THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES DOWN TO THE BATTLE OF
ALJUBARROTA
In Portugal the twelfth century is marked by a very considerable
activity in building, but the thirteenth, which in France and England
saw Gothic architecture rise to a height of perfection both in
construction and in ornament which was never afterwards excelled, when
more great churches and cathedrals were built than almost ever before or
since, seems here to have been the least productive period in the whole
history of the country. In the thirteenth century, indeed, Portugal
reached its widest European limits, but the energies, alike of the kings
and of the people, seem to have been expended rather in consolidating
their conquests and in cultivating and inhabiting the large regions of
land left waste by the long-continued struggle. Although Dom Sancho's
kingdom only extended from the Minho to the Tagus, in the early years of
the thirteenth century the rich provinces of Beira, and still more of
Estremadura, were very thinly peopled: the inhabitants lived only in
walled towns, and their one occupation was fighting, and plunder almost
their only way of gaining a living. It is natural then that so few
buildings should remain which date from the reigns of Dom Sancho's
successors, Affonso II. (1211-1223), Sancho II. (1223-1248), and Affonso
III. (1248-1279): the necessary churches and castles had been built at
once after the conquest, and the people had neither the leisure nor the
means to replace them by larger and more refined structures as was being
done elsewhere. Of course some churches described in the last chapter
may be actually of that period though belonging artistically and
constructionally to an earlier time, as for instance a large part of the
cathedral of Evora or the church of Sao Joao at Santarem.
[Sidenote: Sao Francisco, Guimaraes.]
The Franciscans had been introduced into Portugal by Dona Sancha, the
daughter of Dom Sancho I., and houses were built for them by Dona
Urraca, the wife of Dom Affonso II., at Lisbon and at Guimaraes. Their
church at Guimaraes has been very much altered at different times,
mostly in the eighteenth century, but the west door may very well belong
to Dona Urraca's building. It has a drip-mould covered with closely set
balls, and four orders of mouldings of which the second is a broad
chamfer with a row of flat four-leaved flowers; the abacus is well
moulded, but the capitals, which are somewhat bell-shaped, have the bell
covered with rude animals or foliage which are still very romanesque in
design. The entrance to the chapter-house is probably not much later in
date: from the south walk of the simple but picturesque renaissance
cloister a plain pointed doorway leads into the chapter-house, with, on
either side, an opening of about equal size and shape. In these openings
there stand three pairs of round coupled shafts with plain bases, rudely
carved capitals and large square overhanging abaci, from which spring
two pointed arches moulded only on the under side: resting on these, but
connected with them or with the enclosing arch by no moulding or fillet,
is a small circle, moulded like the arches only on one side and
containing a small quatrefoil.[58] This is one of the earliest attempts
at window tracery in the country, for the west window at Evora seems
later, but like it, it shows that tracery was not really understood in
the country, and that the Portuguese builders were not yet able so to
unite the different parts as to make such a window one complete and
beautiful whole. Indeed so unsuccessful are their attempts throughout
that whenever, as at Batalha, a better result is seen, it may be put
down to foreign influence. Much better as a rule are the round windows,
mostly of the fourteenth century, but they are all very like one
another, and are probably mostly derived from the same source, perhaps
from one of the transept windows at Evora, or from the now empty circle
over the west door at Lisbon.
[Sidenote: Sao Francisco, Santarem.]
Much more refined than this granite church at Guimaraes has been Sao
Francisco at Santarem, now unfortunately degraded into being the stable
of a cavalry barracks. There the best-preserved and most interesting
part is the west door, which does not lead directly into the church but
into a low porch or narthex. The narthex itself has central and side
aisles, all of the same height, is two bays in length and is covered by
a fine strong vault resting on short clustered piers.[59] The doorway
itself, which is not acutely pointed, stands under a gable which reaches
up to the plain battlemented parapet of the flat narthex roof. There are
four shafts on each side with a ring-moulding rather less than half-way
up, which at once distinguishes them from any romanesque predecessors;
the capitals are round with a projecting moulding half-way up and
another one at the top with a curious projection or claw to unite the
round cap and the square moulded abacus. Of the different orders of the
arch, all well moulded, the outer has a hood with billet-mould; the
second a well-developed chevron or zigzag; and the innermost a series of
small horseshoes, which like the chevron stretch across the hollow so as
to hold in the large roll at the angle.[60] (Fig. 26.)
