Almost exactly the same is a door in the Franciscan nunnery called Madre de Deus, founded to the east of Lisbon in 1509 by Dona Leonor, the widow of Dom João ii. and sister of Dom Manoel. The only difference is that the shafts at the sides are both twisted, that the pentagon at the top is a good deal larger and has in it the royal arms, and that at the sides are shields, one on the right with the arms of Lisbon—the ship guided by ravens in which St. Vincent's body floated from the east of Spain to the cape called after him—and one on the left with a pelican vulning her breast.[107]
The proportions of this door are rather better than those of the door at Santarem, and it looks less clumsy, but it is impossible to admire either the design or the execution. The fat round outer moulding with its projecting curves and cusps is very unpleasing, the shafts at the sides are singularly purposeless, and the carving is coarse. At Gollegã the design was even more outrageous, but there it was pulled together and made into a not displeasing whole by the square framing.
University Chapel, Coimbra.
What has been since 1540 the university at Coimbra was originally the royal palace, and the master of the works there till the time of his death in 1524 was Marcos Pires, who also planned and carried out most of the great church of Santa Cruz. Probably the university chapel is his work, for the windows are not at all unlike those at Santa Cruz. The door in many ways resembles the three last described, but the detail is smaller and all the proportions better. The door is double with a triple shaft in the middle; the two openings have very flat trefoil heads with a small ogee curve to the central leaf. The jambs have on each side two slender shafts between which there is a delicate twisted branch, and beyond them is a band of finely carved foliage and then another shaft. From these side shafts there springs a large trefoil, encompassing both openings. It is crocketed on the outside and has the two usual ogee cusps or projections on the outer side; but, instead of a large curved pentagon in the middle, the mouldings of the projections and of the trefoil then intertwine and rise up to some height forming a kind of wide-spreading cross with hollow curves between the arms. The arms of the cross end in finials, as do the ogee projections; there is a shield on each side below the cross arms, another crowned and charged with the royal arms above the central shaft, and on one side of it the Cross of the Order of Christ, and on the other an armillary sphere. On either side, as usual, on an octagonal base are tall twisted shafts, with a crown round the base of the twisted pinnacles which rise just to the level of the spreading arms of the cross. Like the door at Santarem the whole would be sprawling and ill-composed but that here the white-wash of the wall comes down only to the arms of the cross, so as to give it—built as it is of grey limestone—a simple square outline, broken only by the upper arm and finial of the cross.
The heads of the two windows, one on either side of the door, are half-irregular octagons with convex sides. They are surrounded by a broad hollow splay framed by thin shafts resting on corbels and bearing a head, a flat ogee in shape, but broken by two hanging points; one of the most common shapes for a Manoelino window. ([Fig. 54].)
One more doorway before ending this chapter, already too long.
São Julião, Setubal.
The parish church of São Julião at Setubal was built during the early years of the sixteenth century, but was so shattered by the great earthquake of 1755 that only two of the doorways survive of the original building. The western is not of much interest, but that on the north—probably the work of João Fenacho who is mentioned as being a well-known carver working at Setubal in 1513—is one of the most elaborate doorways of that period.
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FIG. 53. Santarem. W. Door, Marvilla. |
FIG. 54. Coimbra. University Chapel. |
The northern side of the church is now a featureless expanse of whitewashed plaster, scarcely relieved by a few simple square windows up near the cornice; but near the west end, in almost incongruous contrast, the plainness of the plaster is emphasised by the exuberant mouldings and carving of the door. Though in some features related to the doors at Santarem or the Madre de Deus the door here is much more elaborate and even barbaric, but at the same time, being contained within a simple gable-shaped moulding under a plain round arch, with no sprawling projections, the whole design—as is the case with the university chapel at Coimbra—is much more pleasing, and if the large outer twisted shafts with their ogee trefoiled head had been omitted, would even have been really beautiful.