[Sidenote: Conceicao, Braga.]

Opposite the east end of the cathedral there stands a small tower built in 1512 by Archdeacon Joao de Coimbra as a chapel. It is of two stories, with a vaulted chapel below and a belfrey above, lit by round-headed windows, only one of which retains its tracery. Just above the string which divides the two stories are statues[93] under canopies, one projecting on a corbel from each corner, and one from the middle, while above a cornice, on which stand short pinnacles, six to each side, the tower ends in a low square tile roof. The chapel on the ground floor is entered by a porch, whose flat lintel rests on moulded piers at the angles and on two tall round columns in the centre, while its three openings are filled with plain iron screens, the upper part of which blossoms out into large iron flowers and leaves. Inside there is on the east wall a reredos of early renaissance date, and on the south a large half-classical arch flanked by pilasters under which there is a life-size group of the Entombment made seemingly of terra cotta and painted.

So, rather later than in most other lands, and many years after the renaissance had made itself felt in other parts of the country, Gothic comes to an end, curiously enough not far from where the oldest Christian buildings are found.



CHAPTER VII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS

It is now time to turn back for a century and a half and to speak of the traces left by the Moors of their long occupation of the country. Although they held what is now the northern half of Portugal for over a hundred years, and part of the south for about five hundred, there is hardly a single building anywhere of which we can be sure that it was built by them before the Christian re-conquest of the country. Perhaps almost the only exceptions are the fortifications at Cintra, known as the Castello dos Mouros, the city walls at Silves, and possibly the church at Mertola. In Spain very many of their buildings still exist, such as the small mosque, now the church of Christo de la Luz, and the city walls at Toledo, and of course the mosque at Cordoba and the Alcazar at Seville, not to speak of the Alhambra. Yet it must not be forgotten that, while Portugal reached its furthest limits by the capture of the Algarve under Affonso III. about the middle of the thirteenth century, in Spain the progress was slower. Toledo indeed fell in 1085, but Cordoba and Seville were only taken a few years before the capture of the Algarve, and Granada was able to hold out till 1492. Besides, in what is now Portugal there had been no great capital like Cordoba. And yet, though this is so, hardly a town or a village exists in which some slight trace of their art cannot be found, even if it be but a tile-lining to the walls of church or house. In such towns as Toledo, Moorish builders were employed not only in the many parish churches but even in the cathedral, and in Portugal we find Moors at Thomar even as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, when such names as Omar, Mafamedi, Bugimaa, and Bebedim occur in the list of workmen.

It is chiefly in three directions that Moorish influence made itself felt, in actual design, in carpentry, and in tiling, and of these the last two, and especially tiling, are the most general, and long survived the disappearance of Arab detail.

[Sidenote: Cintra.]

Some eighteen miles from Lisbon, several sharp granite peaks rise high above an undulating tableland. Two of these are encircled by the old Moorish fortification which climbs up and down over huge granite boulders, and on a projecting spur near their foot, and to the north, there stands the old palace of Cintra. As long as the Walis ruled at Lisbon, it was to Cintra that they came in summer for hunting and cool air, and some part at least of their palace seems to have survived till to-day.

Cintra was first taken by Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon in 1093—to be soon lost and retaken by Count Henry of Burgundy sixteen years later, but was not permanently held by the Christians till Affonso Henriques expelled the Moors in 1147. The Palace of the Walis was soon granted by him to Gualdim Paes, the famous grand master of the Templars, and was held by his successors till it was given to Dom Diniz's queen, St. Isabel. She died in 1336, when the palace returned to the Order of Christ—which had meanwhile been formed out of the suppressed Order of the Temple—only to be granted to Dona Beatriz, the wife of D. Affonso IV., in exchange for her possessions at Ega and at Torre de Murta. Dom Joao I. granted the palace in 1385 to Dom Henrique de Vilhena, but he soon sided with the Spaniards, for he was of Spanish birth, his possessions were confiscated and Cintra returned to the Crown. Some of the previous kings may have done something to the palace, but it was King Joao who first made it one of the chief royal residences, and who built a very large part of it.

A few of the walls have been examined by taking off the plaster, and have been found to be built in the usual Arab manner, courses of rubble bonded at intervals with bands of thin bricks two or three courses deep. Such are the back wall of the entrance hall and a thick wall near the kitchen. Outside all the walls are plastered, all the older windows, of one or two lights, are enclosed in square frames—for the later windows of Dom Manoel's time are far more elaborate and fantastic—and most of the walls end in typical Moorish battlements. High above the dark tile roofs there tower the two strange kitchen chimneys, huge conical spires ending in round funnels, now all plastered, but once covered with a pattern of green and white tiles.



The whole is so extremely complicated that without a plan it would be almost useless to attempt a description. Speaking roughly, all that lies to the west of the Porte Cochere which leads from the entrance court through to the kitchen court and stables beyond is, with certain alterations and additions, the work of Dom Joao, and all that lies to the east is the work of Dom Manoel, added during the first years of the sixteenth century. Entering through a pointed gateway, one finds oneself in a long and irregular courtyard, having on the right hand a long low building in which live the various lesser palace officials, and on the left, first a comparatively modern projecting building in which live the ladies-in-waiting, then somewhat further back the rooms of the controller of the palace and his office. From the front wall of this office, which itself juts out some feet into the courtyard, there runs eastwards a high balustraded terrace reaching as far as another slightly projecting wing, and approached by a great flight of steps at its western end. Not far beyond the east end of the terrace an inclined road leads to the Porte Cochere, and beyond it are the large additions made by Dom Manoel. (Fig. 44.)

On this terrace stands the main front of the palace. Below are four large pointed arches, and above five beautiful windows lighting the great Sala dos Cysnes or Swan Hall. Originally these four arches were open and led into a large vaulted hall; now they are all built up—perhaps by Dona Maria I. after the great earthquake—three having small two-light windows, and one a large door, the chief entrance to the palace. In the back wall of this hall may still be seen three windows which must have existed before it was built, for what is now their inner side was evidently at first their outer; and this wall is one of those found to be built in the Arab manner, so that clearly Dom Joao's hall was built in front of a part of the Walis' palace, a part which has quite disappeared except for this wall.

From the east end of this lower hall a straight stair, which looks as if it had once been an outside stair, leads up to a winding stair by which another hall is reached, whose floor lies at a level of about 26 feet above the terrace.[94] From this hall, which may be of later date than Dom Joao's time, a door leads down to the central pateo or courtyard, or else going up a few steps the way goes through a smaller square room, once an open verandah, through a wide doorway inserted by Dom Manoel into the great Swan Hall. This hall, the largest room in the palace, measuring about 80 feet long by 25 wide, is so called from the swans painted in the eight-sided panels of its wonderful roof. The story is that while the palace was still building ambassadors came to the king from the duke of Burgundy asking for the hand of his daughter Isabel. Among other presents they brought some swans, which so pleased the young princess that she made them collars of red velvet and persuaded her father to build for them a long narrow tank in the central court just under the north windows of this hall. Here she used to feed them till she went away to Flanders, and from love of his daughter King Joao had the swans with their collars painted on the ceiling of the hall. The swans may still be seen, but not those painted for Dom Joao, for all the mouldings clearly show that the present ceiling was reconstructed some centuries later. The hall is lit by five windows looking south across the entrance court to the Moorish castle on the hill beyond, and by three looking over the swan tank into the central pateo.

These windows, and indeed all those in Dom Joao's part of the palace, are very like each other. They are nearly all of two lights—never of more—and are made of white marble. In every case there is a square-headed moulded frame enclosing the whole window, the outer mouldings of this frame resting on small semicircular corbels, and having Gothic bases. Inside this framework stand three slender shafts, with simple bases and carved capitals. These capitals are not at all unlike French capitals of the thirteenth century, but are really of a common Moorish pattern often found elsewhere, as in the Alhambra. On them, moulded at the ends, but not in front or behind, rest abaci, from which spring stilted arches. (Fig. 45.)