[Sidenote: Santa Maria dos Olivaes, Thomar.]
In a previous chapter the building of a church at Thomar by Dom Gualdim
Paes, Grand Master of the Templars, has been mentioned. Of this church
and the castle built at the same time, both of which stood on the east
or flat bank of the river Nabao, nothing now remains except perhaps the
lower part of the detached bell-tower. This church, Santa Maria dos
Olivaes, was the Matriz or mother church of all those held, first by the
Templars and later by their successors, the Order of Christ, not only in
Portugal but even in Africa, Brazil, and in India. Of so high a dignity
it is scarcely worthy, being but a very simple building neither large
nor richly ornamented. A nave and aisles of five bays, three polygonal
apses to the east and later square chapels beyond the aisles, make up
the whole building. The roofs are all of panelled wood of the sixteenth
century except in the three vaulted apses, of which the central is
entered by an arch, which, rising no higher than the aisle arches,
leaves room for a large window under the roof. All the arches of the
aisle arcade spring from the simple moulded capitals of piers whose
section is that of four half-octagons placed together. In the
[Illustration: FIG. 26.
SANTAREM.
W. DOOR, SAO FRANCISCO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.
SE SILVES.]
clerestory are windows of one small light, in the aisles of two larger
lights, and in the apses single lancets. The great simplicity of the
building notwithstanding it can scarcely be as old as the thirteenth
century: the curious way in which the two lancet lights of the aisle
windows are enclosed under one larger trefoiled arch recalls the similar
windows in the church at Leca do Balio near Oporto begun in 1336, though
there the elliptical head of the enclosing arch is much less
satisfactory than the trefoiled head here used. The only part of the
church which can possibly have been built in the thirteenth century is
the central part of the west front. The pointed door below stands under
a projecting gable like that at Sao Francisco Santarem, except that
there is a five-foiled circle above the arch containing a pentalpha, put
there perhaps to keep out witches. The door itself has three large
shafts on each side with good but much-decayed capitals of foliage, and
a moulded jamb next the door. The arch itself is terribly decayed, but
one of its orders still has the remains of a series of large cusps,
arranged like the horseshoe cusps at Santarem but much larger. Above the
door gable is a circular window of almost disproportionate size. It has
twelve trefoil-headed lights radiating from a small circle, and
curiously crossing a larger circle some distance from the smaller.
Unfortunately the spaces between the trefoils and the outer mouldings
have been filled up with plaster and the lights themselves subdivided
with meaningless wood tracery to hold the horrible blue-and-red glass
now so popular in Portugal. Though Santa Maria dos Olivaes cannot be
nearly as old as has usually been believed, it is one of the earliest
churches built on the plan derived perhaps first from Braga Cathedral or
from the Franciscan and Dominican churches in Galicia, of a wooden
roofed basilica with or without transept, and with three or more apses
to the east; a form which to the end of the Gothic period was the most
common and which is found even in cathedrals as at Silves or at Funchal
in Madeira.
Dom Sancho II., whose reign had begun with brilliant attacks on the
Moors, had, because of his connection with Dona Mencia de Haro, the
widow of a Castilian nobleman, and his consequent inactivity, become
extremely unpopular, so was supplanted in 1246 by his brother Dom
Affonso III. The first care of the new king was to carry on the
conquest
[Sidenote: Silves.]
of the Algarve, which his brother had given up when he fell under the
evil influence of Dona Mencia, and by about 1260 he had overrun the
whole country. At first Alfonso x., the Wise, king of Castile and Leon,
was much displeased at this extension of Portuguese power, but on Dom
Affonso agreeing to marry his daughter Beatriz de Guzman, the Spanish
king allowed his son-in-law to retain his conquests and to assume the
title of King of the Algarve, a title which his descendants still bear.
