Altogether the building is most picturesque, the balconies are charming, and the round turrets and the battlements give it a look of strength and at the same time add greatly to its appearance. The general outline, however, is not altogether pleasing owing to the setting back of the top story. ([Fig. 62].)
The detail, however, is most interesting. It is throughout Manoelino, and that too with hardly an admixture of Gothic. There is no naturalism, and hardly any suggestion of the renaissance, and as befits a fort it is without any of the exuberance so common to buildings of this time.
Now here again, as at Thomar and Batalha, Haupt has seen a result of the intercourse with India; both in the balconies and in the turret roofs[128] he sees a likeness to a temple in Gujerat; and it must be admitted that in the example he gives the balconies and roofs are not at all unlike those at Belem. It might further be urged that Garcia de Resende who designed the tower, if he was never in India himself, formed part of Dom Manoel's great embassy to Rome in 1514, when the wonders of the East were displayed before the Pope, that he might easily be familiar with Indian carvings or paintings, and that finally there are no such balconies elsewhere in Portugal. All that may be true, and yet in his own town of Evora there are still many pavilions more like the smaller balconies than are those in India, and it surely did not need very great originality to put such a pavilion on corbels and so give the tower its most distinctive feature. As for the turrets, in Spain there are many, at Medina del Campo or at Coca, which are corbelled out in much the same way, though their roofs are different, and like though the melon-shaped dome of the turrets may be to some in Gujerat, they are more like those at Bacalhôa, and surely some proof of connection between Belem and Gujerat, better than mere likeness, is wanted before the Indian theory can be accepted. That the son of an Indian viceroy should roof his turrets at Bacalhôa with Indian domes might seem natural; but the turrets were certainly built before he bought the Quinta in 1528, and neither they nor the house shows any other trace of Indian influence.
The night of July 7, 1497, the last Vasco da Gama and his captains were to spend on shore before starting on the momentous voyage which ended at Calicut, was passed by them in prayer, in a small chapel built by Prince Henry the Navigator for the use of sailors, and dedicated to Nossa Senhora do Restello.
Two years later he landed again in the Tagus, with a wonderful story of the difficulties overcome and of the vast wealth which he had seen in the East. As a thankoffering Dom Manoel at once determined to found a great monastery for the Order of St. Jerome on the spot where stood Prince Henry's chapel. Little time was lost, and the first stone was laid on April 1 of the next year.
The first architect was that Boutaca who, about ten years before, had built the Jesus Church at Setubal for the king's nurse, Justa Rodrigues, and to him is probably due the plan. Boutaca was succeeded in 1511 by Lourenço Fernandes, who in turn gave place to João de Castilho in 1517[129] or 1522.
It is impossible now to say how much each of these different architects contributed to the building as finished. At Setubal Boutaca had built a church with three vaulted aisles of about the same height. The idea was there carried out very clumsily, but it is quite likely that Belem owes its three aisles of equal height to his initiative even though they were actually carried out by some one else.
Judging also from the style, for the windows show many well-known Manoelino features, while the detail of the great south door is more purely Gothic, they too and the walls may be the work of Boutaca or of Lourenço Fernandes, while the great door is almost certainly that of João de Castilho.
In any case, when João de Castilho came the building was not nearly finished, for in 1522 he received a thousand cruzados towards building columns and the transept vault.[130]
But even more important to the decoration of the building than either Boutaca or João de Castilho was the coming of Master Nicolas, the Frenchman[131] whom we shall see at work at Coimbra and at São Marcos. Belem seems to have been the first place to which he came after leaving home, and we soon find him at work there on the statues of the great south door, and later on those of the west door, where, with the exception of the Italian door at Cintra, is carved what is probably the earliest piece of renaissance detail in the country.