 |
[Sidenote: University Chapel, Coimbra.]
What has been since 1540 the university at Coimbra was originally the royal palace, and the master of the works there till the time of his death in 1524 was Marcos Pires, who also planned and carried out most of the great church of Santa Cruz. Probably the university chapel is his work, for the windows are not at all unlike those at Santa Cruz. The door in many ways resembles the three last described, but the detail is smaller and all the proportions better. The door is double with a triple shaft in the middle; the two openings have very flat trefoil heads with a small ogee curve to the central leaf. The jambs have on each side two slender shafts between which there is a delicate twisted branch, and beyond them is a band of finely carved foliage and then another shaft. From these side shafts there springs a large trefoil, encompassing both openings. It is crocketed on the outside and has the two usual ogee cusps or projections on the outer side; but, instead of a large curved pentagon in the middle, the mouldings of the projections and of the trefoil then intertwine and rise up to some height forming a kind of wide-spreading cross with hollow curves between the arms. The arms of the cross end in finials, as do the ogee projections; there is a shield on each side below the cross arms, another crowned and charged with the royal arms above the central shaft, and on one side of it the Cross of the Order of Christ, and on the other an armillary sphere. On either side, as usual, on an octagonal base are tall twisted shafts, with a crown round the base of the twisted pinnacles which rise just to the level of the spreading arms of the cross. Like the door at Santarem the whole would be sprawling and ill-composed but that here the white-wash of the wall comes down only to the arms of the cross, so as to give it—built as it is of grey limestone—a simple square outline, broken only by the upper arm and finial of the cross.
The heads of the two windows, one on either side of the door, are half-irregular octagons with convex sides. They are surrounded by a broad hollow splay framed by thin shafts resting on corbels and bearing a head, a flat ogee in shape, but broken by two hanging points; one of the most common shapes for a Manoelino window. (Fig. 54.)
One more doorway before ending this chapter, already too long.
[Sidenote: Sao Juliao, Setubal.]
The parish church of Sao Juliao at Setubal was built during the early years of the sixteenth century, but was so shattered by the great earthquake of 1755 that only two of the doorways survive of the original building. The western is not of much interest, but that on the north—probably the work of Joao Fenacho who is mentioned as being a well-known carver working at Setubal in 1513—is one of the most elaborate doorways of that period.
The northern side of the church is now a featureless expanse
of whitewashed plaster, scarcely relieved by a few simple square windows up near the cornice; but near the west end, in almost incongruous contrast, the plainness of the plaster is emphasised by the exuberant mouldings and carving of the door. Though in some features related to the doors at Santarem or the Madre de Deus the door here is much more elaborate and even barbaric, but at the same time, being contained within a simple gable-shaped moulding under a plain round arch, with no sprawling projections, the whole design—as is the case with the university chapel at Coimbra—is much more pleasing, and if the large outer twisted shafts with their ogee trefoiled head had been omitted, would even have been really beautiful.
The opening of the door itself has a trefoiled head, whose hollow moulding is enriched with small well-carved roses and flowers. This trefoiled head opens under a round arch, springing from delicate round shafts, shafts and arch-mould being alike enriched with several finely carved rings, while from ring to ring the rounded surface is beautifully wrought with wonderful minutely carved spirals. The bases and caps of these, as of the other larger shafts, are of the usual Manoelino type, round with a hollow eight-sided abacus. Beyond these shafts and their arch, rather larger shafts, ringed in the same way and carved with a delicate diaper, support a larger arch, half-octagonal in shape and with convex sides, all ornamented like its supports, while all round this and outside it there runs a broad band of foliage, half Gothic, half renaissance in character. Beyond these again are the large shafts with their ogee trefoiled arch, which though they spoil the beauty of the design, at the same time do more than all the rest to give that strange character which it possesses. These shafts are much larger than the others, indeed they are made up of several round mouldings twisted together each of the same size as the shaft next them. Base and capital are of course also much larger, and there is only one ring ornament, above which the twisting is reversed. All the mouldings are carved, some with spirals, some with bundles of leaves bound round by a rope, with bunches of grape-like fruit between. The twisted mouldings are carried up beyond the capitals to form a huge trefoil turning up at the top to a large and rather clumsy finial. In this case the upright shafts at the sides are not twisted as in the other doors; they are square in plan, interrupted by a moulding at the level of the capitals, below which they are carved on each face with large square flowers, while above they have a round moulding at the angles. At the top are plain Gothic pinnacles; behind which rises the enclosing arch, due doubtless to the restoration after the earthquake. The gable-shaped moulding runs from the base of these pinnacles to the top of the ogee, and forms the boundary between the stonework and the plaster.
Such then is the Manoelino in its earlier forms, and there can be little doubt that it was gradually evolved from a union of late Gothic and Moorish, owing some peculiarities such as twisted shafts, rounded mouldings, and coupled windows to Moorish, and to Gothic others such as its flowery finials. The curious outlines of its openings may have been derived, the simpler from Gothic, the more complex from Moorish. Steps are wanting to show whence came the sudden growth of naturalism, but it too probably came from late Gothic, which had already provided crockets, finials and carved bands of foliage so that it needed but little change to connect these into one growing plant. Sometimes these Manoelino designs, as in the palace at Cintra, are really beautiful when the parts are small and do not straggle all over the surface, but sometimes as in the Marvilla door at Santarem, or in that of the convent of the Madre de Deus at Lisbon, the mouldings are so clumsy and the design so sprawling and ill-connected, that they can only be looked on as curiosities of architectural aberration.
CHAPTER XI
THOMAR AND THE CONQUEST OF INDIA
Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon in July 1497 with a small fleet to try and make his way to India by sea, and he arrived at Calicut on the Malabar coast nearly a year later, in May 1598. He and his men were well received by the zamorim or ruler of the town—then the most important trade centre in India—and were much helped in their intercourse by a renegade native of Seville who acted as interpreter. After a stay of about two months he started for home with his ships laden with spices, and with a letter to Dom Manoel in which the zamorim said:—
'Vasco da Gama, a nobleman of thy household, has visited my kingdom, and has given me great pleasure. In my kingdom is abundance of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, and precious stones; what I seek from thy country is gold, silver, coral and scarlet.'[108]
Arriving at Lisbon in July 1499, Vasco da Gama met with a splendid reception from king and people; was given 20,000 gold cruzados, a pension of 500 cruzados a year, and the title of Dom; while provision was also made for the families of those who had perished during the voyage; for out of one hundred and forty-eight who started two years earlier only ninety-six lived to see Lisbon again.
So valuable were spices in those days that the profit to the king on this expedition, after all expenses had been paid and all losses deducted, was reckoned as being in the proportion of sixty to one.
No wonder then that another expedition was immediately organised by Dom Manoel. This armada—in which the largest ship was of no more than four hundred tons—sailed from Lisbon under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral on March 9, 1500. Being driven out of his course, Cabral after many days saw a high mountain which he took to be an island, but sailing on found that it was part of a great continent. He landed, erected a cross, and took possession of it in the name of his king, thus securing Brazil for Portugal. One ship was sent back to Lisbon with the news, and the rest turned eastwards to make for the Cape of Good Hope. Four were sunk by a great gale, but the rest arrived at Calicut on September 13th.
Here he too was well received by the zamorim and built a factory, but this excited the anger of the Arab traders, who burned it, killing fifty Portuguese. Cabral retorted by burning part of the town and sailed south to Cochin, whose ruler, a vassal of the zamorim, was glad to receive the strangers and to accept their help against his superior. Thence he soon sailed homewards with the three ships which remained out of his fleet of thirteen.
In 1502 Dom Manoel received from the Pope Alexander VI. the title of 'Lord of Navigation, conquests and trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India,' and sent out another great expedition under Vasco da Gama, who, however, with his lieutenant, Vicente Sodre, found legitimate trade less profitable than the capture of pilgrim ships going to and from Mecca, which they rifled and sank with all on board. From the first thus treated they took 12,000 ducats in money and 10,000 ducats' worth in goods, and then blew up the ship with 240 men besides women and children.
Reaching Calicut, the town was again bombarded and sacked, since the zamorim would not or could not expel all the Arab merchants, the richest of his people.
Other expeditions followed every year till in 1509 a great Mohammedan fleet led by the 'Mirocem, the Grand Captain of the Sultan of Grand Cairo and of Babylon,' was defeated off the island of Diu, and next year the second viceroy, Affonso de Albuquerque, moved the seat of the government from Cochin to Goa, which, captured and held with some difficulty, soon became one of the richest and most splendid cities of the East.
Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and the great depot of Persian trade had been captured in 1509, and it was not long before the Portuguese had penetrated to the Straits of Malacca and even to China and Japan.
So within twelve years from the time of Vasco da Gama's voyage the foundations of the Portuguese empire in the East had been firmly laid—an empire which, however, existed merely as a great trading concern in which Dom Manoel was practically sole partner and so soon became the richest sovereign of his time.
Seeing therefore how close the intercourse was between Lisbon and India,[109] it is perhaps no wonder that, in his very interesting book on the Renaissance Architecture of Portugal, Albrecht Haupt, struck by the very strange forms used at Thomar and to a lesser degree in the later additions to Batalha, propounded a theory that this strangeness was directly due to the importation of Indian details. That the discovery of a sea route to India had a great influence on the architecture of Portugal cannot be denied, for the direct result of this discovery was to fill the coffers of a splendour-loving king with what was, for the time, untold wealth, and so to enable him to cover the country with innumerable buildings; but tempting as it would be to accept Haupt's theory, it is surely more reasonable to look nearer home for the origin of these peculiar features, and to see in them only the culmination of the Manoelino style and the product of an even more exuberant fancy than that possessed by any other contemporary builder. Of course, when looking for parallels with such a special object in view it is easy enough to find them, and to see resemblances between the cloister windows at Batalha and various screens or panels at Ahmedabad; and when we find that a certain Thomas Fernandes[110] had been sent to India in 1506 as military engineer and architect; that another Fernandes, Diogo of Beja, had in 1513 formed part of an embassy sent to Gujerat and so probably to the capital Ahmedabad; and that Fernandes was also the name of the architects of Batalha, it becomes difficult not to connect these separate facts together and to jump to the quite unwarrantable conclusion that the four men of the same name may have been related and that one of them, probably Diogo, had given his kinsmen sketches or descriptions on which they founded their designs.[111]
With regard to Thomar, where the detail is even more curious and Indian-looking, the temptation to look for Indian models is still stronger, owing to the peculiar position which the Order of Christ at Thomar now held, for the knights of that order had for some time possessed complete spiritual jurisdiction over India and all other foreign conquests.
This being so, it might have seemed appropriate enough for Dom Manoel to decorate the additions he made to the old church with actual Indian detail, as his builder did with corals and other symbols of the strange discoveries then made. The fact also that on the stalls at Santa Cruz in Coimbra are carved imaginary scenes from India and from Brazil might seem to be in favour of the Indian theory, but the towns and forests there depicted are exactly what a mediaeval artist would invent for himself, and are not at all like what they were supposed to represent, and so, if they are to be used in the argument at all, would rather go to show how little was actually known of what India was like.
There seems also not to be even a tradition that anything of the sort was done, and if a tradition has survived about the stalls at Coimbra, surely, had there been one, it might have survived at Thomar as well.
At the same time it must be admitted that the bases of the jambs inside the west window in the chapter-house are very unlike anything else, and are to a Western eye like Indian work. However, a most diligent search in the Victoria and Albert Museum through endless photographs of Indian buildings failed to find anything which was really at all like them, and this helped to confirm the belief that this resemblance is more fancied than real; besides, the other strange features, the west window outside, and the south window, now a door, are surely nothing more than Manoelino realism gone a little mad.
Thomar has already been seen in the twelfth century when Dom Gualdim Paes built the sixteen-sided church and the castle, and when he and his Templars withstood the Moorish invaders with such success.
As time went on the Templars in other lands became rich and powerful, and in the fourteenth century Philippe le Bel of France determined to put an end to them as an order and to confiscate their goods. So in 1307 the grand master was imprisoned, and five years later the Council of Vienne, presided over by Clement V.—a Frenchman, Bertrand de Goth—suppressed the order. Philippe seized their property, and in 1314 the grand master was burned.
In Portugal their services against the Moors were still remembered, and although by this time no part of Portugal was under Mohammedan rule, Granada was not far off, and Morocco was still to some extent a danger.
Dom Diniz therefore determined not to exterminate the Templars, but to change them into a new military order, so in 1319 he obtained a bull from John XXII. from Avignon constituting the Order of Christ. At first their headquarters were at Castro-Marim at the mouth of the Guadiana, but soon they returned to their old Templar stronghold at Thomar and were re-granted most of their old possessions.
The Order of Christ soon increased in power, and under the administration of Prince Henry, 1417 to 1460, took a great part in the discoveries and explorations which were to bring such wealth and glory to their country. In 1442, Eugenius IV. confirmed the spiritual jurisdiction of the order over all conquests in Africa, and Nicholas V. and Calixtus III. soon extended this to all other conquests made, or to be made anywhere, so that the knights had spiritual authority over them 'as if they were in Thomar itself.' This boon was obtained by Dom Affonso V. at his uncle Prince Henry's wish.
When Prince Henry died he was succeeded as duke of Vizeu and as governor of the order by his nephew Fernando, the second son of Dom Duarte. Fernando died ten years later and was succeeded by his elder son Diogo, who was murdered fifteen years later by Dom Joao II. in 1485. Then the title passed to his brother Dom Manoel, and with it the administration of the order, a position which he retained when he ascended the throne, and which has since belonged to all his successors.
Prince Henry finding that the old Templar church with its central altar was unsuited to the religious services of the order, built a chapel or small chancel out from one of the eastern sides and dedicated it to St. Thomas of Canterbury. But as the order advanced in wealth and in power this addition was found to be far too small, and in a general chapter held by Dom Manoel in 1492 it was determined to build a new Coro large enough to hold all the knights and leaving the high altar in its old place in the centre of the round church.
In all the Templar churches in England, when more room was wanted, a chancel was built on to the east, so that the round part, instead of containing the altar, has now become merely a nave or a vestibule. At Thomar, however, probably because it was already common to put the stalls in a gallery over the west door, it was determined to build the new Coro to the west, and this was done by breaking through the two westernmost sides of the sixteen-sided building and inserting a large pointed arch.
Although it was decided to build in 1492, little or nothing can have been done for long, if it is true that Joao de Castilho who did the work was only born about the year 1490; and that he did it is certain, as he says himself that he 'built the Coro, the chapter-house—under the Coro—the great arch of the church, and the principal door.'
Two stone carvers, Alvaro Rodrigues and Diogo de Arruda, were working there in 1512 and 1513, and the stalls were begun in July 1511, so that some progress must have been made by them. If then Joao de Castilho did the work he must have been born some time before 1490, as he could hardly have been entrusted with such a work when a boy of scarcely twenty.
Joao de Castilho, who is said to have been by birth a Biscayan, soon became the most famous architect of his time. He not only was employed on this Coro, but was afterwards summoned to superintend the great Jeronymite monastery of Belem, which he finished. Meanwhile he was charged by Joao III. with the building of the vast additions made necessary at Thomar when in 1523 the military order was turned into a body of monks. He lived long enough to become a complete convert to the renaissance, for at Belem the Gothic framework is all overlaid with renaissance detail, while in his latest additions at Thomar no trace of Gothic has been left. He died shortly before 1553, as we learn from a document dated January 1st of that year, which states that his daughter Maria de Castilho then began, on the death of her father, to receive a pension of 20,000 reis.
The new Coro is about eighty-five feet long inside by thirty wide, and is of three bays. Standing, as does the Templars' church, on the highest point of the hill, it was, till the erection of the surrounding cloisters, clear of any buildings. Originally the round church, being part of the fortifications, could only be entered from the north, but the first thing done by Dom Manoel was to build on the south side a large platform or terrace reached from the garden on the east by a great staircase. This terrace is now bounded on the west by the Cloister dos Filippes, on the south by a high wall and by the chapter-house, begun by Dom Manoel but never finished, and on the north by the round church and by one bay of the Coro; and in this bay is now the chief entrance to the church. The lower part of the two western bays is occupied by the chapter-house, with one window looking west over the cloister of Santa Barbara, and one south, now hidden by the upper Cloister dos Filippes and used as a door. [See plan p. 225.]
Inside, the part over the chapter-house is raised to form the choir, and there, till they were burned in 1810 by the French for firewood, stood the splendid stalls begun in July 1511 by Olivel of Ghent who had already made stalls for Sao Francisco at Evora.[112] The stalls had large figures carved on their backs, a continuous canopy, and a high and elaborate cresting, while in the centre on the west side the Master's stall ended in a spire which ran up with numberless pinnacles, ribs and finials to a large armillary sphere just under the vaulting.[113] Now the inside is rather bare, with no ornament beyond the intricacy of the finely moulded ribs and the elaborate corbels from which they spring. These are a mass of carving, armillary spheres, acanthus leaves, shields upheld by well-carved figures, crosses, and at the top small cherubs holding the royal crown.