The countess of Boulogne, Affonso's first wife, was indeed still alive,
but that seems to have troubled neither Dona Beatriz nor her father. At
Silves or Chelb, for so the Moorish capital had been called, a bishopric
was soon founded, but the cathedral,[61] though many of its details seem
to proclaim an early origin, was probably not begun till the early, and
certainly not finished till near the later, years of the fourteenth
century. It is a church of the same type as Santa Maria at Thomar but
with a transept. The west door, a smaller edition of that at Alcobaca,
leads to a nave and aisles of four bays, with plain octagonal columns,
whose bases exactly resemble the capitals reversed--an octagon brought
to a square by a curved chamfer. The nave has a wooden roof, transepts a
pointed barrel vault, and the crossing and chancel with its side chapels
a ribbed vault. Though some of the capitals at the east end look almost
romanesque, the really late date is shown by the cusped fringing of the
chancel arch, a feature very common at Batalha, which was begun at the
end of the fourteenth century, and by the window tracery, where in the
two-light windows the head is filled by a flat pierced slab. Outside,
the chancel has good buttresses at the angles, and is crowned by that
curious boat-like corbel table seen at Santarem and by a row of
pyramidal battlements. The church is only about 150 feet long, but with
its two picturesque and dilapidated towers, and the wonderful deep
purple of its sandstone walls rising above the whitewashed houses and
palms of the older Silves and backed by the Moorish citadel, it makes a
most picturesque and even striking centre to the town, which, standing
high above the river, preserves the memory of its Moslem builders in
its remarkable and many-towered city walls.[62] (Fig. 27.)
[Sidenote: Beja.]
King Diniz the Labourer, so called for his energy in settling and
reclaiming the land and in fixing the moving sands along the west coast
by plantations of pine-trees, and the son of Dom Affonso and Dona
Beatriz, was a more active builder than any of his immediate
predecessors. Of the many castles built by him the best preserved is
that of Beja, the second town of Alemtejo and the Pax Julia of Roman
times. The keep, built about 1310, is a great square tower over a
hundred feet high. Some distance from the top it becomes octagonal, with
the square fortified by corbelled balconies projecting far out over the
corners. Inside are several stories of square halls finely vaulted with
massive octagonal vaults; below, the windows are little more than slits,
but on one floor there are larger two-light pointed openings.[63]
[Sidenote: Leiria.]
Far finer and larger has been the castle of Leiria, some fifty miles
south of Coimbra: it or the keep was begun by Dom Diniz in 1324.[64] The
rock on which it stands, in steepness and in height recalls that of
Edinburgh Castle, but without the long slope of the old town leading
nearly to the summit: towering high above Leiria it is further defended
on the only accessible quarter by the river Lis which runs round two
sides not far from the bottom of the steep descent. Unfortunately all is
ruined, only enough remaining to show that on the steepest edge of the
rock there stood a palace with large pointed windows looking out over
the town to the green wooded hills beyond. On the highest part stands
what is left of the keep, and a little lower the castle-church whose
bell-tower, built over the gate, served to defend the only access to the
inner fortification. This church, built about the same time, with a now
roofless nave which was never vaulted, is entered by a door on the
south, and has a polygonal vaulted apse. The mouldings of the door as
well as the apse vault and its tall two-light windows show a greater
delicacy and refinement than is seen in almost any earlier building, and
some of the carving has once been of great beauty, especially of the
boss at the centre of the apse.[65]
But besides those two castles there is another building of this period
which had a greater and more lasting effect on the work of this
fourteenth century. In England the arrival of the Cistercians and the
new style introduced or rather developed by them seems almost more than
anything else to have determined the direction of the change from what
is usually, perhaps wrongly,[66] called Norman to Early English, but in
Portugal the great foundation of Alcobaca was apparently powerless to
have any such marked effect except in the one case of cloisters. Now
with the exception of the anomalous and much later Claustro Real at
Batalha, all cloisters in Portugal, before the renaissance, follow two
types: one, which is clearly only a modification of the continuous
romanesque arcades resting on coupled shafts, has usually a wooden roof,
and consists of a row of coupled shafts bearing pointed arches, and
sometimes interrupted at intervals by square piers; this form of
cloister is found at Santo Thyrso near Guimaraes, at Sao Domingos in
Guimaraes itself, and in the Cemetery cloister built by Prince Henry the
Navigator at Thomar in the fifteenth century.
