THE LATER RENAISSANCE AND THE SPANISH USURPATION
This earlier style did not, however, last very long. Even before the
death of Dom Joao more strictly classical forms began to come in from
Italy, brought by some of the many pupils who had been sent to study
there. Once when staying at Almeirim the king had been much interested
in a model of the Colosseum brought to him by Goncalo Bayao, whom he
charged to reproduce some of the monuments he had seen in Rome.
Whether he did reproduce them or not is unknown, but in the Claustro dos
Filippes at Thomar this new and thoroughly Italian style is seen fully
developed.
[Sidenote: Thomar, Claustro dos Filippes.]
Diogo de Torralva had been nominated to direct the works in Thomar in
1554, but did nothing to this cloister till 1557 after Dom Joao's death,
when his widow, Dona Catharina, regent for her grandson, Dom Sebastiao,
ordered him to pull down what was already built, as it was unsafe, and
to build another of the same size about one hundred and fifteen feet
square, but making the lower story rather higher.
The work must have been carried out quickly, since on the vault of the
upper cloister there is the date 1562--a date which shows that the whole
must have been practically finished some eighteen years before Philip of
Spain secured the throne of Portugal, and that therefore the cloister
should rather be called after Dona Catharina, who ordered it, than after
the 'Reis Intrusos,' whose only connection with Thomar is that the first
was there elected king.
Between each of the three large arches which form a side of the lower
cloister stand two Roman Doric columns of considerable size. They are
placed some distance apart leaving room between them for an opening,
while another window-like opening occurs above the moulding from which
the arches
[Illustration: FIG. 91.
GUARDA.
REREDOS IN CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: FIG. 92.
THOMAR.
CLAUSTRO DOS FILIPPES.]
spring. In the four corners the space between the columns, as well as
the entablature, is set diagonally, leaving room in one instance for a
circular stair. The cornice is enriched with dentils and the frieze with
raised squares. On the entablature more columns of about the same height
as those below, but with Ionic capitals, stand in pairs. Stairs lead up
in each corner to the flat roof, above which they rise in a short
dome-bearing drum. In this upper cloister the arches are much narrower,
springing from square Ionic pilasters, two on each side, set one behind
the other, and leaving an open space beyond so that the whole takes the
form of a Venetian window. The small upper window between the columns is
round instead of square, and the cornice is carried on large corbels. In
front of all the openings is a balustrade. Two windows look south down
the hillside over rich orchards and gardens, while immediately below
them a water channel, the end of a great aqueduct built under Philip I.
of Portugal, II. of Spain, by the Italian Filippo Terzi,[160] cools the
air, and, overflowing, clothes the arches with maidenhair fern. Another
window opening on to the Claustro de Sta. Barbara gives a very good view
of the curious west front of the church. There is not and there probably
never was any parapet to the flat paved roof, from where one can look
down on the surrounding cloisters, and on the paved terrace before the
church door where Philip was elected king in April 1580. (Fig. 92.)
This cloister, the first example in Portugal of the matured Italian
renaissance, is also, with the exception of the church of Sao Vicente de
Fora at Lisbon, the most successful, for all is well proportioned, and
shows that Diogo de Torralva really understood classic detail and how to
use it. He was much less successful in the chancel of Belem, while about
the cathedral which he built at Miranda de Douro it is difficult to find
out anything, so remote and inaccessible is it, except that it stands
magnificently on a high rock above the river.[161]
The reigns of Dom Sebastiao and of his grand-uncle, the Cardinal-King,
were noted for no great activity in building. Only at Evora, where he so
long filled the position of archbishop before succeeding to the throne,
was the cardinal able to do much. The most important architectural
event in Dom Sebastiao's reign was the coming of Filippo Terzi from
Italy to build Sao Roque, the church of the Jesuits in Lisbon, and the
consequent school of architects, the Alvares, Tinouco, Turianno, and
others who were so active during the reign of Philip.