Each arch is delicately moulded and elaborately cusped, but, though in some cases—for the shape varies in almost every window—each individual cusp may have the look of a Gothic trefoil, the arrangement is not Gothic at all. There are far more than are ever found in a Gothic window, sometimes as many as eleven, and they usually begin at the bottom with a whole instead of a half cusp. From the centre of each abacus, cutting across the arch mouldings, another moulding runs up, which being returned across the top encloses the upper part of each light in a smaller square frame. It is this square frame which more than anything else gives these windows their Eastern look, and it has been shown how often, and indeed almost universally a square framing was put round doorways all through the last Gothic



period. In only one instance are the shafts anything but plain, and that is in the central window overlooking the entrance court, where they are elaborately twisted, and where also they start at the level of the floor within instead of standing on a low parapet.

In the room itself the walls up to a certain height are covered with tiles, diamonds of white and a beautiful olive green which are much later than Dom Joao's time. There is also near the west end of the north side a large fireplace projecting slightly from the wall; at either end stands a shaft with cap and base like those of the windows, bearing a long flat moulded lintel, while on the hearth there rest two very fine wrought-iron Gothic fire-dogs.

East of the fireplace a door having a wide flat ogee head leads into a small porch built in the corner of the pateo to protect the passage to the Sala das Pegas, the first of the rooms to the south of this pateo.

In the angle formed by the end wall of the Sala dos Cysnes and the side of the Sala das Pegas there is a small low room now called the Sala de Dom Sebastiao or do Conselho. It is entered from the west end of the Swan Hall through a door, which was at first a window just like all the rest. This Hall of Dom Sebastiao or of the Council is so called from the tradition that it was there that in 1578 that unhappy king held the council in which it was decided to invade Morocco, an expedition which cost the king his life and his country her independence. In reality the final solemn council was held in Lisbon, but some informal meeting may well have been held there. Now the room is low and rather dark, being lit only by two small windows opening above the roof of the controller's office. It is divided into two unequal parts by an arcade of three arches, the smaller part between the arches and the south wall being raised a step above the rest. When first built by Dom Joao this raised part formed a covered verandah, the rest being, till about the time of Maria I., open to the sky and forming a charming and cool retreat during the heat of summer. The floor is of tiles and marble, and all along the south wall runs a bench entirely covered with beautiful tiles. At the eastern end is a large seat, rather higher than the bench and provided with arms, doubtless for the king, and tiled like the rest.

Passing again from the Swan Hall the way leads through the porch into the Sala das Pegas or of the magpies. The door from the porch to the room is one of the most beautiful parts of Dom Joao's work. It is framed as are the windows, and has shafts, capitals, abaci, and bases just like those already described; but the arch is different. It is beautifully moulded, but is—if one may so speak—made up of nine reversed cusps, whose convex sides form the arch: the inner square moulding too is enriched with ball ornament. Inside the walls are covered to half their height with exquisite tiles of Moorish pattern, blue, green and brown on a white ground.

On the north wall is a great white marble chimney-piece, once a present from Pope Leo X. to Dom Manoel and brought by the great Marques de Pombal from the ruined palace of Almeirim opposite Santarem. Two other doors, with simple pointed heads, lead one into the dining-room, and one into the Sala das Sereias. The Sala das Pegas, like the Swan Hall, is called after its ceiling, for on it are painted in 136 triangular compartments, 136 magpies, each holding in one foot a red rose and in its beak a scroll inscribed 'Por Bem.' Possibly this ceiling, which on each side slopes up to a flat parallelogram, is more like that painted for Dom Joao than is that of the Swan Hall, but even here some of the mouldings are clearly renaissance, and the painting has been touched up, but anyhow it was already called Camera das Pegas in the time of Dom Duarte; further, tradition tells that the magpies were painted there by Dom Joao's orders, and why. It seems that once during the hour of the midday siesta the king, wandering about his unfinished house, found in this room one of the maids of honour. Her he kissed, when another maid immediately went and told the queen, Philippa of Lancaster. She was angry, but Dom Joao only said 'Por bem,' meaning much what his queen's grandfather had meant when he said 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,' and to remind the maids of honour, whose waiting-room this was, that they must not tell tales, he had the magpies painted on the ceiling.

The two windows, one looking west and one into the pateo, are exactly like those already described.

From the Sala das Pegas one door leads up a few steps into the Sala das Sereias, and another to the dining-room. This Sala das Sereias, so called from the mermaids painted on the ceiling, is a small room some eighteen feet square. It is lit by a two-light window opening towards the courtyard, a window just like those of the Sala das Pegas and of the Sala dos Cysnes. Some of its walls, especially that between it and the Sala das Pegas, are very thick and seem to be older than the time of Dom Joao. As usual, the walls are partly covered with beautiful tiles, mostly embossed with green vine-leaves, but round the door leading to the long narrow room, used as a servery, is an interlacing pattern of green and blue tiles, while the spandrils between this and the pointed doorhead are filled with a true Arabesque pattern, dark on a light ground, which is said to belong to the Palace of the Walis. There are altogether four doors, one leading to the servery, one to the Sala das Pegas, one to a spiral stair in the corner of the pateo, and one to the dining-room.

This dining-room projects somewhat to the west so as to leave space for a window looking south to the mountains, and one looking north across a small court, as well as one looking west. Of these, the two which look south and west are like each other, and like the other of Dom Joao's time except that the arches are not cusped; that the outer frame is omitted and that the abaci are moulded in front as well as at the ends; but the third window looking north is rather different. The framing has regular late Gothic bases, the capitals of the shafts are quite unlike the rest, having one large curly leaf at each angle, and the moulding running up the centre between the arches—which are not cusped—is plaited instead of being plain. Altogether it looks as if it were later than Dom Joao's time, for it is the only window where the capitals are not of the usual Arab form, and they are not at all like some in the castle of Sempre Noiva built about the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The wall-tiles of the dining-room are like those of the Sala das Sereias, but end in a splendid cresting. The ceiling is modern and uninteresting.

Next to the north comes the servery, a room without interest but for its window which looks west, and is like the two older dining-room windows.

Returning to the Sala das Sereias, a spiral stair leads down to the central pateo, which can also be reached from the porch in the south-west corner. All along the south side runs the tank made by Dom Joao for his daughter's swans, and on three sides are beautiful white marble windows. At the east end of the north side three open arches lead to the bathroom. As is the case with the windows, the three arches are enclosed in a square frame. The capitals, however, are different, having an eight-sided bell on which rests a square block with a bud carved at each angle, and above an abacus, moulded all round. The arches are cusped like the windows, but are stilted and segmental. Inside is a recess framed in an arch of Dom Manoel's time, and from all over the tiled walls and the ceiling jets of water squirt out, so that the whole becomes a great shower-bath, delightful and cooling on a hot day but rather public. In the middle of the pateo there stands a curious column—not at all unlike the 'pelourinho'[95] of Cintra—which stands in a basin just before the entrance gate. This column is formed of three twisted shafts on whose capitals sit a group of boys holding three shields charged with the royal arms. All round the court is a dado of white and green tiles arranged in an Arab pattern.