The inner side of the door has a segmental head and on either jamb are tall twisted shafts. A moulded string course running round just above the level once reached by the top of the stalls turns up over the window as a hood-mould.
At the same time much was done to enrich the old Templars' church. All the shafts were covered with gilt diaper and the capitals with gold; crockets were fixed to the outer sides of the pointed arches of the central octagon, and inside it were placed figures of saints standing on Gothic corbels under canopies of beautiful tabernacle work. Similar statues stand on the vaulting shafts of the outer polygon and between them, filling in the spaces below the round-headed windows, are large paintings in the Flemish style common to all Portuguese pictures of that time—of the Nativity, of the Visit of the Magi, of the Annunciation, and of the Virgin and Child.
To-day the only part of the south side visible down to the ground level is the eastern bay in which opens the great door. This is one of the works which Joao de Castilho claims as his, and on one of the jambs there is carved a strap, held by two lion's paws on which are some letters supposed to be his signature, and some figures which have been read as 1515, probably wrongly, for there seems to have been no renaissance work done in Portugal except by Sansovino till the coming of Master Nicolas to Belem in 1517 or later.[114] If it is 1515 and gives the date, it must mean the year when the mere building was finished, not the carving, for the renaissance band can hardly have been done till after his return from Belem.
The doorway is one of great beauty, indeed is one of the most beautiful pieces of work in the kingdom. The opening itself is round-headed with three bands of carving running all round it, separated by slender shafts of which the outermost up to the springing of the arch is a beautiful spiral with four-leaved flowers in the hollows. Of the carved bands the innermost is purely renaissance, with candelabra, medallions, griffins and leaves all most beautifully cut in the warm yellow limestone. On the next band are large curly leaves still Gothic in style and much undercut; and in the last, four-leaved flowers set some distance one from the other.
At the top, the drip-mould grows into a large trefoil with crockets outside and an armillary sphere within. At the sides tall thin buttresses end high above the door in sharp carved pinnacles and bear under elaborate canopies many figures of saints.[115] Two other pinnacles rise from the top of the arch, and between them are more saints. In the middle stands Our Lady, and from her canopy a curious broken and curving moulding runs across the other pinnacles and canopies to the sides.
But that which gives to the whole design its chief beauty is the deep shadow cast by the large arch thrown across from one main buttress to the other just under the parapet. This arch, moulded and enriched with four-leaved flowers, is fringed with elaborate cusps, irregular in size, which with rounded mouldings are given a trefoil shape by small beautifully carved crockets. (Fig. 55.)
Except the two round buttresses at the west end and one on the north side which has Manoelino pinnacles, all are the same, breaking into a cluster of Gothic pinnacles rather more than half-way up and ending in one large square crocketed pinnacle very like those at Batalha. The roof being flat and paved there is no gable at the west end; there is a band of carving for cornice, then a moulding, and above it a parapet of flattened quatrefoils, in each of which is an armillary sphere, and at the top a cresting, alternately of cusped openings and crosses of the Order of Christ, most of which, however, have been broken away. Of the windows all are wide and pointed, without tracery and deeply splayed. The one in the central bay next the porch has niches and canopies at the side for statues and jambs not unlike those designed some years after at Belem. There is also a certain resemblance between the door here and the great south entrance to Belem, though this one is of far greater beauty, being more free from over-elaboration and greatly helped by the shadow of the high arch.
So far the design has shown nothing very abnormal; but for one or two renaissance details it is all of good late Gothic, with scarcely any Manoelino features. It is also more pleasing than any other contemporary building in Portugal, and the detail, though very rich, is more restrained. This may be due to the nationality of Joao de Castilho, for some of the work is almost Spanish, for example the buttresses, the pinnacles, and the door with its trefoiled drip-mould.
If, however, the two eastern bays are good late Gothic, what can be said of the western? Here the fancy of the designer seems to have run quite wild, and here it is that what have been considered to be Indian features are found.
It is hard to believe that Joao de Castilho, who nowhere, except perhaps in the sacristy door at Alcobaca, shows any love of what is abnormal and outlandish, should have designed these extraordinary details, and so perhaps the local tradition may be so far true, according to which the architect was not Joao but one Ayres do Quintal. Nothing else seems to be known of Ayres—though a head carved under the west window of the chapter-house is said to be his—but in a country so long illiterate as Portugal, where unwritten stories have been handed down from quite distant times, it is possible that oral tradition may be as true as written records.
Now it is known that Joao de Castilho was working at Alcobaca in 1519. In 1522 he was busy at Belem, where he may have been since 1517, when for the first time some progress seems to have been made with the building there. What really happened, therefore, may be that when he left Thomar, the Coro was indeed built, and the eastern buttresses finished, but that the carving of the western part was still uncut and so may have been the work of Ayres after Joao was himself gone.[116] This is, of course, only a conjecture, for Ayres seems to be mentioned in no document, but whoever it was who carved these buttresses and windows was a man of extraordinary originality, and almost mad fancy.
To turn now from the question of the builder to the building itself. The large round buttresses at the west end are fluted at the bottom; at about half their height comes a band of carving about six feet deep seeming to represent a mass of large ropes ending in tasselled fringes or possibly of roots. On one buttress a large chain binds these together, on the others a strap and buckle—probably the Order of the Garter given to Dom Manoel by Henry VII. Above this five large knotty tree-trunks or branches of coral grow up the buttresses uniting in rough trefoiled heads at the top, and having statues between them—Dom Affonso Henriques,
Dom Gualdim Paes, Dom Diniz and Dom Manoel—two on each buttress. Then the buttress becomes eight-sided and smaller, and, surrounded by five thick growths, of which not a square inch is unworked and whose pinnacles are covered with carving, rises with many a strange moulding to a high round pinnacle bearing the cross of the order—a sign, if one may take the coral and the trees to be symbolical of the distant seas crossed and of the new lands visited, of the supreme control exercised by the order over all missions.
Coral-like mouldings too run round the western windows on both north and south sides, and at the bottom these are bound together with basket work.
Strange as are the details of these buttresses, still more strange are the windows of the chapter-house. Since about 1560 the upper cloister of the Filippes has covered the south side of the church so that the south chapter-house window, which now serves as a door, is hidden away in the dark. Still there is light enough to see that in naturalism and in originality it far surpasses anything elsewhere, except the west window of the same chapter-house. Up the jambs grow branches bound round by a broad ribbon. From the spaces between the ribbons there sprout out on either side thick shoots ending in large thistle heads. The top of the opening is low, of complicated curves and fine mouldings, on the outermost of which are cut small curly leaves, but higher up the branches of the jambs with their thistle heads and ribbons with knotted ropes and leaves form a mass of inextricable intricacy, of which little can be seen in the dark except the royal arms.
Inside the vault is Gothic and segmental, but the west window is even more strange than the southern; its inner arch is segmental and there are window seats in the thickness of the wall. The jambs have large round complicated bases of many mouldings, some enriched with leaves, some with thistle heads, some with ribbons, and one with curious projections like small elephants' trunks—in short very much what a Western mind might imagine some Hindu capital, reversed, to be like. On the jamb itself and round the head are three upright mouldings held together by carved basket work of cords, and bearing at intervals thistle heads in threes; beyond is another band of leaf-covered carving, and beyond it an upright strip of wavy lines.[117] The opening has a head like that of the other window and is filled with a bronze grille.
Still more elaborate and extraordinary is the outside of this window, nor would it be possible to find words to describe it.
The jambs are of coral branches, with large round shafts beyond, entirely leaf-covered and budding into thistle heads. Ropes bind them round at the bottom and half-way up great branches are fastened on by chains. At the top are long finials with more chains holding corals on which rest armillary spheres. The head of the window is formed of twisted masses, from which project downwards three large thistle heads. Above this is a great wreath of leaves, hung with two large loops of rope, and twisting up as a sort of cusped ogee trefoil to the royal arms and a large cross of the Order of Christ. A square frame with flamelike border rises to the top of the side finials to enclose a field cut into squares by narrow grooves. Below the window more branches, coral, and ropes knot each other round the head of Ayres just below the rope moulding which runs across from buttress to buttress. Above the top of the opening and about half-way up the whole composition there is an offset, and on it rests a series of disks, set diagonally and strung on another rope. (Fig. 56.)