But before speaking of the work of this school some of Cardinal Henry's
buildings at Evora must be mentioned, and then the story told of how
Philip succeeded in uniting the whole Peninsula under his rule.
[Sidenote: Evora, Graca.]
A little to the south of the cathedral of Evora, and a little lower down
the hill, stands the Graca or church of the canons of St. Augustine.
Begun during the reign of Dom Joao III., the nave and chancel, in which
there is a fine tomb, have many details which recall the Conceicao at
Thomar, such as windows set in sham perspective. But they were long in
building, and the now broken down barrel vault and the curious porch
were not added till the reign of Dom Sebastiao, while the monastic
buildings were finished about the same time.
This porch is most extraordinary. Below, there are in front four
well-proportioned and well-designed Doric columns; beyond them and next
the outer columns are large projecting pilasters forming buttresses, not
unlike the buttresses in some of the earlier cloisters. Above the
entablature, which runs round these buttresses, there stand on the two
central columns two tall Ionic semi-columns, surmounted by an
entablature and pointed pediment, and enclosing a large window set back
in sham perspective. On either side large solid square panels are filled
by huge rosettes several feet across, and above them half-pediments
filled with shields reach up to the central pediment but at a lower
level. Above these pediments another raking moulding runs up supported
on square blocks, while on the top of the upper buttresses there sit
figures of giant boys with globes on their backs; winged figures also
kneel on the central pediment.
It will be seen that this is one of the most extraordinary erections in
the world. Though built of granite some of the detail is quite fine, and
the lower columns are well proportioned; but the upper part is
ridiculously heavy and out of keeping with the rest, and inconceivably
ill-designed. The different parts also are ill put together and look as
if they had belonged to distinct buildings designed on a totally
different scale.
[Sidenote: Evora University.]
Not much need be said of the Jesuit University founded at Evora by the
Cardinal in 1559 and suppressed by the Marques de Pombal. Now partly a
school and partly an orphanage, the great hall for conferring degrees is
in ruins, but the courtyard with its two ranges of galleries still
stands. The court is very large, and the galleries have round arches and
white marble columns, but is somehow wanting in interest. The church too
is very poor, though the private chapel with barrel vault and white
marble dome is better, yet the whole building shows, like the Graca
porch, that classic architecture was not yet fully understood, for Diogo
de Torralva had not yet finished his cloister at Thomar, nor had Terzi
begun to work in Lisbon.
When Dom Joao III. died in 1557 he was succeeded by his grandson
Sebastiao, who was then only three years old. At first his grandmother,
Dona Catharina, was regent, but she was thoroughly Spanish, and so
unpopular. For five years she withstood the intrigues of her
brother-in-law, Cardinal Henry, but at last in 1562 retired to Spain in
disgust. The Cardinal then became regent, but the country was really
governed by two brothers, of whom the elder, Luis Goncalves da Camara, a
Jesuit, was confessor to the young king.
Between them Dom Sebastiao grew up a dreamy bigot whose one ambition was
to lead a crusade against the Moors--an ambition in which popular rumour
said he was encouraged by the Jesuits at the instigation of his cousin,
Philip of Spain, who would profit so much by his death.
Since the wealth of the Indies had begun to fill the royal treasury, the
Cortes had not been summoned, so there was no one able to oppose his
will, when at last an expedition sailed in 1578.
At this time the country had been nearly drained of men by India and
Brazil, so a large part of the army consisted of mercenaries; peculation
too had emptied the treasury, and there was great difficulty in finding
money to pay the troops.
Yet the expedition started, and landing first at Tangier afterwards
moved on to Azila, which Mulay Ahmed, a pretender to the Moorish
umbrella, had handed over.
On July 29th, Dom Sebastiao rashly started to march inland from Azila.
The army suffered terribly from heat and thirst, and was quite worn out
before it met the reigning amir, Abd-el-Melik, at Alcacer-Quebir, or
El-Kasar-el-Kebir, 'the great castle,' on the 3rd of August.