In the north-west corner and reached by the same spiral stair, but at a higher level than the Sala das Sereias, is the Sala dos Arabes, so called because it is commonly believed to be a part of the original building. The walls may be so, but of the rest, nothing, but perhaps the shallow round fountain basin in the middle and the square of tiles which surrounds it, now so worn that little of their glazed surface is left. The walls half-way up are lined with tiles, squares and parallelograms, blue, white and green. The doors are framed in different tiles, and all are finished with an elaborate cresting. The most interesting thing in the room is the circular basin in the middle—a basin which gives it a truly Eastern look. Inside a round shallow hollow there stands a many-sided block of marble about six inches high. The sides are concave as in a small section of a Doric column, and within it is hollowed into a beautiful cup, shaped somewhat like a flower of many petals. In the middle there now is a strange object of gilt metal through which the water once poured. On a short stem stands a carefully modelled dish on which rest first leaves, like long acanthus leaves, then between them birds on whose backs sit small figures of boys. Between the boys and above the leaves are more figures exactly like seated Indian gods, and the whole ends in a cone. It is so completely Indian in appearance that there can be little doubt but that it is really of Indian origin, and perhaps it is not too much to see in it part of the spoils brought to Dom Manoel by Vasco da Gama after he had in 1498 made his way round Africa to Calicut and back.

Returning to the Sala das Sereias and passing through the servery and another room an open court is reached called the Pateo de Diana, from a fountain over which Diana presides, and on to which one of the dining-room windows looks. A beautifully tiled stair—these tiles are embossed like those of the dining-room, but besides vine-leaves some have on them bunches of grapes—goes down from the Court of Diana to the Court of the Lion, the Pateo do Leao, where a lion spouts into a long tank. But the chief beauty of these two courts is a small window which overlooks them. This window is only of one light, and like the dining-room window near it its framing has Gothic bases. The capitals are smaller than in the other windows, and the framing partly covers the outer moulding of the window arch, making it look like a segment of a circle. But the cusps are the most curious part. They form four more or less trefoiled spaces with wavy outlines, and two of them—not the remaining one at the top—end in large well-carved vine-leaves, very like those at the ends of the cusps on the arches in the Capella do Fundador at Batalha. To add to the charm of the window, the space between the top of the arch and the framing is filled in with those beautiful tiles embossed with vine-leaves.

Going up again to the Sala dos Arabes, a door in the northern wall leads to a passage running northwards to the chapel. About half-way along the passage another branches off to the right towards the great kitchen.

The chapel stands at the northern edge of the palace buildings, having beyond it a terrace called the Terreiro da Meca or of Mecca; partly from this name, and partly from the tiles which still cover the middle of the floor it is believed that the chapel stands exactly on the site of the Walis' private mosque, with perhaps the chancel added.

The middle of the nave—the chapel consists of a nave and chancel, two small transeptal recesses, and two galleries one above the other at the west end—is paved with tiles once glazed and of varying colours, but now nearly all worn down till the natural red shows through. The pattern has been elaborate; a broad border of diagonal checks surrounding a narrow oblong in which the checks are crossed by darker lines so as to form octagons, and between the outer border and the octagons a band of lighter ground down which in the middle runs a coloured line having on each side cones of the common Arab pattern exactly like the palace battlements.

Now the walls are bare and white, but were once covered with frescoes of the fifteenth century; the reredos is a clumsy addition of the eighteenth century.

The cornice and the long pilasters at the entrance to the chancel seem to have been added at the same time, but the windows and ceiling are still those of Dom Joao's time. The windows—there are now three, a fourth in the chancel having been turned into a royal pew—are of two or three lights, have commonplace tracery, and are only interesting as being one of the few wholly Gothic features in the palace.

Far more interesting is the ceiling, which is entirely Arab in construction and in design. In the nave it is an irregular polygon in section, and in the chancel is nearly a semicircle, having nine equal sides. The whole of the boarded surface is entirely covered with an intricate design formed of strips of wood crossing each other in every direction so as to form stars, triangles, octagons, and figures of every conceivable shape. The whole still retains its original colouring. At the centres of the main figures are gilt bosses—the one over the high altar being a shield with the royal arms—the wooden strips are black with a white groove down the centre of each, and the ground is either dark red or light blue. (Fig. 46.)

The whole is of great interest not only for its own sake, but because it is the only ceiling in the palace which has remained unchanged since the end of the fourteenth century, and because it is, as it were, the parent of the splendid roofs in the Sala dos Cysnes and of the still more wonderful one in the Sala dos Escudos.

The kitchen lies at the back of the chapel and at right angles to it. It is a building about 58 feet long by 25 wide, and is divided into two equal parts by a large arch. Each of these two parts is covered by a huge conical chimney so that the inside is more like the nave of St. Ours at Loches than anything else, while outside these chimneys rise high above all the rest of the palace. It is lit by small two-light Gothic windows, and has lately been lined with white tiles. Now the



chimneys serve only as ventilators, as ordinary iron ranges have been put in. There seems to be nothing in the country at all like these chimneys—for the kitchen at Alcobaca, although it has a stream running through it, is but a poor affair compared with this one, nor is its chimney in any way remarkable outside.[96]

The rest of the palace towards the west, between the west end of the chapel and the great square tower in which is the Sala dos Escudos, was probably also built about the time of Dom Joao I., but except for a few windows there is little of interest left which belongs to his time.

The great tower of the Sala dos Escudos was built by Dom Manoel on the top of an older building then called the Casa da Meca, in which Affonso V. was born in 1432—the year before his grandfather Dom Joao died—and where he himself died forty-nine years later. In another room on a higher floor—where his feet, as he walked up and down day after day, have quite worn away the tiles—Affonso VI. was imprisoned. Affonso had by his wildness proved himself quite unable to govern, and had also made himself hated by his queen, a French princess. She fell in love with his brother, so Affonso was deposed, divorced, and banished to the Azores. After some years it was found that he was there trying to form a party, so he was brought to Cintra and imprisoned in this room from 1674 till his death in 1683. These worn-out tiles are worthy of notice for their own sake since tiles with Moorish patterns, as are these here and those in the chapel, are very seldom used for flooring, and they are probably among the oldest in the palace.

[Sidenote: Castles, Guimaraes and Barcellos.]

Such was the palace from the time of Joao I. to that of Dom Manoel, a building thoroughly Eastern in plan as in detail, and absolutely unlike such contemporary buildings as the palaces of the dukes of Braganza at Guimaraes or at Barcellos, or the castle at Villa da Feira between Oporto and Aveiro. The Braganza palaces are both in ruins, but their details are all such as might be found almost anywhere in Christian Europe. Large pointed doors, traceried windows and tall chimneys—these last round and of brick—differ only from similar features found elsewhere, as one dialect may differ from another, whereas Cintra is, as it were, built in a

[Sidenote: Villa da Feira.]

totally different language. The castle at Villa da Feira is even more unlike anything at Cintra. A huge keep of granite, the square turrets projecting slightly from the corners give it the look of a Norman castle, for the curious spires of brick now on those turrets were added later, perhaps under Dom Manoel. Inside there is now but one vast hall with pointed barrel roof, for all the wooden floors are gone, leaving only the beam holes in the walls, the Gothic fireplaces, and the small windows to show where they once were.

It is then no wonder that Cintra has been called the Alhambra of Portugal, and it is curious that the same names are found given to different parts of the two buildings. The Alhambra has a Mirador de Lindaraxa, Cintra a Jardim de Lindaraya; the Alhambra a Torre de las dos Hermanas, Cintra a Sala das Irmas or of the Sisters—the part under the Sala dos Escudos where Affonso V. was born; while both at the Alhambra and here there is a garden called de las or das Damas.



CHAPTER VIII

OTHER MOORISH BUILDINGS

The old palace at Cintra is perhaps the only complete building to the north of the Tagus designed and carried out by Moorish workmen scarcely, if at all, influenced by what the conquering Christians were doing round them. Further south in the province of Alemtejo Moorish buildings are more common, and there are many in which, though the design and plan as well as most of the detail may be Western, yet there is something, the whitewashed walls, the round conical pinnacles, or the flat roofs which give them an Eastern look.

And this is natural. Alemtejo was conquered after the country north of the Tagus had been for some time Christian, and no large immigration of Christians ever came to take the place of the Moors, so that those few who remained continued for long in their own Eastern ways of building and of agriculture.