[Sidenote: Cloister, Cellas.]
The most remarkable of all the cloisters of the first type is that of
the nunnery of Cellas near Coimbra. Founded in 1210 by Dona Sancha,
daughter of Sancho I., the nunnery is now a blind asylum. The cloister,
with round arches and coupled columns, seems thoroughly romanesque in
character, as are also the capitals. It is only on looking closer that
the real date is seen, for the figures on the capitals, which are carved
with scenes such as the beheading of St. John the Baptist, are all
dressed in the fashion that prevailed under Dom Diniz--about 1300--while
the foliage on others, though still romanesque in arrangement, is much
later in detail. More than half of the arcades were rebuilt in the
seventeenth century, but enough remains to make the cloister of Cellas
one of the most striking examples of the survival of old forms and
methods of building which in less remote countries had been given up
more than a hundred years before.
The church, though small, is not without interest. It has a round nave
of Dom Manoel's time with a nuns' choir to the west and a chancel to the
east, and is entered by a picturesque door of the later sixteenth
century.
[Sidenote: Cloister, Coimbra.]
[Sidenote: Cloister, Alcobaca.]
More interesting is the second type which was commonly used when a
cloister with a vault was wanted; and of it there are still examples to
be seen at the Se Velha Coimbra, at Alcobaca, Lisbon Cathedral, Evora,
and Oporto. None of these five examples are exactly alike, but they
resemble each other sufficiently to make it probable that they are all,
ultimately at least, derived from one common source, and there can be no
doubt that that source was Cistercian. In France what was perhaps its
very first beginnings may be seen in the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay
near Monbart, where in each bay there are two round arches enclosed
under one larger round arch. This was further developed at Fontfroide
near Narbonne, where an arcade of four small round arches under a large
pointed arch carries a thin wall pierced by a large round circle. Of the
different Portuguese examples the oldest may very well be that at
Coimbra which differs only from Fontfroide in having an arcade of two
arches in each bay instead of one of four, but even though it may be a
little older than the large cloister of Alcobaca, it must have been due
to Cistercian influence. The great Claustro do Silencio at Alcobaca was,
as an inscription tells, begun in the year 1310,[67] when on April 13th
the first stone was laid by the abbot in the presence of the master
builder Domingo Domingues.[68] In this case each bay has an arcade of
two or three pointed arches resting on coupled columns with strong
buttresses between each bay, but the enclosing arch is not pointed as at
Coimbra or Fontfroide but segmental and springs from square jambs at the
level of the top of the buttresses, and the circles have been all filled
with pierced slabs, some of which have ordinary quatrefoils and some
much more intricate patterns, though in no case do they show the Moorish
influence which is so noticeable at Evora. On the north side projects
the lavatory, an apsidal building with two stories of windows and with
what in France would be regarded as details of the thirteenth century
and not, as is really the case, of the fourteenth. A few bays on the
west walk seem rather later than the rest, as the arches of the arcade
are trefoil-headed, while the upper part of a small projection on the
south side which now contains a stair, as well as the upper cloister to
which it leads, were added by Joao de Castilho for Cardinal Prince
Henry, son of Dom Manoel, and commendator of the abbey in 1518. (Fig.
28.)
[Sidenote: Cloister, Lisbon.]
In the cloister at Lisbon which seems to be of about the same date, and
which, owing to the nature of the site, runs round the back of the
choir, there is no outer containing arch, and in some bays there are two
large circles instead of one, but in every other respect, except that
some of the round openings are adorned with a ring of dog-tooth
moulding, the details are very similar, the capitals and bases being all
of good thirteenth-century French form.[69] (Fig. 29.)
[Sidenote: Cloister, Oporto.]