Although, were the royal arms and the cross removed, the window might not look out of place in some wild Indian temple, yet it is much more likely not to be Indian, but that the shafts at the sides are but the shafts seen in many Manoelino doors, that the window head is an elaboration of other heads,[118] that the coral jambs are another form of common naturalism, and that the great wreath is only the hood-mould rendered more extravagant. In no other work in Portugal or anywhere in the West are these features carved and treated with such wild elaboration, nor anywhere else is there seen a base like that of the jambs inside, but surely there is nothing which a man of imagination could not have evolved from details already existing in the country.
Above the window the details are less strange. A little higher than the cross a string course traverses the front from north to south, crested with pointed cusps. Higher up still, a round window, set far back in a deep splay, lights the church above. Outside the sharp projecting outer moulding of this window are rich curling leaves, inside a rope, while other ropes run spirally across the splay, which seems to swell like a sail, and was perhaps meant to remind all who saw it that it was the sea that had brought the order and its master such riches and power. At the top are the royal arms crowned, and above the spheres of the parapet and the crosses of the cresting another larger cross dominates the whole front.
Such is Dom Manoel's addition to the Templars' church, and outlandish and strange as some of it is, the beautiful rich yellow of the stone under the blue sky and the dark shadows thrown by the brilliant sun make the whole a building of real beauty. Even the wild west window is helped by the compactness of its outline and by the plainness of the wall in which it is set, and only the great coral branches of the round buttresses are actually unpleasing. The size too of the windows and the great thickness of the wall give the Coro a strength and a solidity which agree well with the old church, despite the richness of the one and the severe plainness of the other. There is perhaps no building in Portugal which so well tells of the great increase of wealth which began under Dom Manoel, or which so well recalls the deeds of his heroic captains—their long and terrible voyages, and their successful conquests and discoveries. Well may the emblem of Hope,[119] the armillary sphere, whereby they found their way across the ocean, be carved all round the parapet, over the door, and beside the west window with its wealth of knots and wreaths.
Whether or not Ayres or Joao de Castilho meant the branches of coral to tell of the distant oceans, the trees of the forests of Brazil, and the ropes of the small ships which underwent such dangers, is of little consequence. To the present generation which knows that all these discoveries were only possible because Prince Henry and his Order of Christ had devoted their time and their wealth to the one object of finding the way to the East, Thomar will always be a fitting memorial of these great deeds, and of the great men, Bartholomeu Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Affonso de Albuquerque, Pedro Cabral, and Tristao da Cunha, by whom Prince Henry's great schemes were brought to a successful issue.
CHAPTER XII
THE ADDITIONS TO BATALHA
Little had been done to the monastery of Batalha since the death of Dom Duarte left his great tomb-chapel unfinished. Dom Affonso v., bent on wasting the lives of the bravest of his people and his country's wealth in the vain pursuit of conquests in Morocco, could spare no money to carry out what his father had begun, and so make it possible to move his parents' bodies from their temporary resting-place before the high altar to the chapel intended to receive them. Affonso V. himself dying was laid in a temporary tomb of wood in the chapter-house, as were his wife and his grandson, the only child of Dom Joao II.; while a coffin of wood in one of the side chapels held Dom Joao himself.
When Joao died, his widow Dona Leonor is said to have urged her brother, the new king, to finish the work begun by their ancestor and so form a fitting burial-place for her son as well as for himself and his descendants. Dom Manoel therefore determined to finish the Capellas Imperfeitas, and the work was given to the elder Matheus Fernandes, who had till 1480, when he was followed by Joao Rodrigues, been master of the royal works at Santarem. The first document which speaks of him at Batalha is dated 1503, and mentions him as Matheus Fernandes, vassal of the king, judge in ordinary of the town of Santa Maria da Victoria, and master of the works of the same monastery, named by the king. He died in 1515, and was buried near the west door.[120] He was followed by another Matheus Fernandes, probably his son, who died in 1528, to be succeeded by Joao de Castilho. But by then Dom Manoel was already dead. He had been buried not here, but in his new foundation of Belem, and his son Joao III. and Joao de Castilho himself were too much occupied in finishing Belem and in making great additions to Thomar to be able to do much to the Capellas Imperfeitas. So after building two beautiful but incongruous arches, Joao de Castilho went back to his work elsewhere, and the chapels remain Imperfeitas to this day.
It will be remembered that the tomb-house begun by Dom Duarte took the form of a vast octagon some seventy-two feet in diameter surrounded by seven apsidal chapels—one on each side except that towards the church—and by eight smaller chapels between the apses. When Matheus Fernandes began his work most of the seven surrounding chapels were finished except for their vaulting, but not all, as in two or three the outer moulding of the entrance arch is enriched by small crosses of the Order of Christ, and by armillary spheres carved in the hollow; while the whole building stood isolated and unconnected with the church.
The first thing, therefore, done by Matheus was to build an entrance hall or pateo uniting the octagon with the church. Unless the walls of the Pateo be older than Dom Manoel's time it is impossible now to tell how Huguet, Dom Duarte's architect, meant to connect the two, perhaps by a low passage running eastwards from the central apse, perhaps not at all.
The plan carried out by Matheus took the form of a rectangular hall enclosing the central apse and the two smaller apses to the north and south, but leaving—now at any rate—a space between it and the side apses. Possibly the original intention may have been to pull down the two side apses, and so to form a square ambulatory behind the high altar leading to the great octagon beyond; but if that were the intention it was never carried out, and now the only entrance is through an insignificant pointed door on the north side.
The walls of the Pateo with their buttresses, string courses and parapet are so exactly like the older work as to suggest that they may really date from the time of Dom Duarte, and that all that Matheus Fernandes did was to build the vault, insert the windows, and form the splendid entrance to the octagon; but in any case the building was well advanced if not finished in 1509, when over the small entrance door was written, 'Perfectum fuit anno Domini 1509.'
Two windows light the Pateo, one looking north and one south. They are both alike, and both are thoroughly Manoelino in style. They are of two lights, with well-moulded jambs, and half-octagonal heads. The drip-mould, instead or merely surrounding the half octagon, is so broken and bent as to project across it at four points, being indeed shaped like half a square with a semicircle on the one complete side, and two quarter circles on the half sides, all enriched by many a small cusp and leaf. The mullion is made of two branches twisting upwards, and the whole window head is filled with curving boughs and leaves forming a most curious piece of naturalistic tracery, to be compared with the tracery of some of the openings in the Claustro Real. (Fig. 58.)
No doubt, while the Pateo was being built, the great entrance to the Imperfect chapels, one of the richest as well as one of the largest doorways in the world, was begun, and it must have taken a long time to build and to carve, for the lower part, on the chapel side especially, seems to be rather earlier in style than the upper. The actual opening to the springing of the arch measures some 17 feet wide by 28 feet high, while including the jambs the whole is about 24 feet wide on the chapel, and considerably more on the Pateo side,—since there the splay is much deeper—by 40 feet high. To take the chapel side first:—Above a complicated base there is up the middle of each jamb a large hollow, in which are two niches one above the other, with canopies and bases of the richest late Gothic; on either side of this hollow are tall thin shafts entirely carved with minute diaper, two on the inner and one on the outer side. Next towards the chapel is another slender shaft, bearing two small statues one above the other, and outside it slender Gothic pinnacles and tabernacle work rise up to the capital. Up the outer side of the jambs are carved sharp pointed leaves, like great acanthus whose stalk bears many large exquisitely carved crockets. On the other side of the central hollow the diapered shaft is separated from the tiers of tiny pinnacles which form the inner angle of the jamb by a broad band of carving, which for beauty of design and for delicacy of carving can scarcely be anywhere surpassed. On the Pateo side the carving is even more wonderful.[121] There are seven shafts in all on each side, some diapered, some covered with spirals of leaves, one with panelling and one with exquisite foliage carved as minutely as on a piece of ivory.
Between each shaft are narrow mouldings, and between the outer five four bands of ivy, not as rich or as elaborately undercut as on the chapel side, but still beautiful, and interesting as the ivy forms many double circles, two hundred and four in all, in each of which are written the words 'Tayas Erey' or 'Taya Serey,' Dom Manoel's motto. For years this was a great puzzle. In the seventeenth century the writer of the history of the Dominican Order in Portugal, Frei Luis de Souza, boldly said they were Greek, and in this opinion he was supported by 'persons of great judgment, for "Tanyas" is the accusative of a Greek word "Tanya," which is the same as region, and "erey" is the imperative of the verb "ereo", which signifies to seek, inquire, investigate, so that the meaning is, addressed to Dom Manoel, seek for new regions, new climes.' Of course whatever the meaning may be it is not Greek, indeed at that time in Portugal there was hardly any one who could speak Greek, and Senhora de Vasconcellos—than whom no one has done more for the collecting of inscriptions in Portugal—has come to the very probable conclusion that the words are Portuguese. She holds that 'Tayas erey' or 'Taya serey' should be read 'Tanaz serey,' 'I shall be tenacious'—for Tanaz is old Portuguese for Tenaz—and that the Y is nothing but a rebus or picture of a tenaz or pair of pincers, and indeed the Y's are very like pincers. In this opinion she is upheld by the carving of the tenacious ivy round each word, and the fact that Dom Manoel was not really tenacious at all, but rather changeable, makes it all the more likely that he would adopt such a motto.
