EARLY MANOELINO
Affonso V., the African, had died and been succeeded by his son Joao II.
in 1487. Joao tried, not without success, to play the part of Louis XI.
of France and by a judicious choice of victims (he had the duke of
Braganza, the richest noble in the country, arrested by a Cortes at
Evora and executed, and he murdered his cousin the duke of Vizeu with
his own hand) he destroyed the power of the feudal nobility. Enriched by
the confiscation of his victims' possessions, the king was enabled to do
without the help of the Cortes, and so to establish himself as a
despotic ruler. Yet he governed for the benefit of the people at large,
and reversing the policy of his father Affonso directed the energies of
his people towards maritime commerce and exploration instead of wasting
them in quarrelling with Castile or in attempting the conquest of
Morocco. It was he who, following the example of his grand-uncle Prince
Henry, sent out ship after ship to find a way to India round the
continent of Africa. Much had already been done, for in 1471 Fernando Po
had reached the mouth of the Niger, and all the coast southward from
Morocco was well known and visited annually, for slaves used to
cultivate the vast estates in the Alemtejo; but it was not till 1484
that Diogo Cao, sent out by the king, discovered the mouth of the Congo,
or till 1486 that Bartholomeu Diaz doubled the Cabo Tormentoso, an
ill-omened name which Dom Joao changed to Good Hope.
Dom Joao II. did not live to greet Vasco da Gama on his return from
India, for he died in 1495, but he had already done so much that Dom
Manoel had only to reap the reward of his predecessor's labours. The one
great mistake he made was that in 1493 he dismissed Columbus as a
dreamer, and so left the glory of the discovery of America to Ferdinand
and Isabella. Besides doing so much for the trade of his country, Dom
Joao did what he could to promote literature and art. Andrea da
Sansovino worked for him for nine years from 1491 to 1499, and although
scarcely anything done by him can now be found, he here too set an
example to Dom Manoel, who summoned so many foreign artists to the
country and who sent so many of his own people to study in Italy and in
Flanders.
Four years before Dom Joao died, his only son Affonso, riding down from
Almerim to the Tagus to meet his father, who had been bathing, fell from
his horse and was killed. In 1495 he himself died, and was succeeded by
his cousin, Manoel the Fortunate. Dom Manoel indeed deserved the name of
'Venturoso.' He succeeded his cousin just in time to see Vasco da Gama
start on his great voyage which ended in 1497 at Calicut. Three years
later Pedro Alvares Cabral landed in Brazil, and before the king died,
Goa--the great Portuguese capital of the East--had become the centre of
a vast trade with India, Ormuz[102] in the Persian Gulf of trade with
Persia, while all the spices[103] of the East flowed into Lisbon and
even Pekin[104] had been reached.
From all these lands, from Africa, from Brazil, and from the East,
endless wealth poured into Lisbon, nearly all of it into the royal
treasury, so that Dom Manoel became the richest sovereign of his time.
In some other ways he was less happy. To please the Catholic Kings, for
he wished to marry their daughter Isabel, widow of the young Prince
Affonso, he expelled the Jews and many Moors from the country. As they
went they cursed him and his house, and Miguel, the only child born to
him and Queen Isabel, and heir not only to Portugal but to all the
Spains, died when a baby. Isabel had died at her son's birth, and
Manoel, still anxious that the whole peninsula should be united under
his descendants, married her sister Maria. His wish was realised--but
not as he had hoped--for his daughter Isabel married her cousin Charles
V. and so was the mother of Philip II., who, when Cardinal King Henry
died in 1580, was strong enough to usurp the throne of Portugal.
Being so immensely rich, Dom Manoel was able to cover the whole land
with buildings. Damiao de Goes, who died in 1570, gives a list of
sixty-two works paid for by him. These include cathedrals, monasteries,
churches, palaces, town walls, fortifications, bridges, arsenals, and
the draining of marshes, and this long list does not take in nearly all
that Dom Manoel is known to have built.
Nearly all these churches and palaces were built or added to in that
peculiar style now called Manoelino. Some have seen in Manoelino only a
development of the latest phase of Spanish Gothic, but that is not
likely, for in Spain that latest phase lasted for but a short time, and
the two were really almost contemporaneous.
Manoelino does not always show the same characteristics. Sometimes it is
exuberant Gothic mixed with something else, something peculiar, and this
phase seems to have grown out of a union of late Gothic and Moorish.