Next morning the battle began, and though Abd-el-Melik died almost at
once, the Moors, surrounding the small Christian army, were soon
victorious. Nine thousand were killed, and of the rest all were taken
prisoners except fifty. Both the Pretender and Dom Sebastiao fell, and
with his death and the destruction of his army the greatness of Portugal
disappeared.
For two years, till 1580, his feeble old grand-uncle the Cardinal Henry
sat on the throne, but when he died without nominating an heir none of
Dom Manoel's descendants were strong enough to oppose Philip II. of
Spain. Philip was indeed a grandson of Dom Manoel through his mother
Isabel, but the duchess of Braganza, daughter of Dom Duarte, duke of
Guimaraes, Cardinal Henry's youngest brother, had really a better claim.
But the spirit of the nation was changed, she dared not press her
claims, and few supported the prior of Crato, whose right was at least
as good as had been that of Dom Joao I., and so Philip was elected at
Thomar in April 1580.
Besides losing her independence Portugal lost her trade, for Holland and
England both now regarded her as part of their great enemy, Spain, and
so harried her ports and captured her treasure ships. Brazil was nearly
lost to the Dutch, who also succeeded in expelling the Portuguese from
Ceylon and from the islands of the East Indies, so that when the sixty
years' captivity was over and the Spaniards expelled, Portugal found it
impossible to recover the place she had lost.
It is then no wonder that almost before the end of the century money for
building began to fail, and that some of the churches begun then were
never finished; and yet for about the first twenty or thirty years of
the Spanish occupation building went on actively, especially in Lisbon
and at Coimbra, where many churches were planned by Filippo Terzi, or by
the two Alvares and others. Filippo Terzi seems first to have been
employed at Lisbon by the Jesuits in building their church of Sao Roque,
begun about 1570.[162]
[Sidenote: Lisbon, Sao Roque.]
Outside the church is as plain as possible; the front is divided into
three by single Doric pilasters set one on each side of the main door
and two at each corner. Similar pilasters stand on these, separated from
them only by a shallow cornice. The main cornice is larger, but the
pediment is perfectly plain. Three windows, one with a pointed and two
with round pediments, occupy the spaces left between the upper
pilasters. The inside is richer; the wooden ceiling is painted, the
shallow chancel and the side chapels vaulted with barrel vaults, of
which those in the chapels are enriched with elaborate strapwork. Above
the chapels are square-headed windows, and then a corbelled cornice.
Even this is plain, and it owes most of its richness to the paintings
and to the beautiful tiles which cover part of the walls.[163]
The three other great churches which were probably also designed by
Terzi are Santo Antao, Sta. Maria do Desterro, and Sao Vicente de Fora.
Of these the great earthquake of 1755 almost entirely destroyed the
first two and knocked down the dome of the last.
[Sidenote: Sao Vicente de Fora.]
Though not the first to be built, Sao Vicente being the least injured
may be taken before the others. It is a large church, being altogether
about 236 feet long by 75 wide, and consists of a nave of three bays
with connected chapels on each side, a transept with the fallen dome at
the crossing, a square chancel, a retro-choir for the monks about 45
feet deep behind the chancel, and to the west a porch between two tall
towers.
On the south side are two large square cloisters of no great interest
with a sacristy between--in which all the kings of the House of Braganza
lie in velvet-covered coffins--and the various monastic buildings now
inhabited by the patriarch of Lisbon.
The outside is plain, except for the west front, which stands at the top
of a great flight of steps. On the west front two orders of pilasters
are placed one above the other. Of these the lower is Doric, of more
slender proportions than usual, while the upper has no true capitals
beyond the projecting entablature and corbels on the frieze. Single
pilasters divide the centre of the front into three equal parts and
coupled pilasters stand at the corners of the towers. In the central
part three plain arches open on to the porch, with a pedimented niche
above each. In the tower the niches are placed lower with oblong
openings above and below.
Above the entablature of the lower order there are three windows in the
middle flanked by Ionic pilasters and surmounted by pediments, while in
the tower are large round-headed niches with pediments. (Fig. 93.)