The carvers were doubtless quite illiterate and may well have thought that the pincers in the drawing from which they were working were a letter and may therefore have mixed them up to the puzzling of future generations.[122] Or since nowhere is 'Tayaz serey' written with the 'z' may not the first 'y' be the final 'z' of Tanaz misplaced?
The arched head of the opening is treated differently on the two sides. Towards the Pateo the two outer mouldings form a large half octagon set diagonally and with curved sides; the next two form a large trefoil. In the spandrels between these are larger wreaths enclosing 'Tanyas erey,' which is also repeated all round these four mouldings.
The trefoils form large hanging cusps in front of the complicated inner arch. This too is more or less trefoil in shape,
but with smaller curves between the larger, and all elaborately fringed with cuspings and foliage.
Four mouldings altogether are of this shape, two on each side, and beyond them towards the chapel is that arch or moulding which gives to the whole its most distinctive character. The great trefoil, with large cusps, which forms the head is crossed by another moulding in such a way as to become a cinquefoil, while the second moulding, like the hood of the door at Santarem, forms three large reversed cusps, each ending in splendid acanthus leaves. Further, the whole of these mouldings are on the inner side carved with a delicate spiral of ribbon and small balls, and on the outer with the same acanthus that runs up the jambs.
Now, on the chapel side especially, from the base to the springing there is little that might not be found in late French Gothic work, except perhaps that diapered shafts were not then used in France, and that the bands of carving are rather different in spirit from French work; but as for the head, no opening of that size was made in France of so complicated and, it must be added, so unconstructional a shape. It is the chef-d'oeuvre of the Manoelino style, and although a foreigner may be inclined at first, from its very strangeness, to call it Eastern, it is really only a true development in the hands of a real artist of what Manoelino was; an expression of Portugal's riches and power, and of the gradual assimilation of such Moors as still remained on this side the Straits. Of course it is easy to say that it is extravagant, overloaded and debased; and so it may be. Yet no one who sees it can help falling a victim to its fascination, for perhaps its only real fault is that the great cusps and finials are on rather too large a scale for the rest. Not even the greatest purist could help admiring the exquisite fineness of the carving—a fineness made possible by the limestone, very soft when new, which gradually hardens and grows to a lovely yellow with exposure to the air. No records tell us so, but considering the difference in style between the upper and the lower part it may perhaps be conjectured that the elder Matheus designed the lower part, and the younger the upper, after his father's death in 1515.
In the great octagon itself the first thing to be done was to build huge piers, which partly encroach on the small sepulchral chapels between the larger apses. These piers now rise nearly to the level of the central aisle of the church where they are cut off unfinished; they must be about 80 or 90 feet in height. On the outer side they are covered with many circular shafts which are banded together by mouldings at nearly regular intervals. Haupt has pointed out that in general appearance they are not unlike the great minar called the Kutub at Old Delhi, and a lively imagination might see a resemblance to the vast piers, once the bases of minars, which flank the great entrance archways of some mosques at Ahmedabad, for example those in the Jumma Musjid. Yet there is no necessity to go so far afield. Manoelino architects had always been fond of bundles of round mouldings and so naturally used them here, nor indeed are the piers at all like either the Kutub or the minars at Ahmedabad. They have not the batter or the sharp angles of the one, nor the innumerable breaks and mouldings of the others.
Between each pier a large window was meant to open, of which unfortunately nothing has been built but part of the jambs.
Inside the vaulting of the apsidal chapels was first finished; all the vaults are elaborate, have well-moulded ribs, and bosses, some carved with crosses of the Order of Christ, some with armillary spheres, others with a cross and the words 'In hoc signo vinces,' or with a sphere and the words 'Espera in Domino.' Where Dom Joao II. was to be buried is a pelican vulning herself—for that was his device—and in that intended for his father Dom Affonso V. a 'rodisio' or mill-wheel. A little above the entrance arches to the chapels the octagon is surrounded by two carved string courses separated by a broad plain frieze.[123] On the lower string are the beautifully modelled necks and heads of dragons, springing from acanthus leaves and so set as to form a series of M's, and on the upper an exquisite pattern arranged in squares, while on it rests a most remarkable cresting. In this cresting, which is formed of a single bud set on branches between two coupled buds, the forms are most strange and at the same time beautiful.
Inside, the great piers have been much more highly adorned than without. The vaulting shafts in the middle—which, formed of several small round mouldings, have run up quite plain from the ground, only interrupted by shields and their mantling on the frieze—are here broken and twisted. On either side are niches with Gothic canopies, above which are interlacing leaves and branches. Beyond the niches are the window jambs, on which, next the opening, are shafts carved with naturalistic tree-stems, and between these and the niches two bands of ornament separated by thin plain shafts.
In each opening these bands are different. In some is Gothic foliage, in others semi-classic carving like the string below or realistic like the cresting. In others are naturalistic branches, and in the opening over the chapel where Dom Manoel was to lie are cut the letters M in one hand and R in the other; Manoel Rey. (Fig. 59.)
Only the first foot or so of the vaulting has been built, and there is nothing now to show how the great octagon was to be roofed. Murphy[124] gives his idea; the eight piers carried high up and capped with spires, huge Gothic windows between, and the whole covered by a vast pointed roof—presumably of wood—above the vault. Haupt with his Indian prepossessions suggests a dome surrounded by eight great domed pinnacles. Probably neither is right; certainly Murphy's great roof of wood would never have been made, and as for Haupt's dome nothing domed was built in Portugal till long after and that at first only on a small scale.[125] Besides, the well-developed Gothic ribs which are seen springing in each corner clearly show that some kind of Gothic vault was meant, and not a dome; and that the Portuguese could build wonderful vaults had been already shown by the chapter-house here and was soon to be shown by the transept at Belem. So in all probability the roof would have been a great Gothic vault of which the centre would rise very considerably above the sides; for there is no sign of stilting the ribs over the windows. The whole would have been covered with stone slabs, and would have been surrounded by eight groups of pinnacles, most of which would no doubt have been twisted.
Deeply though one must regret that this great chapel has been left unfinished and open to the sky, yet even in its incomplete state it is a treasure-house of beautiful ornament, and it is wonderful how well the more commonplace Gothic of Huguet's work agrees with and even enhances the richness of the detail which Fernandes drew from so many sources, late Gothic, early renaissance, and naturalistic, and which he knew so well how to combine into a beautiful whole.
The great Claustro Real, built by Dom Joao I., was peculiar among Portuguese cloisters in having, or at least being prepared for, large traceried windows. Probably these had remained blank, and for about a hundred years awaited the tracery which more than any part of the convent shows the skill of Matheus Fernandes.
There seems to be no exact record of when the work was done, but it must have been while additions were being made to the Imperfect chapels, though more fortunate than they, the work here was successfully finished.
The cloister has seven bays on each side, of which the five in the middle are nearly equal, having either five or six lights. In the eastern corners the openings have only three lights, in the south-western they have four, and in the north-western there stands the square two-bayed lavatory. (Fig. 60.)
In all the openings the shafts are alike. They have tall eight-sided and round bases, similar capitals and a moulded ring half-way up, while the whole shaft from ring to base and from ring to capital is carved with the utmost delicacy, with spirals, with diaper patterns, or with leaflike scales. Above the capitals the pointed openings are filled in with veils of tracery of three different patterns. In the central bay, and in the two next but one on either side of it, and so filling nine openings, is what at first seems to be a kind of reticulated tracery. But on looking closer it is found to be built up of leaf-covered curves and of buds very like those forming the cresting in the Capellas Imperfeitas. In the corner bays—except where stands the lavatory—there is another form of reticulated tracery, where the larger curves are formed by branches, whose leaves make the cusps, while filling in the larger spaces are budlike growths like those in the first-mentioned windows.
On either side of the central openings the tracery is more naturalistic than elsewhere; here the whole is formed of interlacing and intertwining branches, with leaves and large fruit-like poppy heads, and in the centre the Cross of the Order of Christ. But of all, the most successful is in the lavatory; there the two bays which form each side are high and narrow,
with richly cusped pointed arches. Instead of cutting out the cusps and filling the upper part with tracery, Matheus Fernandes has with extraordinary skill thrown a crested transome across the opening and below it woven together a veil of exquisitely carved branches, which, resting on a central shaft, half hide and half reveal the large marble fountain within. (Fig. 61.)