Sometimes it is frankly naturalistic, and this seems to have been
developed out of the first; and sometimes Gothic and renaissance are
used together. In this phase, the composition is still always Gothic,
though the details may be renaissance. At times, of course, all phases
are found together, but those which most distinctly deserve the name,
Manoelino, are the first and second.
The shape of the arches, whether of window or of door, is one of the
most characteristic features of Manoelino. After it had been well
established they were rarely pointed. Some are round, some trefoils;
some have a long line of wavy curves, others a line of sharp angles and
curves together.[105] In others, like the door to the Sala das Pegas at
Cintra, and so probably derived from Moorish sources, the arch is made
of three or more convex curves, and in others again the arch is half of
a straight-sided polygon, while in many of the more elaborate all or
many of these may be used together to make one complicated whole of
interlacing mouldings and hanging cusps.
The capitals too are different from any that have come before. Some are
round, but they are more commonly eight-sided, or have at least an
eight-sided abacus, often with the sides hollow forming a star. If
ornamented with leaves, the leaves do not grow out of the bell but are
laid round it like a wreath. But leaf carving is not common; usually
the caps are merely moulded, one or two of the mouldings being often
like a rope; or branches may be set round them sometimes bound together
with a broad ribbon like a bent faggot. The bases too are usually
octagonal with an ogee section.
Another feature common to all phases is the use of round mouldings,
either one by itself--often forming a kind of twisting broken
hood-mould--or of several together, when they usually form a spiral.
Such a round moulding has already been seen forming an ogee over the
windows at Sempre Noiva and over the chapter-house door at Sao Joao
Evangelista, Evora, and there are at Evora two windows side by side, in
one of which this round moulding forms a simple ogee, while in the other
it forms a series of reversed curves after the true Manoelino manner.
[Sidenote: House of Resende, Evora.]
They are in the house of Garcia de Resende, a man of many
accomplishments whose services were much valued both by Dom Joao and by
Dom Manoel. He seems too to have been an architect of some distinction,
if, as is said, he designed the Torre de Sao Vicente at Belem.
This second window in his house is one of the best examples of the
complete union between Gothic and Moorish. It has three shafts, one (in
the centre) with a Moorish capital, and two whose caps are bound round
with a piece of rope. The semicircular arches consist of one round
moulding with round cusps. A hollow mould runs down the two jambs and
over the two arches, turning up as an ogee at the top. Beyond this
hollow are two tall round shafts ending in large crocketed finials,
while tied to them with carved cords is a curious hood-mould, forming
three reversed cusps ending in large finials, one in the centre and one
over each of the arches, and at the two ends curling across the hollow
like a cut-off branch.
Here then we have an example not only of the use of the round moulding,
but also of naturalistic treatment which was afterwards sometimes
carried to excess.
Probably this window may be rather later in date than at least the
foundation of the churches of Nossa Senhora do Popolo at Caldas da
Rainha or of the Jesus Convent at Setubal; but it is in itself so good
an example of the change from the simple ogee to the round broken
moulding and of the use of naturalistic features, that it has been taken
first.
In 1485 Queen Leonor, wife of Dom Joao II., began a
[Sidenote: Caldas da Rainha.]
hospital for poor bathers at the place now called after her, Caldas da
Rainha, or Queen's hot baths. Beside the hospital was built a small
church, now a good deal altered, with simple round-headed windows, and a
curious cresting. Attached to it is a tower, interesting as being the
only Manoelino church tower now existing. The lower part is square and
plain, but the upper is very curious. On one side are two belfry
windows, with depressed trefoil heads--that is the top of the trefoil
has a double curve, exactly like the end of a clover leaf. On the outer
side of each window is a twisted shaft with another between them, and
from the top of these shafts grow round branches forming an arch over
each window, and twining up above them in interlacing curves. The window
on the east side has a very fantastic head of broken curves and straight
lines. A short way above the windows the square is changed to an octagon
by curved offsets. There are clock faces under small gables on each
cardinal side, and at the top of it all rises a short eight-sided spire.
Probably this was the last part of the church to be built, and so would
not be finished till about the year 1502, when the whole was dedicated.
[Sidenote: Jesus, Setubal.]
More interesting than this is the Jesus College at Setubal. Founded by
Justa Rodrigues, Dom Manoel's nurse, in 1487 or 1488 and designed by one
Boutaca or Boitaca,[106] it was probably finished sooner than the church
at Caldas, and is the best example in the country of a late Gothic
church modified by the addition of certain Manoelino details.