It is especially in and about the town of Evora that this is seen, and that too although the cathedral built at the end of the twelfth century is, except for a few unimportant details, a Western building.

[Sidenote: Alvito.]

But more completely Eastern than any one building at Evora is the castle at Alvito, a small town some thirty or forty miles to the south-west. The town stands at the end of a long low hill and looks south over an endless plain across to Beja, one of the most extensive and, in its way, beautiful views in the country.

At one end of the town on the slope of the hill stands the castle, and not far off in one of the streets is the town hall whose tower is too characteristic of the Alemtejo not to be noticed. The building is whitewashed and perfectly plain, with ordinary square windows. An outside stair leads to the upper story, and behind it rises the tower. It, like the building, is absolutely plain with semicircular openings near the top irregularly divided by a square pier. Close above these openings is a simple cornice on which stand rather high and narrow battlements; within them rises a short eight-sided spire, and at each corner a short round turret capped by a conical roof. The whole from top to bottom is plastered and whitewashed, and it is this glaring whiteness more than anything else which gives to the whole so Eastern a look.

As to the castle, Haupt in his most interesting book, Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Portugal, says that, though he had never seen it, yet from descriptions of its plan he had come to the conclusion that it was the castle which, according to Vasari, was built by Andrea da Sansovino for Dom Joao II. Now it is well known that Sansovino was for nine years in Portugal and did much work there, but none of it can now be found except perhaps a beautiful Italian door in the palace at Cintra; Vasari also states that he did some work in the heavy and native style which the king liked. Is it possible that the castle of Alvito is one of his works in this native style?

Vasari says that Sansovino built for Dom Joao a beautiful palace with four towers, and that part of it was decorated by him with paintings, and it was because Haupt believed that this castle was built round an arcaded court—a regular Italian feature, but one quite unknown in Portugal—that he thought it must be Sansovino's lost palace.

As a matter of fact the court is not arcaded—there is only a row of rough plastered arches along one side; there are five and not four towers; there is no trace now of any fine painted decoration inside; and, in short, it is inconceivable that, even to please a king, an architect of the Italian renaissance could ever have designed such a building.

The plan of the castle is roughly square with a round tower at three of the corners, and at the fourth or southern corner a much larger tower, rounded in front and projecting further from the walls. The main front is turned to the south-west, and on that side, as well as on the south-eastern, are the habitable parts of the castle. Farm buildings run along inside and outside the north-western, while the north-eastern side is bounded only by a high wall.

Half-way along the main front is the entrance gate, a plain pointed arch surmounted by two shields, that on the right charged with the royal arms, and that on the left with those of the Barao d'Alvito, to whose descendant, the Marques d'Alvito, the castle still belongs. There is also an inscription stating that the castle, begun in 1494 by the orders of Dom Joao II. and finished in the time of Dom Manoel, was built by Dom Diogo Lobo, Barao d'Alvito.[97]

In the court a stair, carried on arches, goes up to the third floor where are the chief rooms in the house. None of them, which open one from the other or from a passage leading to the chapel in the westernmost corner, are in any way remarkable except for their windows. The ceilings of the principal rooms are of wood and panelled, but are clearly of much later date than the building and are not to be compared with those at Cintra. Most of the original windows—for those on the main front have been replaced by plain square openings—are even more Eastern than those at Cintra. They are nearly all of two lights—there is one of a single light in the passage—but are without the square framing. Each window has three very slender white marble shafts, with capitals and with abaci moulded on each side. On some of the capitals are carved twisted ropes, while others, as in a window in the large southern tower, are like those at Cintra. As the shafts stand a little way back from the face of the wall the arches are of two orders, of which only the inner comes down to the central shaft. (Fig. 47.)

These arches, all horseshoe in shape, are built of red brick with very wide mortar joints, and each brick, in both orders, is beautifully moulded or cut at the ends so as to form a series of small trefoiled cusps, each arch having as many as twenty-seven or more. The whole building is plastered and washed yellow, so that the contrast between the bare walls and the elaborate red arches and white shafts is singularly pleasing. All the outer walls are fortified, but the space between each embrasure is far longer than usual; the four corner towers rise a good deal above the rest of the buildings, but in none, except the southern, are there windows above the main roof. It has one, shaped like the rest, but now all plastered and framed in an ogee moulding. Half-way along the north-west wall, outside it, stands the keep, which curiously is not Arab at all. It is a large square tower of no great height, absolutely plain, and built of unplastered stone or marble. It has scarcely any windows, and walls of great thickness which, like those of the smaller round towers, have a slight batter. It seems to be older than the rest, and now its chief ornament is a large fig-tree growing near the top on the south side.[98]

[Sidenote: Evora.]

[Sidenote: Pacos Reaes.]

Of all the towns in the Alemtejo Evora is the one where Eastern influence is most strongly marked. Indeed the Roman temple and the cathedral are perhaps the only old buildings which seem to be distinctly Western, and even the cathedral has some trace of the East in its two western spires, one round and tiled, and the other eight-sided and plastered. For long Evora was one of the chief towns of the kingdom, and was one of those oftenest visited by the kings. Their palace stood close to the church of Sao Francisco, and must once have been a beautiful building.

Unfortunately most of it has disappeared, and what is left, a large hall partly of the time of Dom Manoel, has been so horribly restored in order to turn it into a museum as to have lost all character.

A porch still stands at the south end, but scraped and pointed out of all beauty. It has in front four square stone piers bearing large horseshoe brick arches, and these arches are moulded and cusped exactly like those at Alvito.

[Sidenote: Morgado de Cordovis.]

There are no other examples of Moorish brickwork in the town, but there is more than one marble window resembling those at Alvito in shape. Of these the most charming are found in the garden of a house belonging to a 'morgado' or entailed estate called Cordovis. These windows form two sides of a small square summer-house; their shafts have capitals like those of the dining-room windows at Cintra, and the horseshoe arches are, as usual, cusped. A new feature, showing how the pure Arab details were being gradually combined with Gothic, is an ogee moulding which, uniting the two arches, ends in a large Gothic finial; other mouldings run up the cornice at the angles, and the whole, crowned with battlements, ends in a short round whitewashed spire.

Some miles from Evora among the mountains, Affonso of



[Sidenote: Sempre Noiva.]

Portugal, archbishop of Evora, built himself a small country house which he called Sempre Noiva, or 'Ever New,' about the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is now a ruin having lost all its woodwork, but the walls are still well preserved. The plan is simple; a rectangle with a chapel projecting from the eastern side, and a small wing from the west end of the south side. All the ground floor is vaulted, as is the chapel, but the main rooms on the first floor had wooden roofs, except the one next the chapel which forms the middle floor of a three-storied tower, which, rising above the rest of the building, has a battlemented flat roof reached by a spiral stair. This stair, like the round buttresses of the chapel, is capped by a high conical plastered roof. As usual the whole, except the windows and the angles, is plastered and has a sgraffito frieze running round under the cornice. There is a large porch on the north side covering a stair leading to the upper floor, where most of the windows are of two lights and very like those of the pavilion at Evora. Two like them have the ogee moulding, and at the sides a rounded moulding carried on corbels and finished above the window with a carved finial. The capitals are again carved with leaves, but the horseshoe arches have no cusps, and the mouldings, like the capitals, are entirely Gothic; the union between the two styles, Gothic and Arab, was already becoming closer.

Naturally Moorish details are more often found in secular than in religious buildings: yet there are churches where such details exist even if the general plan and design is Christian.

[Sidenote: Sao Joao Evangelista, Evora.]