At first, perhaps, accustomed to the ordinary forms of Gothic tracery, these windows seem strange, to some even unpleasing. Soon, however, when they have been studied more closely, when it has been recognised that the brilliant sunshine needs closer tracery and smaller openings than does the cooler North, and that indeed the aim of the designer is to keep out rather than to let in the direct rays of light, no one can be anything but thankful that Matheus Fernandes, instead of trying to adapt Gothic forms to new requirements, as was done by his predecessors in the church, boldly invented new forms for himself; forms which are entirely suited to the sun, the clear air and sky, and which with their creamy lace make a fitting background to the roses and flowers with which the cloister is now planted.
Now the question arises, from whence did Matheus Fernandes draw his inspiration? We have seen that windows with good Gothic tracery are almost unknown in Portugal, for even in the church here at Batalha the larger windows nearly all show a want of knowledge, and a wish to shut out the sun as much as possible, and besides there is really no resemblance between the tracery in the church and that in the cloister.
In the lowest floor of the Torre de Sao Vicente, begun by Dom Joao II. and finished by Dom Manoel to defend the channel of the Tagus, the central hall is divided from a passage by a thin wall whose upper part is pierced to form a perforated screen. The original plan for the tower is said to have been furnished by Garcia de Resende, whose house we have seen at Evora, and if this screen, which is built up of heart-shaped curves, is older than the cloister windows at Batalha, he may have suggested to Matheus Fernandes the tracery which has a more or less reticulated form, though on the other hand it may be later and have been suggested by them. Most probably, however, Matheus Fernandes thought out the tracery for himself. He would not have had far to go to see real reticulated panelling, for the church is covered with it; but an even more likely source of this reticulation might be found in the beautiful Moorish panelling which exists on such buildings as the Giralda or the tower at Rabat, and if we find Moors among the workmen at Thomar there may well have been some at Batalha as well. As for the naturalistic tracery, it is clearly only an improvement on such windows as those of the Pateo behind the church, and there is no need to go to Ahmedabad and find there pierced screens to which they have a certain resemblance.
However, whatever may be its origin, this tracery it is which makes the Claustro Real not only the most beautiful cloister in Portugal, but even, as that may not seem very great praise, one of the most beautiful cloisters in the world, and it must have been even more beautiful before a modern restoration crowned all the walls with a pierced Gothic parapet and a spiky cresting, whose angular form and sharp mouldings do not quite harmonise with the rounded and gentle curves of the tracery below.
After the suppression of the monastic orders in 1834, Batalha, which had already suffered terribly from the French invasion—for in 1810 during the retreat under Massena two cloisters were burned and much furniture destroyed—was for a time left to decay. However, in 1840 the Cortes decreed an annual expenditure of two contos of reis,[126] or about L450 to keep the buildings in repair and to restore such parts as were damaged.
The first director was Senhor Luis d'Albuquerque, and he and his successors have been singularly successful in their efforts, and have carried out a restoration with which little fault can be found, except that they have been too lavish in building pierced parapets, and in filling the windows of the church with wooden fretwork and with hideous green, red and blue glass.
CHAPTER XIII
BELEM
Belem or Bethlehem lies close to the shore, after the broad estuary of the Tagus has again grown narrow, about four miles from the centre of Lisbon, and may best be reached by one of the excellent electric cars which now so well connect together the different parts of the town and its wide-spreading suburbs.
Situated where the river mouth is at its narrowest, it is natural that it was chosen as the site of one of the forts built to defend the capital. Here, then, on a sandbank washed once by every high tide, but now joined to the mainland by so unromantic a feature as the gasworks, a tower begun by Dom Joao II., and designed, it is said, by Garcia de Resende, was finished by Dom Manoel about 1520 and dedicated to Sao Vicente, the patron of Lisbon.[127]
The tower is not of very great size, perhaps some forty feet square by about one hundred high. It stands free on three sides, but on the south towards the water it is protected by a great projecting bastion, which, rather wider than the tower, ends at the water edge in a polygon.
The tower contains several stories of one room each, none of which are in themselves in any way remarkable except the lowest, in which is the perforated screen mentioned in the last chapter. In the second story the south window opens on to a long balcony running the whole breadth of the tower, and the other windows on to smaller balconies. The third story is finished with a fortified parapet resting on great corbels. The last and fourth, smaller than those below, is fortified with pointed merlons, and with a round corbelled turret at each corner.
On entering, it is found that the bastion contains a sort of cloister with a flat paved roof on to which opens the door of the tower. Under the cloister are horrid damp dungeons, last used by Dom Miguel, who during his usurpation imprisoned in them such of his liberal opponents as he could catch. The whole bastion is fortified with great merlons, rising above a rope moulding, each, like those on the tower, bearing a shield carved with the Cross of the Order of Christ, and by round turrets corbelled out at the corners. These, like all the turrets, are capped with melon-shaped stone roofs, and curious finials. Similar turrets jut out from two corners of the ground floor.
The parapet also of the cloister is interesting. It is divided into squares, in each of which a quatrefoil encloses a cross of the Order of Christ. At intervals down the sides are spiral pinnacles, at the corners columns bearing spheres, and at the south end a tall niche, elaborately carved, under whose strange canopy stand a Virgin and Child.
The most interesting features of the tower are the balconies. That on the south side, borne on huge corbels, has in front an arcade of seven round arches, resting on round shafts with typical Manoelino caps. A continuous sloping stone roof covers the whole, enriched at the bottom by a rope moulding, and marked with curious nicks at the top. The parapet is Gothic and very thin. The other balconies are the same, a pointed tentlike roof ending in a knob, a parapet whose circles enclose crosses of the order, but with only two arches in front.
The third story is lit by two light windows on three sides, and on the south side by two round-headed windows, between which is cut a huge royal coat-of-arms crowned.
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 Bacalhoa, 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 Bacalhoa 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 Lourenco Fernandes, who in turn gave place to Joao 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 Lourenco Fernandes, while the great door is almost certainly that of Joao de Castilho.
In any case, when Joao 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 Joao de Castilho was the coming of Master Nicolas, the Frenchman[131] whom we shall see at work at Coimbra and at Sao 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.
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 Joao de Castilho himself and to what he had learned either from Nicolas or
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 Joao III., and the unfortunate Dom Sebastiao, 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.
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.
Taking the outside of the church first. The walls of the transept and of the transept chapel are perfectly plain, without buttresses, with but little cornice and, now at least, without a cresting or parapet. They are only relieved by an elaborate band of ornament which runs along the whole south side of the church, by the tall round-headed windows, and in the main transept by a big rope moulding which carries on the line of the chapel roof. Plain as it is, this part of the church is singularly imposing from its very plainness and from its great height, and were the cornice and cresting complete and the original chancel still standing would equal if not surpass in beauty the more elaborate nave. The windows—one of which lights the main transept on each side of the chancel, and two, facing east and west, the chapel which also has a smaller round window looking south—are of great size, being about thirty-four feet high by over six wide; they are deeply set in the thick wall, are surrounded by two elaborate bands of carving, and have crocketed ogee hood-moulds.
The great band of ornament which is interrupted by the lower part of the windows has a rope moulding at the top above which are carved and interlacing branches, two rope mouldings at the bottom, and between them a band of carving consisting of branches twisted into intertwining S's, ending in leaves at the bottom and buds at the top, the whole being nearly six feet across.
The three eastern bays of the nave are separated by buttresses, square below, polygonal above, and ending in round shafts and pinnacles at the top. The cornice, here complete, is deep with its five carved mouldings, but not of great projection. On it stands the cresting of elaborately branched leaves, nearly six feet high.
The central bay is entirely occupied by the great south door which, with its niches, statues and pinnacles entirely hides the lower part of the buttresses. The outer round arch of the door is thrown across between the two buttresses, which for more than half their height are covered with carved and twisted mouldings, with niches, canopies, corbels, and statues all carved with the utmost elaboration. Immediately above the great arch is a round-headed window, and on either side between it and the buttresses are two rows of statues and niches in tiers separated by elaborate statue-bearing shafts and pinnacles. Statues even occupy niches on the window jamb, and a Virgin and Child stand up in front on the end of the ogee drip-mould of the great arch. (Fig. 64.)