Unfortunately it was a good deal injured by the great earthquake in
1755, when it lost all pinnacles and parapets. The church consists of a
nave and aisles of three and a half bays and of a square chancel.
Inside, the side aisles are vaulted with a half barrel and the central
with a simple vault having large plain chamfered ribs. The columns,
trefoils in section, are twisted, and have simple moulded caps. The
chancel which is higher than the nave is entered by a large pointed
arch, which like its jambs has one of its mouldings twisted. The chancel
vault has many ribs, most of which are also twisted. All the piers and
jambs as well as the windows are built of Arrabida marble, a red breccia
found in the mountains to the west of Setubal; the rest is all
whitewashed except the arches and vaulting ribs which are painted in
imitation of the marble piers.
Outside, the main door, also of Arrabida marble, is large and pointed,
with many mouldings and two empty niches on each side. It has little
trace of Manoelino except in the bent curves of the upturned drip-mould,
and in the broken lines of the two smaller doors which open under the
plain tympanum. The nave window is of two lights with simple tracery,
but in the chancel, which was ready by 1495, the window shows more
Manoelino tendencies. It is of three lights, with flowing tracery at the
head, and with small cusped and crocketed arches thrown across each
light at varying levels. There are niches on the jambs, and the outer
moulding is carried round the window head in broken curves, after the
manner of Resende's house at Evora. Though the chancel is square inside,
the corners outside are cut off by a very broad chamfer, and a very
curious ogee curve unites the two.
The cloisters to the north are more usual. The arches are round or
slightly pointed, and like the short round columns with their moulded
eight-sided caps and sides, are of Arrabida marble. Half-way along each
walk two of the columns are set more closely together, and between them
is a small round arch, with below it a Manoelino trefoil; there is too
in the north-west corner a lavatory with a good flat vault.
[Sidenote: Beja, Conceicao.]
At Beja the church of the Conceicao, founded by Dom Manoel's father, has
been very much pulled about, but the cornice and parapet with Gothic
details, rope mouldings, and twisted pinnacles still show that it also
was built when the new Manoelino style was first coming into use.
[Sidenote: Castle.]
In the ruins of the Castle there is a very picturesque window where two
horseshoe arches are set so close together that the arches meet in such
a way that the cusps at their meeting form a pendant, while another
window in the Rua dos Mercadores, though very like the one in Resende's
house in Evora, is more naturalistic. The outer shafts of the jambs are
carved like tree trunks, and the hood moulding like a thick branch is
bent and interlaced with other branches.
[Sidenote: Paco, Cintra.]
The additions made to the palace at Cintra by Dom Manoel are a complete
treasury of Manoelino detail in its earlier phases.
The works were already begun in 1508, and in January of the previous
year Andre Gonsalves, who was in charge, bought two notebooks for 240
reis in which to set down expenses, as well as paper for his office and
four bottles of ink. From these books we learn what wages the different
workmen received. Pero de Carnide, the head mason, got 50 reis or about
twopence-halfpenny a day, and his helper only 35 reis. The chief
carpenter, Johan Cordeiro, had 60 reis a day, and so had Goncalo Gomes,
the head painter. All the workmen are recorded from Pero de Torres, who
was paid 3500 reis, about 14 shillings, for each of the windows he
carved and set up, down to the man who got 35 reis a day for digging
holes for planting orange-trees and for clearing out the place where the
rabbits were kept. Andre Gonsalves also speaks of a Boitaca, master
mason. He was doubtless the Boitaca or Boutaca of the Jesus Church at
Setubal and afterwards at Belem, though none of his work at Setubal in
any way resembles anything he may have done here.
The carriage entry which runs under the palace between Dom Manoel's
addition and the earlier part of the palace, has in it some very
characteristic capitals, two which support the entrance arch, while one
belongs to the central column of an arcade which forms a sort of aisle
on the west side. They are all round, though one belongs to an octagonal
shaft. They have no abacus proper, but instead two branches are bent
round, bound together by a wide ribbon. Below these branches are several
short pieces of rope turned in just above the neck-mould, and between
them carved balls, something like two artichokes stuck together face to
face.