Just to the north of the cathedral of Evora, Rodrigo Affonso de Mello, count of Olivenca, in 1485 founded a monastery for the Loyos, or Canons Secular of St. John the Evangelist. The church itself is in no way notable; the large west door opening under a flat arched porch is one of these with plain moulded arches and simple shafts which are so common over all the country, and is only interesting for its late date. At the left side is a small monument to the founder's memory; on a corbel stands a short column bearing an inscribed slab, and above the slab is a shield under a carved curtain. Inside are some tombs—two of them being Flemish brasses—and great tile pictures covering the walls. These give the life of Sao Lorenzo Giustiniani, patriarch of Venice, and canon of San Giorgio in Alga, where the founder of the Loyos had been kindly received and whence he drew the rules of his order, and are interesting as being signed and dated 'Antonius ab oliva fecit 1711.'

The cloisters are also Gothic with vine-covered capitals, but the entrance to the chapter-house and refectory is quite different. In general design it is like the windows at Sempre Noiva, two horseshoe arches springing from the capitals of thin marble shafts and an ogee moulding above. The three shafts are twisted, the capitals are very strange; they are round with several mouldings, some fluted, some carved with leaves, some like pieces of rope: the moulded abaci also have four curious corbels on two sides. The capitals are carried across the jambs and the outer moulding, which is of granite, as is the whole except the three shafts and their caps, and between the shafts and this moulding there is a broad band of carved foliage. The ogee and the side finials or pinnacles, which are of the same section as the outer moulding from which they spring, are made of a bundle of small rolls held together by a broad twisted ribbon. Lastly, between the arches and the ogee there is a flat marble disk on which is carved a curious representation of a stockaded enclosure, supposed to be memorial of the gallant attack made by Affonso de Mello on Azila in Morocco.[99] The whole is a very curious piece of work, the capitals and bases being, with the exception of some details at Thomar and at Batalha, the most strange of the details of that period, though, were the small corbels left out, they would differ but little from other Manoelino capitals, while the bases may be only an attempt of a Moorish workman to copy the interpenetration of late Gothic. (Fig. 48.)

[Sidenote: Sao Francisco, Evora.]

Not much need be said here of the church of Sao Francisco or of the chapel of Sao Braz, both begun at about the same time. Sao Francisco was long in building, for it was begun by Affonso V. in 1460 and not finished till 1501. It is a large church close to the ruins of the palace at Evora, and has a wide nave without aisles, six chapels on each side, larger transept chapels, and a chancel narrower than the nave. It is, like most of Evora, built of granite, has a pointed barrel vault cut into by small groins at the sides and scarcely any windows, for the outer walls of the side chapels are carried up so as to leave a narrow space between them and the nave wall. This was probably done to support the main vault, but the result is that almost the only window is a large one over the west porch. It is this porch that most strongly shows the hand of Moorish workmen. It is five bays long and one deep, and most of the five arches in front, separated by Gothic buttresses and springing from late Gothic capitals, are horseshoe in shape. The white marble doorway has two arches springing from a thin central shaft, which like the arches and the two heavy mouldings, which forming the outer part of the jambs are curved over them, is made of a number of small rounds partly straight and partly twisted. At the corners of the church are large round spiral pinnacles with a continuous row of battlements between; these battlements interspersed with round pinnacles are even set all along the ridge of the vault. The reredos and the stalls made by Olivel of Ghent in 1508 are gone; so are Francisco Henriques' stained windows, but there are still some good tiles, and in a large square opening looking into the chancel there is a shaft with a beautiful early renaissance capital.

[Sidenote: Sao Braz, Evora.]

Sao Braz stands outside the town near the railway station. It was built as a pilgrimage chapel soon after 1482, when the saint had been invoked to stay a terrible plague. It is not large, has an aisleless nave of four bays, a large porch with three wide pointed arches at the west, and a sort of domed chancel. Most of the details are indeed Gothic, but there is little detail, and the whole is entirely Eastern in aspect. It is all plastered, the buttresses are great rounded projections capped with conical plastered roofs; there are battlements on the west gable and on the three sides of the porch, which also has great round conical-topped buttresses or turrets at the angles.

Inside there are still fine tiles, but the sgraffito frieze has nearly disappeared from the outer cornice.

There is also an interesting church somewhat in the same style as Sao Braz, but with aisles and brick flying buttresses at Vianna d'Alemtejo near Alvito.



CHAPTER IX

MOORISH CARPENTRY

If it was only in the south that Moorish masons built in stone or brick, their carpenters had a much wider range. The wooden ceilings of as late as the middle of the seventeenth century may show no Eastern detail, yet in the method of their construction they are all ultimately descended from Moorish models. Such ceilings are found all over the country, but curiously enough the finest examples of truly Eastern work are found in the far north at Caminha and in the island of Madeira at Funchal.

[Sidenote: Aguas Santas.]

The old romanesque church at Aguas Santas near Oporto has a roof, simple and unadorned, the tie-beams of which are coupled in the Moorish manner. The two beams about a foot apart are joined in the centre by four short pieces of wood set diagonally so as to form a kind of knot. This is very common in Moorish roofs, and may be seen at Seville and elsewhere. The rest of the roof is boarded inside, boards being also fastened to the underside of the collar beams.

[Sidenote: Azurara.]

At Azurara the ties are single, but the whole is boarded as at Aguas Santas, and this is also the case at Villa do Conde and elsewhere.

In the palace chapel at Cintra, already described, the boarding is covered with a pattern of interlacing strips, but later on panelling was used, usually with simple mouldings. Such is the roof in the nave of the church of Nossa Senhora do Olival at Thomar, probably of the seventeenth century, and in many houses, as for instance in the largest hall in the castle at Alvito. From such simple panelled ceilings the splendid elaboration of those in the palace at Cintra was derived.

[Sidenote: Caminha.]

The roofs at Caminha and at Funchal are rather different. At Caminha the roof is divided into bays of such a size that each of the three divisions, the two sloping sides and the flat centre under the collar ties, is cut into squares. In the sloping sides these squares are divided from each other by a strip of boarding covering the space occupied by three rafters. On this boarding are two bands of ornament separated by a carved chain, while one band, with the chain, is returned round the top and bottom of the square. Between each strip of boarding are six exposed rafters, and these are united alternately by small knots in the middle and at the ends, and by larger and more elaborate knots at the ends. In the flat centre under the collar ties each square is again surrounded by the band of ornament and by the chains, but here band and chain are also carried across the corners, leaving a large octagon in the centre with four triangles in the angles. Each octagon has a plain border about a foot wide, and within it a plain moulding surrounding an eight-sided hollow space. All these spaces are of some depth; each has in the centre a pendant, and in each the opening is fringed with tracery or foliation. In some are elaborate Gothic cuspings, in others long carved leaves curved at the ends; and in one which happens to come exactly over an iron tie-rod—for the rods are placed quite irregularly—the pendant is much longer and is joined to the tie by a small iron bar. At the sides the roof starts from a cornice of some depth whose mouldings and ornamentation are more classic than Gothic. (Fig. 49.)

In the side aisles the cornice is similar, but of greater projection, and the rafters are joined to each other in much the same way, but more simply.

[Sidenote: Funchal.]

At Funchal the roof is on a larger scale: there is no division into squares, but the rafters are knotted together with much greater elaboration, and the flat part is like the chapel roof at Cintra, entirely covered with interlacing strips forming an intricate pattern round hollow octagons.

[Sidenote: Sala dos Cysnes, Cintra.]

The simple boarding of the earlier roofs may well have led to the two wonderful ceilings at Cintra, those in the Sala dos Cysnes, and in the Sala dos Brazoes or dos Escudos, but the idea of the many octagons in the Sala dos Cysnes may have come from some such roof as that at Caminha, when the octagons are so important a feature of the design. In that hall swans may have first been painted for Dom Joao, but the roof has clearly been remade since then, possibly under Dom Manoel. The gilt ornament on the mouldings seem even later, but may of course have been added afterwards, though it is not very unlike some of the carving on the roof at Caminha, an undoubted work of Dom Manoel's time.