It will be seen later how poorly Diogo de Castilho at Coimbra finished off his window on the west front of Santa Cruz. Here the work was probably finished first, and it is curious that Diogo in copying his brother's design did not also copy the great canopy which overshadows the window and which, rising through the cornice to a great pinnacled niche, so successfully finishes the whole design. Here too the buttresses carry up the design to the top of the wall, and with the strong cornice and rich cresting save it from the weakness which at Coimbra is emphasised by the irregularity of the walling above.
Luckier than the door at Coimbra this one retains its central jamb, on which, on a twisting shaft from whose base look out two charming lions, there stands, most appropriately, Prince Henry the Navigator, without whose enterprise Vasco da Gama would in all probability never have sailed to India and so given occasion for the founding of this church. Round each of the two entrances runs a band of renaissance carving, and the flat reliefs in the divided tympanum are rather like some that may be seen in France,[132] but otherwise the detail is all Gothic. Twisted shafts bearing the corbels, elaborate canopies, crocketed finials, all are rather Gothic than Manoelino. Since the material—a kind of marble—is much less fine than the stone used at Batalha or in Coimbra or Thomar, the carving is naturally less minute and ivory-like than it is there, and this is especially the case with the foliage, which is rather coarse. The statues too—except perhaps Prince Henry's—are a little short and sturdy.
The tall windows in the bays on either side of this great door are like those in the transept, except that round them are three bands of carving instead of two, the one in the centre formed of rods which at intervals of about a foot are broken to cross each other in the middle, and that beyond the jambs tall twisted shafts run up to round finials just under the cornice.
In the next bay to the west, where is the choir gallery inside, there are two windows, one above the other, like the larger ones but smaller, and united by a moulding which runs round both.
The same is the case with the tower, where, however, the upper window is divided into two, the lower being a circle and the upper having three intersecting lights. The drip-mould is also treated in the common Manoelino way with large spreading finials. Above the cornice, which is less elaborate than in the nave, was a short octagonal drum capped by a low spire, now replaced by a poor dome and flying buttresses.
The west door once opened into a three-aisled porch now gone. It is much less elaborate than the great south door, but shows great ingenuity in fitting it in under what was once the porch vault. The twisted and broken curves of the head follow a common Manoelino form, and below the top of the broken hood-mould are two flying angels who support a large corbel on which is grouped the Holy Family. On the jambs are three narrow bands of foliage, and one of figures standing under renaissance canopies. On either side are spreading corbels and large niches with curious bulbous canopies[133] under which kneel Dom Manoel on the left presented by St. Jerome, and on the right, presented by St. John the Baptist, his second wife, Queen Maria—like the first, Queen Isabel, a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and the aunt of his third wife, Leonor. These figures are evidently portraits, and even if they were flattered show that they were not a handsome couple.
Below these large corbels, on which are carved large angels, are two smaller niches with figures, one on each side of the twisted shaft. Renaissance curves form the heads of these as they do of larger niches, one on each side of the Holy Family above, which contain the Annunciation and the Visit of the Wise Men.
Beyond Dom Manoel and his wife are square shafts with more niches and figures, and beyond them again flatter niches, half Manoelino, half renaissance. The rest of the west front above the ruined porch is plain except for a large round window lighting the choir gallery. The north-west tower does not rise above the roof.
Outside, the church as a whole is neither well proportioned nor graceful. The great mass of the transept is too overwhelming, the nave not long enough, and above all, the large windows of the nave too large. It would have looked much better had they been only the size of the smaller windows lighting the choir gallery—omitting the one below, and this would further have had the advantage of not cutting up the beautiful band of ornament. But the weakest part of the whole design are the towers, which must always have been too low, and yet would have been too thin for the massive building behind them had they been higher. Now, of course, the one finished with a dome has nothing to recommend it, neither height, nor proportion, nor design. Yet the doorway taken by itself, or together with the bay on either side, is a very successful composition, and on a brilliantly sunny day so blue is the sky and so white the stone that hardly any one would venture to criticise it for being too elaborate and over-charged, though no doubt it might seem so were the stone dingy and the sky grey and dull.
The church of Belem may be ill-proportioned and unsatisfactory outside, but within it is so solemn and vast as to fill one with surprise. Compared with many churches the actual area is not really very great nor is it very high, yet there is perhaps no other building which gives such an impression of space and of freedom. Entering from the brilliant sunlight it seems far darker than, with large windows, should be the case, and however hideous the yellow-and-blue checks with which they are filled may be, they have the advantage of keeping out all brilliant light; the huge transept too is not well lit and gives that feeling of vastness and mystery which, as the supports are few and slender, would otherwise be wanting, while looking westwards the same result is obtained by the dark cavernous space under the gallery. (Fig. 65.)
On the south side the walls are perfectly plain, broken only by the windows, whose jambs are enriched with empty niches; on the north the small windows are placed very high up, the twisted vaulting shafts only come down a short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing part of the whole building. Not more than three feet thick, they rise up to a height of nearly seventy feet to support a great stone vault. Four only of the six stand clear from floor to roof, for the two western are embedded at the bottom in the jambs of the gallery arches. From their capitals the vaulting ribs spread out in every direction, being constructively not unlike an English fan vault, and covering the whole roof with a network of lines. The piers are round, stand on round moulded pedestals, and are divided into narrow strips by eight small shafts. The height is divided into four nearly equal parts by well-moulded rings, encircling the whole pier, and in the middle of the second of these divisions are corbels and canopies for statues. The capitals are round and covered with leaves, but scarcely exceed the piers in diameter. Besides all this each strip between the eight thin shafts is covered from top to bottom—except where the empty niches occur—with carving in slight relief, either foliage or, more usually, renaissance arabesques.
Larger piers stand next the transept, cross-shaped, formed of four of the thinner piers set together, and about six feet thick. They are like the others, except that there are corbels and canopies for statues in the angles, and that a capital is formed by a large moulding carved with what is meant for egg and tongue. From this, well moulded and carved arches, round in the central and pointed in the side aisles, cross the nave from side to side, dividing its vault from that of the transept.
This transept vault, perhaps the largest attempted since the days of the Romans—for it covers a space measuring about ninety-five feet by sixty-five—is three bays long from north to south and two wide from east to west; formed of innumerable ribs springing from these points—of which those at the north and south ends are placed immediately above the arches leading to the chapels—it practically assumes in the middle the shape of a flat oblong dome.
Now, though the walls are thick, there are no buttresses, and the skill and daring required to build a vault sixty-five feet wide and about a hundred feet high resting on side walls on one side and on piers scarcely six feet thick on the other must not only excite the admiration of every one, especially when it is remembered that no damage was caused by the great earthquake which shook Lisbon to pieces in 1755, but must also raise the wish that what has been so skilfully done here had been also done in the Capellas Imperfeitas at Batalha.
At the north end of the main transept are two doors, one leading to the cloister and one to the sacristy. A straight and curved moulding surrounds their trefoil heads under a double twining hood-mould. Outside, other mouldings rise high above the whole to form a second large trefoil, whose hood-mould curves into two great crocketed circles before rising to a second ogee.
The chancel has a round and the chapels pointed entrance arches, formed, as are the jambs, of two bands of carving and two thick twisted mouldings. Tomb recesses, added later, with strapwork pediments line the chapels, and at the entrance to the chancel are two pulpits, for the Gospel and Epistle. These are rather like Joao de Ruao's pulpit at Coimbra in outline, but supported on a large capital are quite Gothic, as are the large canopies which rise above them.
Strong arches with cable mouldings lead to the space under the gallery, which is supported by an elaborate vault, elliptical in the central and pointed in the side aisles.
In the gallery itself—only to be entered from the upper cloister—are the choir stalls, of Brazil wood, added in 1560, perhaps from the designs of Diogo da Carta.[134]
With the earlier stalls at Santa Cruz and at Funchal, and the later at Evora, these are almost the only ones left which have not been replaced by rococo extravagances.
The back is divided into large panels three stalls wide, each containing a painting of a saint, and separated by panelled and carved Corinthian pilasters. Below each painting is an oblong panel with, in the centre, a beautifully carved head looking out of a circle, and at the sides bold carvings of leaves, dragons, sirens, or animals, while beautiful figures of saints stand in round-headed niches under the pilasters. At the ends are larger pilasters, and a cornice carried on corbels serves as canopy. Each of the lower stalls has a carved panel under the upper book-board, but the small figures which stood between them on the arms are nearly all gone.
If 1560 be the real date, the carving is extraordinarily early in character; the execution too is excellent, though perhaps the heads under the paintings are on too large a scale for woodwork, still they are not at all coarse, and would be worthy of the best Spanish or French sculptors.