[Illustration: PLAN OF SAO VICENTE]
The entablature of the upper order is carried straight across the whole
front, with nothing above it in the centre but a balustrading
interrupted by obelisk-bearing pedestals, but at the ends the towers
rise in one more square story flanked with short Doric pilasters.
Round-arched openings for bells occur on each side, and within the
crowning balustrade with its obelisks a stone dome rises to an
eight-sided domed lantern.
Like all the church, the front is built of beautiful limestone,
rivalling Carrara marble in whiteness, and seen down the narrow street
which runs uphill from across the small _praca_ the whole building is
most imposing. It would have been even more satisfactory had the central
part been a little narrower, and had there been something to mark the
barrel vault within; the omission too of the lower order, which is so
much taller than the upper, would have been an improvement, but even
with these defects the design is most stately, and refreshingly free of
all the fussy over-elaboration and the fantastic piling up of pediments
which soon became too common.
But if the outside deserves such praise, the inside is worthy of far
more. The great stone barrel vault is simply coffered with square
panels. The chapel arches are singularly plain, and spring from a good
moulding which projects nearly
[Illustration: FIG. 93.
LISBON.
SAO VICENTE DE FORA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 94.
LISBON.
SAO VICENTE DE FORA.]
to the face of the pilasters. Two of these stand between each chapel,
and have very beautiful capitals founded on the Doric but with a long
fluted neck ornamented in front by a bunch of crossed arrows and at the
corners with acanthus leaves, and with egg and tongue carved on the
moulding below the Corinthian abacus. Of the entablature, only the
frieze and architrave is broken round the pilasters; for the cornice
with its great mutules runs straight round the whole church, supported
over the chapels by carving out the triglyphs--of which there is one
over each pilaster, and two in the space between each pair of
pilasters--so as to form corbels.
Only the pendentives of the dome and the panelled drum remain; the rest
was replaced after the earthquake by wooden ceiling pierced with
skylights. (Fig. 94.)
Though so simple--there is no carved ornament except in the beautiful
capitals--the interior is one of the most imposing to be seen anywhere,
and though not really very large gives a wonderful impression of space
and size, being in this respect one of the most successful of classic
churches. It is only necessary to compare Sao Vicente de Fora with the
great clumsy cathedral which Herrera had begun to build five years
earlier at Valladolid to see how immensely superior Terzi was to his
Spanish contemporary. Even in his masterpiece, the church of the
Escorial, Herrera did not succeed in giving such spacious greatness,
for, though half as large again, the Escorial church is imposing rather
from its stupendous weight and from the massiveness of its granite piers
than from the beauty of its proportions.
Philip took a great interest in the building of the Escorial, and also
had the plans of Sao Vicente submitted to him in 1590. This plan, signed
by him in November 1590, was drawn by Joao Nunes Tinouco, so that it is
possible that Tinouco was the actual designer and not Terzi, but Tinouco
was still alive sixty years later when he published a plan of Lisbon,
and so must have been very young in 1590. It is probable, therefore,
that tradition is right in assigning Sao Vicente to Terzi, and even if
it be actually the work of Tinouco, he has here done little but copy
what his master had already done elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Lisbon, Santo Antao.]
After Sao Roque the first church begun by Terzi was Santo Antao, now
attached to the hospital of Sao Jose. Begun in 1579 it was not finished
till 1652, only to be destroyed by the earthquake in 1755. As at Sao
Vicente, the west front has a lower order of huge Doric pilasters nearly
fifty feet high. There is no porch, but three doors with poor windows
above which look as if they had been built after the earthquake.
Unfortunately, nearly all above the lower entablature is gone, but
enough is left to show that the upper order was Ionic and very short,
and that the towers were to rise behind buttress-like curves descending
from the central part to two obelisks placed above the coupled corner
pilasters.
The inside was almost exactly like Sao Vicente, but larger.
[Sidenote: Lisbon, Santa Maria do Desterro.]