This great roof in the Swan Hall has a deep and projecting classical cornice; it is divided into three equal parts, two sloping and one flat, with the slopes returned at the ends. The whole is made up of twenty-three large octagons and of four other rather distorted ones in the corners, all surrounded with elaborate mouldings, carved and gilt like the cornice. From the square or three-sided spaces left between the octagons there project from among acanthus leaves richly carved and gilt pendants.

In each of the twenty-seven octagons there is painted on a flat-boarded ground a large swan, each wearing on its neck the red velvet and gold collar made by Dona Isabel for the real swans in the tank outside. These paintings, which are very well done, certainly seem to belong to the seventeenth century, for the trees and water are not at all like the work of an artist of Dom Manoel's time. (Fig. 50.)

[Sidenote: Sala dos Escudos, Cintra.]

Even more remarkable is the roof of the Sala dos Brazoes or dos Escudos—that is 'of the shields'—also built by Dom Manoel, and also retouched at the same time as that in the Sala dos Cysnes. This other hall is a large room over forty feet square. The cornice begins about twelve feet from the ground, the walls being covered with hunting scenes on blue and white tiles of about the end of the seventeenth century. The cornice, about three feet deep and of considerable projection, is, like all the mouldings, painted blue and enriched with elaborate gilt carving. On the frieze is the following inscription in large gilt letters:

Pois com esforcos leais Servicos foram ganhadas Com estas e outras tais Devem de ser comservadas.[100]

The inscription is interrupted by brackets, round which the cornice is returned, and on which rest round arches thrown across the four corners, bringing the whole to an equal-sided



octagon. 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.)

The effect is surprisingly good, for each panel with its beautiful design of curling and twisting acanthus, of birds, of mermaids and of vases has almost the look of beautiful old brocade, for the blues and reds have grown soft with age.

[Sidenote: Santa Clara, Villa do Conde.]

Before finally leaving wood ceilings it were better to speak of another form or style which was sometimes used for their decoration although they are even freer from Moorish detail than are those at Coimbra, though probably like them ultimately derived from the same source. One of the finest of these ceilings is found in the upper Nuns' Choir in the church of Santa Clara at Villa do Conde. The church consists of a short nave with transepts and chancel all roofed with panelled wooden ceilings, painted grey as is often the case, and in no way remarkable. The church was founded in 1318, but the ceilings and stalls of both Nuns' Choirs, which,

[Sidenote: Convent, Aveiro.]

one above the other take up much the greater part of the nave, cannot be earlier than the first half of the seventeenth century. Like the other ceilings it is polygonal in section, but unlike all Moorish ones is not returned round the ends. Above a finely carved cornice with elaborate frieze, the whole ceiling is divided into deeply set panels, large and small squares with narrow rectangles between: all alike covered with elaborate carving, as are also the mouldings and the flat surfaces of the dividing bands. Here the wood is left in its natural colour, but in the nave of the church of a large convent at Aveiro, where the general design of the ceiling is almost the same, pictures are painted in the larger panels, and all the rest is heavily gilt, making the whole most gorgeous.

As time went on wooden roofs became less common, stone barrel vaults taking their place, but where they were used they were designed with a mass of meaningless ornament, lavished over the whole surface, which was usually gilt. One of the most remarkable examples of such a roof is found in the chancel of that same church at Aveiro. It is semicircular in shape and is all covered with greater and smaller carved and gilt circles, from the smallest of which in the middle large pendants hang down.

These circles are so arranged as to make the roof almost like that of Henry VII. Chapel, though the two really only resemble each other in their extreme richness and elaboration. This same extravagance of gilding and of carving also overtook altar and reredos. Now almost every church is full of huge masses of gilt wood, in which hardly one square inch has been left uncarved; sometimes, if there is nothing else, and the whole church—walls and ceiling alike—is a mass of gilding and painting, the effect is not bad, but sometimes the contrast is terrible between the plain grey walls of some old and simple building and the exuberance behind the high altar.



CHAPTER X

EARLY MANOELINO

Affonso V., the African, had died and been succeeded by his son Joao II. in 1487. Joao tried, not without success, to play the part of Louis XI. of France and by a judicious choice of victims (he had the duke of Braganza, the richest noble in the country, arrested by a Cortes at Evora and executed, and he murdered his cousin the duke of Vizeu with his own hand) he destroyed the power of the feudal nobility. Enriched by the confiscation of his victims' possessions, the king was enabled to do without the help of the Cortes, and so to establish himself as a despotic ruler. Yet he governed for the benefit of the people at large, and reversing the policy of his father Affonso directed the energies of his people towards maritime commerce and exploration instead of wasting them in quarrelling with Castile or in attempting the conquest of Morocco. It was he who, following the example of his grand-uncle Prince Henry, sent out ship after ship to find a way to India round the continent of Africa. Much had already been done, for in 1471 Fernando Po had reached the mouth of the Niger, and all the coast southward from Morocco was well known and visited annually, for slaves used to cultivate the vast estates in the Alemtejo; but it was not till 1484 that Diogo Cao, sent out by the king, discovered the mouth of the Congo, or till 1486 that Bartholomeu Diaz doubled the Cabo Tormentoso, an ill-omened name which Dom Joao changed to Good Hope.

Dom Joao II. did not live to greet Vasco da Gama on his return from India, for he died in 1495, but he had already done so much that Dom Manoel had only to reap the reward of his predecessor's labours. The one great mistake he made was that in 1493 he dismissed Columbus as a dreamer, and so left the glory of the discovery of America to Ferdinand and Isabella. Besides doing so much for the trade of his country, Dom Joao did what he could to promote literature and art. Andrea da Sansovino worked for him for nine years from 1491 to 1499, and although scarcely anything done by him can now be found, he here too set an example to Dom Manoel, who summoned so many foreign artists to the country and who sent so many of his own people to study in Italy and in Flanders.

Four years before Dom Joao died, his only son Affonso, riding down from Almerim to the Tagus to meet his father, who had been bathing, fell from his horse and was killed. In 1495 he himself died, and was succeeded by his cousin, Manoel the Fortunate. Dom Manoel indeed deserved the name of 'Venturoso.' He succeeded his cousin just in time to see Vasco da Gama start on his great voyage which ended in 1497 at Calicut. Three years later Pedro Alvares Cabral landed in Brazil, and before the king died, Goa—the great Portuguese capital of the East—had become the centre of a vast trade with India, Ormuz[102] in the Persian Gulf of trade with Persia, while all the spices[103] of the East flowed into Lisbon and even Pekin[104] had been reached.

From all these lands, from Africa, from Brazil, and from the East, endless wealth poured into Lisbon, nearly all of it into the royal treasury, so that Dom Manoel became the richest sovereign of his time.

In some other ways he was less happy. To please the Catholic Kings, for he wished to marry their daughter Isabel, widow of the young Prince Affonso, he expelled the Jews and many Moors from the country. As they went they cursed him and his house, and Miguel, the only child born to him and Queen Isabel, and heir not only to Portugal but to all the Spains, died when a baby. Isabel had died at her son's birth, and Manoel, still anxious that the whole peninsula should be united under his descendants, married her sister Maria. His wish was realised—but not as he had hoped—for his daughter Isabel married her cousin Charles V. and so was the mother of Philip II., who, when Cardinal King Henry died in 1580, was strong enough to usurp the throne of Portugal.

Being so immensely rich, Dom Manoel was able to cover the whole land with buildings. Damiao de Goes, who died in 1570, gives a list of sixty-two works paid for by him. These include cathedrals, monasteries, churches, palaces, town walls, fortifications, bridges, arsenals, and the draining of marshes, and this long list does not take in nearly all that Dom Manoel is known to have built.

Nearly all these churches and palaces were built or added to in that peculiar style now called Manoelino. Some have seen in Manoelino only a development of the latest phase of Spanish Gothic, but that is not likely, for in Spain that latest phase lasted for but a short time, and the two were really almost contemporaneous.