On the east side of the entry a large doorway leads into the newer part
of the palace, in which are now the queen-dowager's private rooms. This
doorhead is most typical of the style. In the centre two flat convex
curves meet at an obtuse angle. At the end of about two feet on either
side of the centre the moulding forming these curves is bent sharply
down for a few inches to a point, and is then united to the jambs by a
curve rather longer than a semicircle. Outside the round moulding
forming these curves and bends is a hollow following the same lines and
filled with branch-work, curved, twisted, and intertwined. Outside the
hollow are shafts, resting on octagonal and interpenetrating bases.
These shafts are half-octagon in section with hollow--not as usual
rounded--sides, ornamented with four-leafed flowers, and are twisted.
Their capitals are formed by three carved wreaths, from which the shafts
rise to curious half-Gothic pinnacles; they are also curved over to form
a hood-mould. Above the central curves this moulding is broken and
turned up to end in most curious cone-shaped horns, while from the
middle there grows a large and elaborate finial.
In the front of the new part overlooking the entrance court there are
six windows, three in each floor. They are all, except for a slight
variation in detail, exactly alike, and are evidently derived from the
Moorish windows in the other parts of the palace. Like them each has two
round-headed lights, and a framing standing on corbelled-out bases at
the sides. The capitals are various, most are mere wreaths of foliage,
but one belonging to the centre shaft of the middle window on the lower
floor has twisted round it two branches out of which grow the cusps.
While at the sides there is no distinct abacus, in the centre it is
always square and moulded. The cusps end in knobs like thistle-heads,
and are themselves rather branchlike. In the hollow between the shafts
and the framing there are sometimes square or round flowers, sometimes
twisting branches. Branches too form the framing of all, they are
intertwined up the sides, and form above the arches a straight-topped
mass of interlacing twigs, out of which grow three large finials.
Originally the three windows of the upper floor belonged to a large hall
whose ceiling was like that of the Sala dos Cysnes. Unfortunately the
ceiling was destroyed, and the hall cut up into small rooms some time
ago. (Fig. 52.)
Inside are several Manoelino doorways. One at the end of a passage has a
half-octagonal head, with curved sides. Beyond a hollow moulding
enriched with square flowers are thick twisted shafts, which are carried
up to form a hood-mould following the curves of the opening below, and
having at each angle a large radiating finial.
Besides these additions Dom Manoel made not a few changes in the older
part of the palace. The main door leading into the Sala dos Cysnes is of
his time, as is too a window in the upper passage leading to the chapel
gallery. Though the walls of the Sala das Duas Irmas are probably older,
he altered it inside and built the two rows of columns and arches which
support the floor of the Sala dos Brazoes above. The arches are round
and unmoulded. The thin columns are also round, but the bases are
eight-sided; so are the capitals, but with a round abacus of boughs and
twisted ribbons. The great hall above is also Dom Manoel's work, though
the ceiling may probably have been retouched since. His also are the
two-light windows, with slender shafts and heads more or less trefoil in
shape, but with many small convex curves in the middle. The lower part
of the outer cornice too is interesting, and made of brick plastered. At
the bottom is a large rope moulding, then three courses of tilelike
bricks set diagonally. Above them is a broad frieze divided into squares
by a round moulding; there are two rows of these squares, and in each is
an opening with a triangular head like a pigeon-hole, which has given
rise to the belief that it was added by the Marquez de Pombal after the
great earthquake. Pombal means 'dovecot,' and so it is supposed that the
marquis added a pigeon-house wherever he could. He may have built the
upper part of the cornice, which might belong to the eighteenth century,
but the lower part is certainly older.
The white marble door leading to the Sala dos Brazoes from the upper
passage is part of Dom Manoel's work. It has a flat ogee head with round
projections which give it a roughly trefoil shape, and is framed in rope
mouldings of great size, which end above in three curious finials.
[Sidenote: Gollega.]
There are not very many churches built entirely in this style, though to
many a door or a window may have been added or even a nave, as was done
to the church of the Order of Christ at Thomar and perhaps to the
cathedral of Guarda. Santa Cruz at Coimbra is entirely Manoelino, but is
too large and too full of the work of the foreigners who brought in the
most beautiful features of the French renaissance to be spoken of now.