Santa Maria do Desterro was begun later than either of the last two, in
1591. Unlike them the two orders of the west front are short and of
almost equal size, Doric below and Ionic above. The arches of the porch
reach up to the lower entablature, and the windows above are rather
squat; it looks as if there was to have been a third order above, but it
is all gone.
The inside was of the usual pattern, except that the pilasters were not
coupled between the chapels, that they were panelled, and that above the
low chapel arches there are square windows looking into a gallery.
[Sidenote: Torreao do Paco.]
Besides these churches Terzi built for Philip a large addition to the
royal palace in the shape of a great square tower or pavilion, called
the Torreao. The palace then stood to the west of what is now called the
Praca do Commercio, and the Torreao jutted out over the Tagus. It seems
to have had five windows on the longer and four on the shorter sides, to
have been two stories in height, and to have been covered by a great
square dome-shaped roof, with a lantern at the top and turrets at the
corners. Pilasters stood singly between each window and in pairs at the
corners, and the windows all had pediments. Now, not a stone of it is
left, as it was in the palace square, the Terreno do Paco da Ribeira,
that the earthquake was at its worst, swallowing up the palace and
overwhelming thousands of people in the waves of the river.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Se Nova.]
Meanwhile the great Jesuit church at Coimbra, now the Se Nova or new
cathedral, had been gradually rising. Founded by Dom Joao III. in 1552,
and dedicated to the Onze mil Virgems, it cannot have been begun in its
present form till much later, till about 1580, while the main, or south,
front seems even later still.[164]
Inside, the church consists of a nave of four bays with side chapels--in
one of which there is a beautiful Manoelino font--transepts and chancel
with a drumless dome over the crossing. In some respects the likeness to
Sao Vicente is very considerable; there are coupled Doric pilasters
between the chapels, the barrel vault is coffered, and the chapel arches
are extremely plain. But here the likeness ends. The pilasters are
panelled and have very simple moulded capitals; the entablature is quite
ordinary, without triglyphs or mutules, and is broken round each pair of
pilasters; the coffers on the vault are very deep, and are scarcely
moulded; and, above all, the proportions are quite different as the nave
is too wide for its height, and the drum is terribly needed to lift up
the dome. In short, the architect seems to have copied the dispositions
of Santo Antao and has done his best to spoil them, and yet he has at
the same time succeeded in making the interior look large, though with
an almost Herrera-like clumsiness.
The south front is even more like Santo Antao. As there, three doors
take the place of the porch, and the only difference below is that each
Doric pilaster is flanked by half pilasters. Above the entablature the
front breaks out into a wild up-piling of various pediments, but even
here the likeness to Santo Antao is preserved, in that a great curve
comes down from the outer Ionic pilasters of the central part, to end,
however, not in obelisks, but in a great volute: the small towers too
are set much further back. Above, as below, the central part is divided
into three. Of these the two outer, flanked by Ionic pilasters on
pedestals, are finished off above with curved pediments broken to admit
of obelisks. The part between these has a large window below, a huge
coat of arms above, and rises high above the sides to a pediment so
arranged that while the lower mouldings form an angle the upper form a
curve on which stand two finials and a huge cross. (Fig. 95.)
[Sidenote: Oporto, Collegio Novo.]
Very soon this fantastic way of piling up pieces of pediment and of
entablature became only too popular, being copied for instance in the
Collegio Novo at Oporto, where, however, the design is not quite so bad
as the towers are brought forward and are carried up considerably
higher. But apart from this horrid misuse of classic details the
greatest fault of the facade at Coimbra is the disproportionate size of
some of the details; the obelisks and the cherubs' heads on which they
stand, the statues at the ends, and the central cross, and above all the
colossal acanthus leaves in the great scrolls are of such a size as
entirely to dwarf all the rest.
From what remains of the front of Santo Antao, it looks as if it and the
front of the Se Velha had been very much alike. Santo Antao was not
quite finished till 1652, so that it is probable that the upper part of
the west front dates from the seventeenth century, long after Terzi's
death, and that the Se Nova at Coimbra was finished about the same time,
and perhaps copied from it.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Misericordia.]