If the cloister at Evora, which was built in 1376 and has already been
described, is the one which departs furthest from the original type,
retaining only the round opening, that of the cathedral of Oporto, built
in 1385, comes nearer to Fontfroide than any of the others. Here each
bay is designed exactly like the French example except that the small
arches are pointed, that the large openings are chamfered instead of
moulded, and that there are buttresses between each bay. The capitals
which are rather tall are carved with rather shallow leaves, but the
most noticeable features are the huge square moulded abaci which are so
large as to be more like those of the romanesque cloisters at Moissac or
of Sta. Maria del Sar at Santiago than any fourteenth-century work.
[Sidenote: Sta. Clara, Coimbra.]
The most important church of the time of Dom Diniz is, or rather was,
that of the convent of Poor Clares founded at Coimbra by his wife St.
Isabel. Although a good king, Diniz had not been a good husband, and the
queen's sorrows had been still further increased by the rebellion of
[Illustration: FIG 28.
ALCOBACA.
CLOISTER OF DOM DINIZ, OR DO SILENCIO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.
LISBON.
CATHEDRAL CLOISTER.]
her son, afterwards Affonso IV., a rebellion to which Isabel was able to
put an end by interposing between her husband and her son. When St.
Isabel died in 1327, two years after her husband, the church was not yet
quite finished, but it must have been so soon after. Unfortunately the
annual floods of the Mondego and the sands which they bring down led to
the abandonment of the church in the seventeenth century, and have so
buried it that the floor of the barn--for that is the use to which it is
now put--is almost level with the springing of the aisle arches, but
enough is left to show what the church was like, and were not its date
well assured no one would believe it to be later than the end of the
twelfth century. The chancel, which was aisleless and lower than the
rest of the church, is gone, but the nave and its aisles are still in a
tolerable state of preservation, though outside all the detail has been
destroyed except one round window on the south side filled in with white
marble tracery of a distinctly Italian type, and the corbel table of the
boat-keel shape. The inside is most unusual for a church of the
fourteenth century. The central aisle has a pointed barrel vault
springing from a little above the aisle arches, while the aisles
themselves have an ordinary cross vault. All the capitals too look
early, and the buttresses broad and rather shallow. (Fig. 30.)
[Sidenote: Leca do Balio.]
A few miles north of Oporto on the banks of the clear stream of the Leca
a monastery for men and women had been founded in 986. In the course of
the next hundred years it had several times fallen into decay and been
restored, till about the year 1115 when it was handed over to the
Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem and so became their
headquarters in Portugal. The church had been rebuilt by Abbot Guntino
some years before the transfer took place, and had in time become
ruinous, so that in 1336 it was rebuilt by Dom Frei Estevao Vasques
Pimentel, the head of the Order. This church still stands but little
altered since the fourteenth century, and though not a large or splendid
building it is the most complete and unaltered example of that
thoroughly national plan and style which, developed in the previous
century, was seen at Thomar and will be seen again in many later
examples. The church consists of a nave and aisles of four bays,
transepts higher than the side but lower than the centre aisle of the
nave, three vaulted apses to the east, and at the south-west corner a
square tower. Like many Portuguese buildings Sta. Maria de Leca do Balio
looks at first sight a good deal earlier than is really the case. The
west and the south doors, which are almost exactly alike, except that
the south door is surmounted by a gable, have three shafts on each side
with early-looking capitals and plain moulded archivolts, and within
these, jambs moulded at the angles bearing an inner order whose flat
face is carved with a series of circles enclosing four and five-leaved
flowers. Above the west door runs a projecting gallery whose parapet,
like all the other parapets of the church, is defended by a close-set
row of pointed battlements. Above the gallery is a large rose-window in
which twelve spokes radiate from a cusped circle in the middle to the
circumference, where the lights so formed are further enriched by cusped
semicircles. The aisle and clerestory windows show an unusual attempt to
include two lancets into one window by carrying on the outer framing of
the window till it meets above the mullion in a kind of pendant
arch.[70]
The square tower is exceedingly plain, without string course or buttress
to mitigate its severity. Half-way up on the west side is a small window
with a battlemented balcony in front projecting out on three great
corbels; higher up are plain belfry windows. At the top, square
balconies or bartizans project diagonally from the corners; the whole,
though there are but three pyramidal battlements on each side, being
even more strongly fortified than the rest of the church. Now in the
fourteenth century such fortification of a church can hardly have been
necessary, and they were probably built rather to show that the church
belonged to a military order than with any idea of defence. The inside
is less interesting, the pointed arches are rather thin and the capitals
poor, the only thing much worthy of notice being the font, belonging to
the time of change from Gothic to Renaissance, and given in 1512.[71]
[Sidenote: Chancel, Se, Lisbon.]