Manoelino does not always show the same characteristics. Sometimes it is exuberant Gothic mixed with something else, something peculiar, and this phase seems to have grown out of a union of late Gothic and Moorish. Sometimes it is frankly naturalistic, and this seems to have been developed out of the first; and sometimes Gothic and renaissance are used together. In this phase, the composition is still always Gothic, though the details may be renaissance. At times, of course, all phases are found together, but those which most distinctly deserve the name, Manoelino, are the first and second.

The shape of the arches, whether of window or of door, is one of the most characteristic features of Manoelino. After it had been well established they were rarely pointed. Some are round, some trefoils; some have a long line of wavy curves, others a line of sharp angles and curves together.[105] In others, like the door to the Sala das Pegas at Cintra, and so probably derived from Moorish sources, the arch is made of three or more convex curves, and in others again the arch is half of a straight-sided polygon, while in many of the more elaborate all or many of these may be used together to make one complicated whole of interlacing mouldings and hanging cusps.

The capitals too are different from any that have come before. Some are round, but they are more commonly eight-sided, or have at least an eight-sided abacus, often with the sides hollow forming a star. If ornamented with leaves, the leaves do not grow out of the bell but are laid round it like a wreath. But leaf carving is not common; usually the caps are merely moulded, one or two of the mouldings being often like a rope; or branches may be set round them sometimes bound together with a broad ribbon like a bent faggot. The bases too are usually octagonal with an ogee section.

Another feature common to all phases is the use of round mouldings, either one by itself—often forming a kind of twisting broken hood-mould—or of several together, when they usually form a spiral. Such a round moulding has already been seen forming an ogee over the windows at Sempre Noiva and over the chapter-house door at Sao Joao Evangelista, Evora, and there are at Evora two windows side by side, in one of which this round moulding forms a simple ogee, while in the other it forms a series of reversed curves after the true Manoelino manner.

[Sidenote: House of Resende, Evora.]

They are in the house of Garcia de Resende, a man of many accomplishments whose services were much valued both by Dom Joao and by Dom Manoel. He seems too to have been an architect of some distinction, if, as is said, he designed the Torre de Sao Vicente at Belem.

This second window in his house is one of the best examples of the complete union between Gothic and Moorish. It has three shafts, one (in the centre) with a Moorish capital, and two whose caps are bound round with a piece of rope. The semicircular arches consist of one round moulding with round cusps. A hollow mould runs down the two jambs and over the two arches, turning up as an ogee at the top. Beyond this hollow are two tall round shafts ending in large crocketed finials, while tied to them with carved cords is a curious hood-mould, forming three reversed cusps ending in large finials, one in the centre and one over each of the arches, and at the two ends curling across the hollow like a cut-off branch.

Here then we have an example not only of the use of the round moulding, but also of naturalistic treatment which was afterwards sometimes carried to excess.

Probably this window may be rather later in date than at least the foundation of the churches of Nossa Senhora do Popolo at Caldas da Rainha or of the Jesus Convent at Setubal; but it is in itself so good an example of the change from the simple ogee to the round broken moulding and of the use of naturalistic features, that it has been taken first.

In 1485 Queen Leonor, wife of Dom Joao II., began a

[Sidenote: Caldas da Rainha.]

hospital for poor bathers at the place now called after her, Caldas da Rainha, or Queen's hot baths. Beside the hospital was built a small church, now a good deal altered, with simple round-headed windows, and a curious cresting. Attached to it is a tower, interesting as being the only Manoelino church tower now existing. The lower part is square and plain, but the upper is very curious. On one side are two belfry windows, with depressed trefoil heads—that is the top of the trefoil has a double curve, exactly like the end of a clover leaf. On the outer side of each window is a twisted shaft with another between them, and from the top of these shafts grow round branches forming an arch over each window, and twining up above them in interlacing curves. The window on the east side has a very fantastic head of broken curves and straight lines. A short way above the windows the square is changed to an octagon by curved offsets. There are clock faces under small gables on each cardinal side, and at the top of it all rises a short eight-sided spire.

Probably this was the last part of the church to be built, and so would not be finished till about the year 1502, when the whole was dedicated.

[Sidenote: Jesus, Setubal.]

More interesting than this is the Jesus College at Setubal. Founded by Justa Rodrigues, Dom Manoel's nurse, in 1487 or 1488 and designed by one Boutaca or Boitaca,[106] it was probably finished sooner than the church at Caldas, and is the best example in the country of a late Gothic church modified by the addition of certain Manoelino details. Unfortunately it was a good deal injured by the great earthquake in 1755, when it lost all pinnacles and parapets. The church consists of a nave and aisles of three and a half bays and of a square chancel. Inside, the side aisles are vaulted with a half barrel and the central with a simple vault having large plain chamfered ribs. The columns, trefoils in section, are twisted, and have simple moulded caps. The chancel which is higher than the nave is entered by a large pointed arch, which like its jambs has one of its mouldings twisted. The chancel vault has many ribs, most of which are also twisted. All the piers and jambs as well as the windows are built of Arrabida marble, a red breccia found in the mountains to the west of Setubal; the rest is all whitewashed except the arches and vaulting ribs which are painted in imitation of the marble piers.

Outside, the main door, also of Arrabida marble, is large and pointed, with many mouldings and two empty niches on each side. It has little trace of Manoelino except in the bent curves of the upturned drip-mould, and in the broken lines of the two smaller doors which open under the plain tympanum. The nave window is of two lights with simple tracery, but in the chancel, which was ready by 1495, the window shows more Manoelino tendencies. It is of three lights, with flowing tracery at the head, and with small cusped and crocketed arches thrown across each light at varying levels. There are niches on the jambs, and the outer moulding is carried round the window head in broken curves, after the manner of Resende's house at Evora. Though the chancel is square inside, the corners outside are cut off by a very broad chamfer, and a very curious ogee curve unites the two.

The cloisters to the north are more usual. The arches are round or slightly pointed, and like the short round columns with their moulded eight-sided caps and sides, are of Arrabida marble. Half-way along each walk two of the columns are set more closely together, and between them is a small round arch, with below it a Manoelino trefoil; there is too in the north-west corner a lavatory with a good flat vault.

[Sidenote: Beja, Conceicao.]

At Beja the church of the Conceicao, founded by Dom Manoel's father, has been very much pulled about, but the cornice and parapet with Gothic details, rope mouldings, and twisted pinnacles still show that it also was built when the new Manoelino style was first coming into use.

[Sidenote: Castle.]

In the ruins of the Castle there is a very picturesque window where two horseshoe arches are set so close together that the arches meet in such a way that the cusps at their meeting form a pendant, while another window in the Rua dos Mercadores, though very like the one in Resende's house in Evora, is more naturalistic. The outer shafts of the jambs are carved like tree trunks, and the hood moulding like a thick branch is bent and interlaced with other branches.

[Sidenote: Paco, Cintra.]

The additions made to the palace at Cintra by Dom Manoel are a complete treasury of Manoelino detail in its earlier phases.

The works were already begun in 1508, and in January of the previous year Andre Gonsalves, who was in charge, bought two notebooks for 240 reis in which to set down expenses, as well as paper for his office and four bottles of ink. From these books we learn what wages the different workmen received. Pero de Carnide, the head mason, got 50 reis or about twopence-halfpenny a day, and his helper only 35 reis. The chief carpenter, Johan Cordeiro, had 60 reis a day, and so had Goncalo Gomes, the head painter. All the workmen are recorded from Pero de Torres, who was paid 3500 reis, about 14 shillings, for each of the windows he carved and set up, down to the man who got 35 reis a day for digging holes for planting orange-trees and for clearing out the place where the rabbits were kept. Andre Gonsalves also speaks of a Boitaca, master mason. He was doubtless the Boitaca or Boutaca of the Jesus Church at Setubal and afterwards at Belem, though none of his work at Setubal in any way resembles anything he may have done here.