But it was not only Terzi's churches which were copied at Coimbra. While
the Se Nova, then, and for nearly two hundred years more, the church of
the Jesuits, was still being built, the architect of the chief pateo of
the Misericordia took Diogo de Torralva's cloister at Thomar as his
model.
It was in the year 1590 that Cardinal Affonso de Castello Branco began
to build the headquarters of the Misericordia of Coimbra, founded in
1500 as a simple confraternity. The various offices of the institution,
including a church, the halls whose ceilings have been already
mentioned, and hospital dormitories--all now turned into an
orphanage--are built round two courtyards, one only of which calls for
special notice, for nearly everything else has been rebuilt or altered.
In this court or cloister, the plan of the Claustro dos Filippes has
been followed in that there are three wide arches on each side, and
between them--but not in the corners, and further apart than at
Thomar--a pair of columns. In this case the space occupied by one arch
is scarcely wider than that occupied by the two fluted Doric columns and
the square-headed openings between them. Another change is that the
complete entablature with triglyphs and metopes is only found above the
columns, for the arches rise too high to leave room for more than the
cornice. (Fig. 96.)
The upper story is quite different, for it has only square-headed
windows, though the line of the columns is carried up by slender and
short Ionic columns; a sloping tile roof rests immediately on the upper
cornice, above which rise small obelisks placed over the columns.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Episcopal Palace.]
At about the same time the Cardinal built a long loggia on the west side
of the entrance court of his palace at Coimbra. The hill on which the
palace is built being extremely
[Illustration: FIG. 95.
SE NOVA, COIMBRA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 96
COIMBRA.
MISERICORDIA.]
steep, an immense retaining wall, some fifty or sixty feet high, bounds
the courtyard on the west, and it is on the top of this wall that the
loggia is built forming a covered way two stories in height and uniting
the Manoelino palace on the north with some offices which bound the yard
on the south. This covered way is formed by two rows of seven arches,
each resting on Doric columns, with a balustrading between the outer
columns on the top of the great wall. The ceiling is of wood and forms
the floor of the upper story, where the columns are Ionic and support a
continuous architrave. The whole is quite simple and unadorned, but at
the same time singularly picturesque, since the view through the arches,
over the old cathedral and the steeply descending town, down to the
convent of Santa Clara and the wooded hills beyond the Mondego, is most
beautiful; besides, the courtyard itself is not without interest. In the
centre stands a fountain, and on the south side a stair, carried on a
flying half-arch, leads up to a small porch whose steep pointed roof
rests on two walls, and on one small column.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Se Velha Sacristy.]
The same bishop also built the sacristy of the old cathedral. Entered by
a passage from the south transept, and built across the back of the
apse, it is an oblong room with coffered barrel vault, lit by a large
semicircular window at the north end. The cornice, of which the frieze
is adorned with eight masks, rests on corbels. On a black-and-white
marble lavatory is the date 1593 and the Cardinal's arms. The two ends
are divided into three tiled panels by Doric columns, and on the longer
sides are presses.
Altogether it is very like the sacristy of Santa Cruz built some thirty
years later, but plainer.
By 1590 or so several Portuguese followers of Terzi had begun to build
churches, founded on his work, but in some respects less like than is
the Se Nova at Coimbra. Such churches are best seen at Coimbra, where
many were built, all now more or less deserted and turned to base uses.
Three at least of these stand on either side of the long Rua Sophia
which leads northwards from the town.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Sao Domingos.]
The oldest seems to be the church of Sao Domingos, founded by the dukes
of Aveiro, but never finished. Only the chancel with its flanking
chapels and the transept have been built. Two of the churches at Lisbon
and the Se Nova of Coimbra are noted for their extremely long Doric
pilasters. Here, in the chancel the pilasters and the half columns in
the transept are Ionic, and even more disproportionately tall. The
architrave is unadorned, the frieze has corbels set in pairs, and
between the pairs curious shields and strapwork, and the cornice is
enriched with dentils, egg and tongue and modillions. Most elaborate of
all is the barrel vault, where each coffer is filled with round or
square panels surrounded with strapwork.