Of the other buildings of the time of Dom Affonso IV. who succeeded his
father Diniz in 1328 the most important
[Illustration: FIG. 30.
COIMBRA.
STA. CLARA.]
has been the choir of the cathedral at Lisbon; the church had been much
injured by an earthquake in 1344 and the whole east end was at once
rebuilt on the French plan, otherwise unexampled in Portugal except by
the twelfth-century choir at Alcobaca. Unfortunately the later and more
terrible earthquake of 1755 so ruined the whole building that of Dom
Affonso's work only the surrounding aisle and its chapels remain. The
only point which calls for notice is that the chapels are considerably
lower than the aisle so as to admit of a window between the chapel arch
and the aisle vault. All the chapels have good vaulting and simple
two-light windows, and capitals well carved with naturalistic foliage.
In one chapel, that of SS. Cosmo and Damiao, screened off by a very good
early wrought-iron grill, are the tombs of Lopo Fernandes Pacheco and of
his second wife Maria Rodrigues. Dona Maria, lying on a stone
sarcophagus, which stands on four short columns, and whose sides are
adorned with four shields with the arms of her father, Ruy di Villa
Lobos, has her head protected by a carved canopy and holds up in her
hands an open book which, from her position, she could scarcely hope to
read.[72]
[Sidenote: Royal tombs, Alcobaca. (Fig. 31.)]
Far more interesting both historically and artistically than these
memorials at Lisbon are the royal tombs in the small chapel opening off
the south transepts of the abbey church at Alcobaca. This vaulted
chapel, two bays deep and three wide, was probably built about the same
time as the cloister, and has good clustered piers and well-carved
capitals. On the floor stand three large royal tombs and two smaller for
royal children, and in deep recesses in the north and south walls, four
others. Only the three larger standing clear of the walls call for
notice; and of these one is that of Dona Beatriz, the wife of Dom
Affonso III., who died in 1279, the same lady who married Dom Affonso
while his wife the countess of Boulogne was still alive. Her tomb, which
stands high above the ground on square columns with circular ringed
shafts at the corners, was clearly not made for Dona Beatriz herself,
but for some one else at least a hundred years before. It is of a white
marble, sadly mutilated at one corner by French treasure-seekers, and
has on each side a romanesque arcade with an apostle, in quite archaic
style, seated under each arch; at the ends are large groups of seated
figures, and on the sloping lid Dona Beatriz herself, in very shallow
relief, evidently carved out of the old roof-shaped cover, which not
being very thick did not admit of any deep cutting. Far richer, indeed
more elaborate than almost any other fourteenth-century tombs, are those
of Dom Pedro I. who died in 1367, and of Inez de Castro who was murdered
in 1355. When only sixteen years old Dom Pedro, to strengthen his father
Affonso the Fourth's alliance with Castile, had been married to Dona
Costanca, daughter of the duke of Penafiel. In her train there came as a
lady-in-waiting Dona Inez de Castro, the daughter of the high
chamberlain of Castile, and with her Dom Pedro soon fell in love. As
long as his wife, who was the mother of King Fernando, lived no one
thought much of his connection with Dona Inez, or of that with Dona
Thereza Lourenco, whose son afterwards became the great liberator, King
Joao I., but after Dona Costanca's death it was soon seen that he loved
Dona Inez more than any one had imagined, and he was believed even to
have married her. This, and his refusal to accept any of the royal
princesses chosen by his father, so enraged Dom Affonso that he
determined to have Dona Inez killed, and this was done by three knights
on 7th January 1355 in the Quinta das Lagrimas--that is, the Garden of
Tears--near Coimbra. Dom Pedro, who was away hunting in the south, would
have rebelled against his father, but was persuaded by the queen to
submit after he had devastated all the province of Minho. Two years
later Dom Affonso died, and after Dom Pedro had caught and tortured to
death two of the murderers--the third escaped to Castile--he in 1361 had
Dona Inez's body removed from its grave, dressed in the royal robes and
