Portuguese Architecture

by Walter Crum Watson

The south door, except for a band of carving round each entrance, is free of renaissance detail, and so was probably built before Nicolas added the statues, but in the western a few such details begin to appear, and in these, as in the band round the other openings, he may have had a hand. Inside renaissance detail is more in evidence, but since the great piers would not be carved till after they were built, it is more likely that the renaissance work there is due to João de Castilho himself and to what he had learned either from Nicolas or

FIG. 62. Torre de São Vicente. Belem.

FIG. 63. Belem Sacristy.

from the growing influence of the Coimbra School. It is, of course, also possible that when Nicolas went to Coimbra, where he was already at work in 1524, some French assistant may have stayed behind, yet the carving on the piers is rather coarser than in most French work, and so was more probably done by Portuguese working under Castilho's direction.

The monastic buildings were begun after the church; but although at first renaissance forms seem supreme in the cloisters, closer inspection will show that they are practically confined to the carving on the buttresses and on the parapets of the arches thrown across from buttress to buttress. All the rest, except the door of the chapter-house—the refectory, undertaken by Leonardo Vaz, the chapter-house itself, and the great undercroft of the dormitory stretching 607 feet away opposite the west door, and scarcely begun in 1521, are purely Manoelino, so that the date 1544 on the lower cloister must refer to the finishing of the renaissance additions and not to the actual building, especially as the upper cloister is even more completely Gothic than the lower.

The sacristy, adjoining the north transept, must have been one of the last parts of the original building to be finished, since in it the vault springs in the centre from a beautiful round shaft covered with renaissance carving and standing on a curious base. ([Fig. 63].)

The first chancel, which in 1523 was nearly ready, was thought to be too small and so was pulled down, being replaced in 1551 by a rather poor classic structure designed by Diogo de Torralva. In it now lie Dom Manoel, his son Dom João iii., and the unfortunate Dom Sebastião, his great-grandson. Vasco da Gama and other national heroes have also found a resting-place in the church, and the chapter-house is nearly filled with the tomb of Herculano, the best historian of his country.

Since the expulsion of the monks in 1834 the monastic buildings have been turned into an excellent orphanage for boys, who to the number of about seven hundred are taught some useful trade and who still use the refectory as their dining-hall. The only other change since 1835 has been the building of an exceedingly poor domed top to the south-west tower instead of its original low spire, the erection of an upper story above the long undercroft, and of a great entrance tower half-way along, with the result that the tower soon fell, destroying the vault below.

O Mosheiro des Jerónimos de Sta Maria de Belem.
fovnded by dom manoel april 21 1500.
bovtaca architect till 1511. svcceeded by
lovrenço fernandes. little done till
1522 when joão de castilho svcceeded.
lower cloister finished 1544.
capella mor rebvilt 1551 by diogo de torralva.

The plan of the church is simple but original. It consists of a nave of four bays with two oblong towers to the west. The westernmost bay is divided into two floors by a great choir gallery entered from the upper cloister and also extending to the west between the towers, which on the ground floor form chapels. The whole nave with its three aisles of equal height measures from the west door to the transept some 165 feet long by 77 broad and over 80 high. East of the nave the church spreads out into an enormous transept 95 feet long by 65 wide, and since the vast vault is almost barrel-shaped considerably higher than the nave. North and south of this transept are smaller square chapels, and to the east the later chancel, the whole church being some 300 feet long inside. North of the nave is the cloister measuring 175 feet by 185, on its western side the refectory 125 feet by 30, and on the east next the transept a sacristy 48 feet square, and north of it a chapter-house of about the same size, but increased on its northern side by a large apse. In the thickness of the north wall of the nave a stair leads from the transept to the upper cloister, and a series of confessionals open alternately, the one towards the church for the penitent and the next towards the lower cloister for the father confessor. Lastly, separated from the church by an open space once forming a covered porch, there stretches away to the west the great undercroft, 607 feet long by 30 wide.