The cloister, nearly, but not quite square, has six bays on each side, of which the four central bays are of four lights each, while narrower ones at the ends have no tracery. In the traceried bays the arches are slightly elliptical, subdivided by two round-headed arches, which in turn enclose two smaller round arches enriched some with trefoil cusps, some with curious hanging pieces of tracery which are put, not in the middle, but a little to the side nearer the central shaft. The shafts are round, very like those at Batalha, and, like every inch of the arch and tracery mouldings, are covered with ornament; some are twisted, some diapered, some covered with renaissance detail. Broad bands too of carving run round the inside and the outside of the main arches, the inner being almost renaissance and the outer purely Manoelino. The vault of many ribs, varying in arrangement in the different walks, is entirely Gothic, while all the doors—except the double opening leading to the chapter-house, which has beautifully carved renaissance panels on the jambs—are Manoelino. The untraceried openings at the ends are fringed with very extraordinary lobed projections, and on the solid pieces of walling at the corners are carved very curious and interesting coats of arms crosses and emblems worked in with beautifully cut leaves and birds. (Figs. 66 and 67.)
Outside, between each bay, wide buttresses project, of which the front—formed into a square pilaster—is enriched with panels of beautiful renaissance work, while the back part is fluted or panelled. From the top mouldings of these pilasters, rather higher than the capitals of the openings, elliptical arches with a vault behind are thrown across from pier to pier with excellent effect. Now, the base mouldings of these panelled pilasters either do not quite fit those of the fluted strips behind, or else are cut off against them, as are also the top mouldings of the fluted part; further, the fluted part runs up rather awkwardly into the vault, so that it seems reasonable to conjecture that these square renaissance pilasters and the arches may be an after-thought, added because it was found that the original buttresses were not quite strong enough for their work, and this too would account for the purely renaissance character of the carving on them, while the rest is almost entirely Gothic or Manoelino. The arches are carried diagonally across the corners, in a very picturesque manner, and they all help to keep out the direct sunlight and to throw most effective shadows.
The parapet above these arches is carved with very pleasing renaissance details, and above each pier rise a niche and saint.
The upper cloister is simpler than the lower. All the arches are round with a big splay on each side carved with four-leaved flowers. They are cusped at the top, and at the springing two smaller cusped arches are thrown across to a pinnacled shaft in the centre. The buttresses between them are covered with spiral grooves, and are all finished off with twisted pinnacles. Inside the pointed vault is much simpler than in the walks below.
Here the tracery is very much less elaborate than in the Claustro Real at Batalha, but as scarcely a square inch of the whole cloister is left uncarved the effect is much more disturbed and so less pleasing.
Beautiful though most of the ornament is, there is too much of it, and besides, the depressed shape of the lower arches is bad and ungraceful, and the attempt at tracery in the upper walks is more curious than successful.
The chapter-house too, though a large and splendid room, would have looked better with a simpler vault and without the elliptical arches of the apse recesses.
The refectory, without any other ornament than the bold ribs of its vaulted roof, and a dado of late tiles, is far more pleasing.
Altogether, splendid as it is, Belem is far less pleasing, outside at least, than the contemporary work at Batalha or at Thomar, for, like the tower of Sao Vicente near by, it is wanting in those perfect proportions which more than richness of detail give charm to a building. Inside it is not so, and though many of the vaulting ribs might be criticised as useless
and the whole vault as wanting in simplicity, yet there is no such impressive interior in Portugal and not many elsewhere.
The very over-elaboration which spoils the cloister is only one of the results of all the wealth which flowed in from the East, and so, like the whole monastery, is a worthy memorial of all that had been done to further exploration from the time of Prince Henry, till his efforts were crowned with success by Vasco da Gama.
[Sidenote: Conceicao, Velha.]
There can be little doubt that the transept front of the church of the Conceicao Velha was also designed by Joao de Castilho. The church was built after 1520 on the site of a synagogue, and was almost entirely destroyed by the earthquake of 1755. Only the transept front has survived, robbed of its cornice and cresting, and now framed in plain pilasters and crowned by a pediment. The two windows, very like those at Belem, have beautiful renaissance details and saints in niches on the jambs.
The large door has a round arch with uprights at the sides rising to a horizontal crested moulding. Below, these uprights have a band of renaissance carving on the outer side, and in front a canopied niche with a well-modelled figure. Above they become semicircular and end in sphere-bearing spirelets. The great round arch is filled with two orders of mouldings, one a broad strip of arabesque, the other a series of kneeling angels below and of arabesque above. The actual openings are formed of two round-headed arches whose outer mouldings cross each other on the central jamb. Above them are two reversed semicircles, and then a great tympanum carved with a figure of Our Lady sheltering popes, bishops, and saints under her robe: a carving which seems to have lately taken the place of a large window. (Fig. 68.)
As it now stands the front is not pleasing. It is too wide, and the great spreading pediment is very ugly. Of course it ought not to be judged by its present appearance, and yet it must be admitted that the windows are too large and come too near the ground, and that much of the detail is coarse. Still it is of interest if only because it is the only surviving building closely related to the church of Belem. Built perhaps to commemorate the expulsion of the Jews, it shared the fate of the Jesuits who instigated the expulsion, and was destroyed only a few years before they were driven from the country by the Marques de Pombal.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COMING OF THE FOREIGN ARTISTS
If Joao de Castilho and his brother Diogo were really natives of one of the Basque provinces, they might rightly be included among the foreign artists who played such an important part in Portugal towards the end of Dom Manoel's reign and the beginning of that of his son, Dom Joao III. Yet the earlier work of Joao de Castilho at Thomar shows little trace of that renaissance influence which the foreigners, and especially the Frenchmen, were to do so much to introduce.
[Sidenote: Santa Cruz, Coimbra.]
A great house of the Canon Regular of St. Augustine had been founded at Coimbra by Dom Affonso Henriques for his friend Sao Theotonio in 1131. But with the passage of centuries the church and monastic building of Sta. Cruz had become dilapidated, and were no longer deemed worthy of so wealthy and important a body. So in 1502 Dom Manoel determined to rebuild them and to adorn the church, and it was for this adorning that he summoned so many sculptors in stone and in wood to his aid.
The first architect of the church was Marcos Pires, to whom are due the cloister and the whole church except the west door, which was finished by his successor Diogo de Castilho with the help of Master Nicolas, a Frenchman.
One Gregorio Lourenco seems to have been what would now be called master of the works, and from his letters to Dom Manoel we learn how the work was going on. After Dom Manoel's death in 1521 he writes to Dom Joao III., telling him what, of all the many things his father the late king had ordered, was already finished and what was still undone.
The church consists of a nave of four bays, measuring some 105 feet by 39, with flanking chapels, the whole lined with eighteenth-century tiles, mostly blue and white. There are also a great choir gallery at the west end, a chancel, polygonal
within but square outside, 54 feet long by 20 broad, with a seventeenth-century sacristy to the south, a cloister to the north, and chapels, one of which was the chapter-house, forming a kind of passage from sacristy to cloister behind the chancel.
By 1518 the church must have been already well advanced, for in January of that year Gregorio Lourenco writes to Dom Manoel saying that 'the wall of the dormitory was shaken and therefore I have sent for "Pere Anes"—Pedro Annes had been master builder of the royal palace, now the university at Coimbra, and being older may have had more experience than Marcos Pires, the designer of the monastery—who had it shored up, and they say that after the vault of the cloister is finished and the wooden floors in it will be quite safe. Also six days ago came the master of the reredos from Seville and set to work at once to finish the great reredos, for which he has worked all the wood—he must surely have brought it with him from Seville—but the glazier has not yet come to finish the windows.'
On 22nd July following he writes again that all but one of the vaults of the cloister were finished—'and Marcos Pirez works well, and the master of the reredos has finished the tabernacle, and the "cadeiras" [that is probably, sedilia] and the bishop has come to see them and they are very good, and the master who is making the tombs of the kings is working at his job, and has already much stonework.'
These tombs of the kings are the monuments of Dom Affonso Henriques on the north wall of the chancel and of Dom Sancho I. on the south. The two first kings of Portugal had originally been buried in front of the old church, and were now for the first time given monuments worthy of their importance in the history of their country.
In 1521 Dom Manoel died, and next year Gregorio tells his successor what his father had ordered; after speaking of the pavement, the vault of Sao Theotonio's Chapel, the dormitory with its thirty beds and its fireplace, the refectory, the royal tombs and a great screen twenty-five palms, or about eighteen feet high, he comes to the pulpit—'This, Sir, which is finished, all who see it say, that in Spain there is no piece of stone of better workmanship, for this 20$000 have been paid,' leaving some money still due. |
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