crowned, and swearing that he had really married her, he compelled all
the court to pay her homage and to kiss her hand: then the body was
placed on a bier and carried by night to the place prepared for it at
Alcobaca, some seventy miles away. When six years later, in 1367, he
came to die himself he left directions that they should be buried with
their feet towards one another, that at the resurrection the first thing
he should see should be Dona Inez rising from her tomb. Unfortunately
the French soldiers in 1810 broke open both tombs, smashing away much
fine carved work and scattering their bones.[73] The two tombs are much
alike in design and differ only in detail; both rest on four lions; the
sides, above a narrow border of sunk quatrefoils, are divided by tiny
buttresses rising from behind the gables of small niches into six parts,
each of which has an arch under a gable whose tympanum is filled with
the most minute tracery. Each of these arches is cusped and foliated
differently according to the nature of the figure subject it contains.
Behind the tops of the gables and pinnacles of the buttresses runs a
small arcade with beautiful little figures only a few inches high: above
this a still more delicate arcade runs round the whole tomb, interrupted
at regular intervals by shields, charged on Dom Pedro's tomb with the
arms of Portugal and on that of Dona Inez with the same and with those
of the Castros alternately. At the foot of Dom Pedro's is represented
the Crucifixion, and facing it on that of Dona Inez the Last Judgment.
Nothing can exceed the delicacy and beauty of the figure sculpture, the
drapery is all good, and the smallest heads and hands are worked with a
care not to be surpassed in any country. (Fig. 32.)
On the top of one lies King Pedro with his head to the north, on the
other Dona Inez with hers to the south; both are life size and are as
well wrought as are the smaller details below. Both have on each side
three angels who seem to be just about to lift them from where they lie
or to have just laid them down. These angels, especially those near Dom
Pedro's head, are perhaps the finest parts of either tomb, with their
beautiful drapery, their well-modelled wings, and above all with the
outstretching of their arms towards the king and Dona Inez. There seems
to be no record as to who worked or designed these tombs, but there can
be little or no doubt that he was a Frenchman, the whole feeling, alike
of the architectural detail and the figures themselves, is absolutely
French; there had been no previous figure sculpture in the country in
any way good enough to lead up to the skill in design and in execution
here shown, nor, with regard to the mere architectural detail, had
Gothic tracery and ornament yet been sufficiently developed for a native
workman to have invented the elaborate cuspings, mouldings, and other
enrichments which make both tombs so pre-eminent above all that came
before them.[74] These tombs, as indeed the whole church, as well as the
neighbouring convent of Batalha, are constructed of a wonderfully fine
limestone, which seems to be practically the same as Caen Stone, and
which, soft and easy to cut when first quarried, grows harder with
exposure and in time, when not in a too shady or damp position, where it
gets black, takes on a most beautiful rich yellow colour.
These tombs, beautiful as they are, do not seem to have any very direct
influence on the work of the next century: it is true that a distinct
advance was made in modelling the effigies of those who lay below, but
apart from that the decoration of these high tombs is in no case even
remotely related to that of the later monuments at Batalha; nor, except
that the national method of church planning was more firmly established
than ever, and that some occasional features such as the cuspings on the
arch-mould of the door of Sao Francisco Santarem, which are copied on an
archaistic door at Batalha, are found in later work, is there much to
point to the great advance that was soon to be made alike in detail and
in construction.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.
ALCOBACA.
CHAPEL WITH ROYAL TOMBS.
(DOM PEDRO AND DONA BEATRIZ.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.
ALCOBACA.
TOMB OF DOM PEDRO I.]