The carriage entry which runs under the palace between Dom Manoel's addition and the earlier part of the palace, has in it some very characteristic capitals, two which support the entrance arch, while one belongs to the central column of an arcade which forms a sort of aisle on the west side. They are all round, though one belongs to an octagonal shaft. They have no abacus proper, but instead two branches are bent round, bound together by a wide ribbon. Below these branches are several short pieces of rope turned in just above the neck-mould, and between them carved balls, something like two artichokes stuck together face to face.

On the east side of the entry a large doorway leads into the newer part of the palace, in which are now the queen-dowager's private rooms. This doorhead is most typical of the style. In the centre two flat convex curves meet at an obtuse angle. At the end of about two feet on either side of the centre the moulding forming these curves is bent sharply down for a few inches to a point, and is then united to the jambs by a curve rather longer than a semicircle. Outside the round moulding forming these curves and bends is a hollow following the same lines and filled with branch-work, curved, twisted, and intertwined. Outside the hollow are shafts, resting on octagonal and interpenetrating bases.

These shafts are half-octagon in section with hollow—not as usual rounded—sides, ornamented with four-leafed flowers, and are twisted. Their capitals are formed by three carved wreaths, from which the shafts rise to curious half-Gothic pinnacles; they are also curved over to form a hood-mould. Above the central curves this moulding is broken and turned up to end in most curious cone-shaped horns, while from the middle there grows a large and elaborate finial.

In the front of the new part overlooking the entrance court there are six windows, three in each floor. They are all, except for a slight variation in detail, exactly alike, and are evidently derived from the Moorish windows in the other parts of the palace. Like them each has two round-headed lights, and a framing standing on corbelled-out bases at the sides. The capitals are various, most are mere wreaths of foliage, but one belonging to the centre shaft of the middle window on the lower floor has twisted round it two branches out of which grow the cusps. While at the sides there is no distinct abacus, in the centre it is always square and moulded. The cusps end in knobs like thistle-heads, and are themselves rather branchlike. In the hollow between the shafts and the framing there are sometimes square or round flowers, sometimes twisting branches. Branches too form the framing of all, they are intertwined up the sides, and form above the arches a straight-topped mass of interlacing twigs, out of which grow three large finials.

Originally the three windows of the upper floor belonged to a large hall whose ceiling was like that of the Sala dos Cysnes. Unfortunately the ceiling was destroyed, and the hall cut up into small rooms some time ago. (Fig. 52.)

Inside are several Manoelino doorways. One at the end of a passage has a half-octagonal head, with curved sides. Beyond a hollow moulding enriched with square flowers are thick twisted shafts, which are carried up to form a hood-mould following the curves of the opening below, and having at each angle a large radiating finial.

Besides these additions Dom Manoel made not a few changes in the older part of the palace. The main door leading into the Sala dos Cysnes is of his time, as is too a window in the upper passage leading to the chapel gallery. Though the walls of the Sala das Duas Irmas are probably older, he altered it inside and built the two rows of columns and arches which support the floor of the Sala dos Brazoes above. The arches are round and unmoulded. The thin columns are also round, but the bases are eight-sided; so are the capitals, but with a round abacus of boughs and twisted ribbons. The great hall above is also Dom Manoel's work, though the ceiling may probably have been retouched since. His also are the two-light windows, with slender shafts and heads more or less trefoil in shape, but with many small convex curves in the middle. The lower part of the outer cornice too is interesting, and made of brick plastered. At the bottom is a large rope moulding, then three courses of tilelike bricks set diagonally. Above them is a broad frieze divided into squares by a round moulding; there are two rows of these squares, and in each is an opening with a triangular head like a pigeon-hole, which has given rise to the belief that it was added by the Marquez de Pombal after the great earthquake. Pombal means 'dovecot,' and so it is supposed that the marquis added a pigeon-house wherever he could. He may have built the upper part of the cornice, which might belong to the eighteenth century, but the lower part is certainly older.

The white marble door leading to the Sala dos Brazoes from the upper passage is part of Dom Manoel's work. It has a flat ogee head with round projections which give it a roughly trefoil shape, and is framed in rope mouldings of great size, which end above in three curious finials.

[Sidenote: Gollega.]

There are not very many churches built entirely in this style, though to many a door or a window may have been added or even a nave, as was done to the church of the Order of Christ at Thomar and perhaps to the cathedral of Guarda. Santa Cruz at Coimbra is entirely Manoelino, but is too large and too full of the work of the foreigners who brought in the most beautiful features of the French renaissance to be spoken of now. Another is the church at Gollega, not far from the Tagus and about half-way between Santarem and Thomar. It is a small church, with nave and aisles of five bays and a square chancel. The piers consist of four half-round shafts round a square. In front the capitals are round next the neck moulding and square next the moulded abacus, while at the sides they become eight-sided. The arches are of two orders and only chamfered. The bases are curious, as each part belonging to a different member of the pier begins at a different level. That of the shaft at the side begins highest, and of the shaft in front lowest, and both becoming eight-sided, envelop the base of the square centre. These eight-sided bases interpenetrate with the mouldings of a lower round base, and all stand on a large splayed octagon, formed from a square by curious ogee curves at the corners. The nave is roofed in wood, but the chancel is vaulted, having ribs enriched like the chancel arch with cable moulding. The west front has a plain tower at the end of the south aisle, buttresses with Gothic pinnacles, a large door below and a round window above. The doorhead is a depressed trefoil, or quatrefoil, as the central leaf is of two curves. Between the inner and outer round moulding is as usual a hollow filled with branches. The outer moulding, on its upper side, throws out the most fantastic curves and cusps, which with their finials nearly encircle two little round windows, and then in wilder curves push up through the square framing at the top to a finial just below the window. At the sides two large twisted shafts standing on very elaborate bases end in twisted pinnacles. The round window is surrounded by large rope moulding, out of which grow two little arms, to support armillary spheres.

[Sidenote: Se, Elvas.]

Dom Manoel also built the cathedral at Elvas, but it has been very much pulled about. Only the nave—in part at least—and an earlier west tower survive. Outside the buttresses are square below and three-cornered above; all the walls are battlemented; the aisle windows are tall and round-headed. On the north side a good trefoil-headed door leads to the interior, where the arches are round, the piers clustered with cable-moulded capitals and starry eight-sided abaci. There is a good vault springing from corbels, but the clerestory windows have been replaced by large semicircles.

[Sidenote: Marvilla, Santarem.]

All the body of the church of Santa Maria da Marvilla at Santarem is built in the style of Dom Joao III., that is, the nave arcade has tall Ionic columns and round arches. The rebuilding of the church was ordered by Dom Manoel, but the style called after him is only found in the chancel and in the west door. The chancel, square and vaulted, is entered by a wide and high arch, consisting, like the door to the Sala das Pegas at Cintra, of a series of moulded convex curves. The west door is not unlike that at Gollega. It has a trefoiled head; with a round moulding at the angle resting on the



capitals of thin shafts. Beyond a broad hollow over which straggles a very realistic and thick-stemmed plant is a large round moulding springing from larger shafts and concentric with the inner. As at Gollega from the outer side of this moulding large cusps project, one on each side, while in the middle it rises up in two curves forming an irregular pentagon with curved sides. Each outward projection of this round moulding ends in a large finial, so that there are five in all, one to each cusp and three to the pentagon. Beyond this moulding a plain flat band runs up the jambs and round the top cutting across the base of the cusps and of the pentagon. The bases of the shafts rest on a moulded plinth and are eight-sided, as are the capitals round which run small wreaths of leaves. Here the upright shafts at the sides are not twisted but run up in three divisions to Gothic pinnacles. (Fig. 53.)

[Sidenote: Madre de Deus.]

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 Joao 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 Gollega the design was even more outrageous, but there it was pulled together and made into a not displeasing whole by the square framing.