Another is the church at Gollega, not far from the Tagus and about
half-way between Santarem and Thomar. It is a small church, with nave
and aisles of five bays and a square chancel. The piers consist of four
half-round shafts round a square. In front the capitals are round next
the neck moulding and square next the moulded abacus, while at the sides
they become eight-sided. The arches are of two orders and only
chamfered. The bases are curious, as each part belonging to a different
member of the pier begins at a different level. That of the shaft at
the side begins highest, and of the shaft in front lowest, and both
becoming eight-sided, envelop the base of the square centre. These
eight-sided bases interpenetrate with the mouldings of a lower round
base, and all stand on a large splayed octagon, formed from a square by
curious ogee curves at the corners. The nave is roofed in wood, but the
chancel is vaulted, having ribs enriched like the chancel arch with
cable moulding. The west front has a plain tower at the end of the south
aisle, buttresses with Gothic pinnacles, a large door below and a round
window above. The doorhead is a depressed trefoil, or quatrefoil, as the
central leaf is of two curves. Between the inner and outer round
moulding is as usual a hollow filled with branches. The outer moulding,
on its upper side, throws out the most fantastic curves and cusps, which
with their finials nearly encircle two little round windows, and then in
wilder curves push up through the square framing at the top to a finial
just below the window. At the sides two large twisted shafts standing on
very elaborate bases end in twisted pinnacles. The round window is
surrounded by large rope moulding, out of which grow two little arms, to
support armillary spheres.
[Sidenote: Se, Elvas.]
Dom Manoel also built the cathedral at Elvas, but it has been very much
pulled about. Only the nave--in part at least--and an earlier west tower
survive. Outside the buttresses are square below and three-cornered
above; all the walls are battlemented; the aisle windows are tall and
round-headed. On the north side a good trefoil-headed door leads to the
interior, where the arches are round, the piers clustered with
cable-moulded capitals and starry eight-sided abaci. There is a good
vault springing from corbels, but the clerestory windows have been
replaced by large semicircles.
[Sidenote: Marvilla, Santarem.]
All the body of the church of Santa Maria da Marvilla at Santarem is
built in the style of Dom Joao III., that is, the nave arcade has tall
Ionic columns and round arches. The rebuilding of the church was ordered
by Dom Manoel, but the style called after him is only found in the
chancel and in the west door. The chancel, square and vaulted, is
entered by a wide and high arch, consisting, like the door to the Sala
das Pegas at Cintra, of a series of moulded convex curves. The west door
is not unlike that at Gollega. It has a trefoiled head; with a round
moulding at the angle resting on the
[Illustration: FIG. 52.
PALACE, CINTRA. PARTS ADDED BY D. MANOEL.]
capitals of thin shafts. Beyond a broad hollow over which straggles a
very realistic and thick-stemmed plant is a large round moulding
springing from larger shafts and concentric with the inner. As at
Gollega from the outer side of this moulding large cusps project, one on
each side, while in the middle it rises up in two curves forming an
irregular pentagon with curved sides. Each outward projection of this
round moulding ends in a large finial, so that there are five in all,
one to each cusp and three to the pentagon. Beyond this moulding a plain
flat band runs up the jambs and round the top cutting across the base of
the cusps and of the pentagon. The bases of the shafts rest on a moulded
plinth and are eight-sided, as are the capitals round which run small
wreaths of leaves. Here the upright shafts at the sides are not twisted
but run up in three divisions to Gothic pinnacles. (Fig. 53.)
[Sidenote: Madre de Deus.]
Almost exactly the same is a door in the Franciscan nunnery called Madre
de Deus, founded to the east of Lisbon in 1509 by Dona Leonor, the widow
of Dom Joao II. and sister of Dom Manoel. The only difference is that
the shafts at the sides are both twisted, that the pentagon at the top
is a good deal larger and has in it the royal arms, and that at the
sides are shields, one on the right with the arms of Lisbon--the ship
guided by ravens in which St. Vincent's body floated from the east of
Spain to the cape called after him--and one on the left with a pelican
vulning her breast.[107]
The proportions of this door are rather better than those of the door at
Santarem, and it looks less clumsy, but it is impossible to admire
either the design or the execution. The fat round outer moulding with
its projecting curves and cusps is very unpleasing, the shafts at the
sides are singularly purposeless, and the carving is coarse. At Gollega
the design was even more outrageous, but there it was pulled together
and made into a not displeasing whole by the square framing.
[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
[Illustration: FIG. 53.
SANTAREM. W. DOOR, MARVILLA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 54.
COIMBRA. UNIVERSITY CHAPEL.]
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.