Portuguese Architecture

by Walter Crum Watson

but with smaller curves between the larger, and all elaborately fringed with cuspings and foliage.

Four mouldings altogether are of this shape, two on each side, and beyond them towards the chapel is that arch or moulding which gives to the whole its most distinctive character. The great trefoil, with large cusps, which forms the head is crossed by another moulding in such a way as to become a cinquefoil, while the second moulding, like the hood of the door at Santarem, forms three large reversed cusps, each ending in splendid acanthus leaves. Further, the whole of these mouldings are on the inner side carved with a delicate spiral of ribbon and small balls, and on the outer with the same acanthus that runs up the jambs.

Now, on the chapel side especially, from the base to the springing there is little that might not be found in late French Gothic work, except perhaps that diapered shafts were not then used in France, and that the bands of carving are rather different in spirit from French work; but as for the head, no opening of that size was made in France of so complicated and, it must be added, so unconstructional a shape. It is the chef-d'œuvre of the Manoelino style, and although a foreigner may be inclined at first, from its very strangeness, to call it Eastern, it is really only a true development in the hands of a real artist of what Manoelino was; an expression of Portugal's riches and power, and of the gradual assimilation of such Moors as still remained on this side the Straits. Of course it is easy to say that it is extravagant, overloaded and debased; and so it may be. Yet no one who sees it can help falling a victim to its fascination, for perhaps its only real fault is that the great cusps and finials are on rather too large a scale for the rest. Not even the greatest purist could help admiring the exquisite fineness of the carving—a fineness made possible by the limestone, very soft when new, which gradually hardens and grows to a lovely yellow with exposure to the air. No records tell us so, but considering the difference in style between the upper and the lower part it may perhaps be conjectured that the elder Matheus designed the lower part, and the younger the upper, after his father's death in 1515.

In the great octagon itself the first thing to be done was to build huge piers, which partly encroach on the small sepulchral chapels between the larger apses. These piers now rise nearly to the level of the central aisle of the church where they are cut off unfinished; they must be about 80 or 90 feet in height. On the outer side they are covered with many circular shafts which are banded together by mouldings at nearly regular intervals. Haupt has pointed out that in general appearance they are not unlike the great minar called the Kutub at Old Delhi, and a lively imagination might see a resemblance to the vast piers, once the bases of minars, which flank the great entrance archways of some mosques at Ahmedabad, for example those in the Jumma Musjid. Yet there is no necessity to go so far afield. Manoelino architects had always been fond of bundles of round mouldings and so naturally used them here, nor indeed are the piers at all like either the Kutub or the minars at Ahmedabad. They have not the batter or the sharp angles of the one, nor the innumerable breaks and mouldings of the others.

Between each pier a large window was meant to open, of which unfortunately nothing has been built but part of the jambs.

Inside the vaulting of the apsidal chapels was first finished; all the vaults are elaborate, have well-moulded ribs, and bosses, some carved with crosses of the Order of Christ, some with armillary spheres, others with a cross and the words 'In hoc signo vinces,' or with a sphere and the words 'Espera in Domino.' Where Dom João ii. was to be buried is a pelican vulning herself—for that was his device—and in that intended for his father Dom Affonso v. a 'rodisio' or mill-wheel. A little above the entrance arches to the chapels the octagon is surrounded by two carved string courses separated by a broad plain frieze.[123] On the lower string are the beautifully modelled necks and heads of dragons, springing from acanthus leaves and so set as to form a series of M's, and on the upper an exquisite pattern arranged in squares, while on it rests a most remarkable cresting. In this cresting, which is formed of a single bud set on branches between two coupled buds, the forms are most strange and at the same time beautiful.

Inside, the great piers have been much more highly adorned than without. The vaulting shafts in the middle—which, formed of several small round mouldings, have run up quite plain from the ground, only interrupted by shields and their mantling on the frieze—are here broken and twisted. On either side are niches with Gothic canopies, above which are interlacing leaves and branches. Beyond the niches are the window jambs, on which, next the opening, are shafts carved with naturalistic tree-stems, and between these and the niches two bands of ornament separated by thin plain shafts.

In each opening these bands are different. In some is Gothic foliage, in others semi-classic carving like the string below or realistic like the cresting. In others are naturalistic branches, and in the opening over the chapel where Dom Manoel was to lie are cut the letters M in one hand and R in the other; Manoel Rey. ([Fig. 59].)