Portuguese Architecture

by Walter Crum Watson

These triangular spaces are roofed with elaborate wooden vaults, with carved and gilt ribs leaving spaces painted blue and covered with gilt ornament. Above the cornice the panelling rises perpendicularly for about eleven feet; there being on each cardinal side eight panels, in two rows of four, one above the other, and over each arch four more—forty-eight panels in all. Above this begins an octagonal dome with elaborately carved and gilt mouldings, like those round the panels, in each angle and round the large octagon which comes in the middle of each side. The next stage is similar, but set at a different angle, and with smaller and unequal-sided octagons, while the dome ends in one large flat eight-sided panel forty-five feet above the floor. All the space between the mouldings and the octagons is filled with most elaborate gilt carving on a blue ground. Nor does the decoration stop here, for the whole is a veritable Heralds' College for all the noblest families of Portugal in the early years of the sixteenth century. The large flat panel at the top is filled with the royal arms carved and painted, with a crown above and rich gilt mantling all round. In the eight panels below are the arms of Dom Manoel's eight children, and in the eight large octagons lower down are painted large stags with scrolls between their horns; lastly, in each of the forty-eight panels at the bottom, and of the six spaces which occur under each of the vaults in the four corners; in each of these seventy-two panels or spaces there is painted a stag. Every stag has round its neck a shield charged with the arms of a noble family, between its horns a crest, and behind it a scroll on which is written the name of the family.[101]

The whole of this is of wood, and for beauty and originality of design, as well as for richness of colour, cannot be surpassed anywhere. In any northern country the seven small windows would not let in enough light, and the whole dome would be in darkness, but the sky and air of Portugal are clear enough for every detail to be seen, and for the gold on every moulding and piece of carving to gleam brightly from the blue background.

None of the ceilings of later date are in any way to be compared in beauty or richness with those of these two halls, for in all others the mouldings are shallower and the panels flatter.

Coimbra Misericordia.

In Coimbra there are two, both good examples of a simpler form of such ceilings. They are, one in the Misericordia—the headquarters of a corporation which owns and looks after all the hospitals, asylums and orphanages in the town—and one in the great hall of the University. The Misericordia, built by bishop Affonso de Castello Branco about the end of the sixteenth century, has a good cloister of the later renaissance, and opening off it two rooms of considerable size with panelled ceilings, of which only one has its original painting. A cornice of some size, with brackets projecting from the frieze to carry the upper mouldings, goes round the room, and is carried across the corners so that at the ends of the room the ceiling has one longer and two quite short sides. The lower sloping part of the ceiling all round is divided into square panels with three-sided panels next the squares on the short canted sides; the upper slope is divided in exactly the same way so that the flat centre-piece consists of three squares set diagonally and of four triangles. All the panels are painted with a variety of emblems, but the colours are dark and the ceiling now looks rather dingy.

Sala dos Capellos University.

The great hall of the University built by the rector, Manoel de Saldanha, in 1655 is a very much larger and finer room. A raised seat runs round the whole room, the lower part of the walls are covered with tiles, and the upper with red silk brocade on which hang portraits of all the kings of Portugal, many doubtless as authentic as the early kings of Scotland at Holyrood. Here only the upper part of the cornice is carried across the corners, and the three sides at either end are equal, each being two panels wide.

As in the Misericordia the section of the roof is five-sided, each two panels wide. All the panels are square except at the half-octagonal ends where they diminish in breadth towards the top: they are separated by a large cable moulding and are painted alternately red and blue with an elaborate design in darker colour on each. ([Fig. 51].)