldiers he successfully defended against a hundred thousand Moors, dying at last in the mountains of Bonacofú in defence of his king in 1464.[88]
The monument was built by his widow, Dona Isabel de Castro, but so terribly had Dom Duarte been cut to pieces by the Moors, that only one finger could be found to be buried there.[89] Though much more elaborate, the tomb is not altogether unlike those of the royal princes at Batalha. The count lies, armed, with a sword drawn in his right hand, on an altar-tomb on whose front, between richly traceried panels, are carved an inscription above, upheld by small figures, and below, in the middle a flaming cresset, probably a memorial of his watchfulness in Africa, and on each side a shield.
Surmounting the altar-tomb is a deeply moulded ogee arch subdivided into two hanging arches which spring from a pendant in the middle, while the space between these sub-arches and the ogee above is filled with a canopied carving of the Crucifixion. At about the level of the pendant the open space is crossed by a cusped segmental arch supporting elaborate flowing tracery. The outer sides of the ogee, which ends in a large finial, are enriched with large vine-leaf crockets. On either side of the arch is a square pier, moulded at the angles, and with each face covered with elaborate tracery. Each pier, which ends in a square crocketed and gabled pinnacle, has half-way
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FIG. 39. Santarem Church of the Graça.Tomb of D. Pedro de Menezes. |
FIG. 40. Santarem Tomb of Dom Duarte de Menezes in S. João de Alporão. |
up a small figure standing on an octagonal corbel under an elaborate canopy. The whole at the top is finished with a cornice running straight across from pier to pier, and crested with interlacing and cusped semicircles, while the flat field below the cornice and above the outer moulding of the great arch is covered with flaming cressets. ([Fig. 40].)
This is perhaps one of the finest of the tombs of the fifteenth century, and like those at Alcobaça is made of that very fine limestone which is found in more than one place in Portugal.
At Abrantes.
Farther up the Tagus at Abrantes, in the church of Santa Maria do Castello, are some more tombs of the same date, more than one of which is an almost exact copy of the princes' tombs at Batalha, though there is one whose arch is fringed with curious reversed cusping, almost Moorish in appearance.
Cloister at Thomar.
Before turning to the many churches built towards the end of the fifteenth century, one of the cloisters of the great convent at Thomar must be mentioned. It is that called 'do Cemiterio,' and was built by Prince Henry the Navigator, duke of Vizeu, during his grandmastership of the Order of Christ about the year 1440. Unlike those at Alcobaça or at Lisbon, which were derived from a Cistercian plan, and were always intended to be vaulted, this small cloister followed the plan, handed down from romanesque times, where on each side there is a continuous arcade resting on coupled shafts. Such cloisters, differing only from the romanesque in having pointed arches and capitals carved with fourteenth-century foliage, may still be seen at Santo Thyrso and at São Domingos, Guimarães, in the north. Here at Thomar the only difference is that the arches are very much wider, there being but five on each side, and that the bell-shaped capitals are covered with finely carved conventional vine-leaves arranged in two rows round the bells. As in the older cloisters one long abacus unites the two capitals, but the arches are different, each being moulded as one deep arch instead of two similar arches set side by side.