This vault and the cornice were probably not finished till well on in
the seventeenth century, for on the lower, and probably earlier vaults,
of the side chapels the ornamentation is much finer and more delicate.
The transepts were to have been covered with groined vaults of which
only the springing has been built. In the north transept and in one of
the chapels there still stand great stone reredoses once much gilt, but
now all broken and dusty and almost hidden behind the diligences and
cabs with which the church is filled. The great fault in Sao Domingos is
the use of the same order both for the tall pilasters in the chancel,
and for the shorter ones in the side chapels; so that the taller, which
are twice as long and of about the same diameter, are ridiculously lanky
and thin.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Carmo.]
Almost opposite Sao Domingos is the church of the Carmo, begun by Frey
Amador Arraes, bishop of Portalegre about 1597. The church is an oblong
hall about 135 feet long, including the chancel, by nearly 40 wide,
roofed with a coffered barrel vault. On each side of the nave are two
rectangular and one semicircular chapel; the vaults of the chapel are
beautifully enriched with sunk panels of various shapes. The great
reredos covers the whole east wall with two stories of coupled columns,
niches and painted panels.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Graca.]
Almost exactly the same is the Graca church next door, both very plain
and almost devoid of interest outside.
[Sidenote: Sao Bento.]
Equally plain is the unfinished front of the church of Sao Bento up on
the hill near the botanical gardens. It was designed by Baltazar Alvares
for Dom Diogo de Murca, rector of the University in 1600, but not
consecrated till thirty-four years later. The church, which inside is
about 164 feet long, consists of a nave with side chapels, measuring 60
feet by about 35, a transept of the same width, and a square chancel.
Besides there is a deep porch in front between two oblong towers, which
have never been carried up above the roof.
The porch is entered by three arches, one in the middle wider and higher
than the others. Above are three niches with shell heads, and then three
windows, two oblong and one round, all set in rectangular frames. At the
sides there are broad pilasters below, with the usual lanky Doric
pilasters above reaching to the main cornice, above which there now
rises only an unfinished gable end. The inside is much more pleasing.
The barrel vaults of the chapels are beautifully panelled and enriched
with egg and tongue; between each, two pilasters rise only to the
moulding from which the chapel arches spring, and support smaller
pilasters with a niche between. In the spandrels of the arches are
rather badly carved angels holding shields, and on the arches
themselves, as at Sao Marcos, are cherubs' heads. A plain entablature
runs along immediately above these arches, and from it to the main
cornice, the walls, covered with blue and white tiles, are perfectly
blank, broken only by square-headed windows. Only at the crossing do
pilasters run up to the vault, and they are of the usual attenuated
Doric form. As usual the roof is covered with plain coffers, as is also
the drumless dome.
This is very like the Carmo and the Graca, which repeat the fault of
leaving a blank tiled wall above the chapels, and it is quite possible
that they too may have been built by Alvares; the plan is evidently
founded on that of one of Terzi's churches, as Sao Vicente, or on that
of the Se Nova, but though some of the detail is charming there is a
want of unity between the upper and lower parts which is found in none
of Terzi's work, nor even in the heavier Se Nova.[165]
[Sidenote: Lisbon, Sao Bento.]
Baltazar Alvares seems to have been specially employed by the order of
St. Benedict, for not only did he build their monasteries at Coimbra but
also Sao Bento, now the Cortes in Lisbon, as well as Sao Bento da
Victoria at Oporto, his greatest and most successful work.
[Sidenote: Oporto, Sao Bento.]
The plan is practically the same as that of Sao Bento at Coimbra, but
larger. Here, however, there are no windows over the chapel arches, nor
any dome at the crossing. Built of grey granite, a certain heaviness
seems suitable enough, and the great coffered vault is not without
grandeur, while the gloom of the inside is lit up by huge carved and
gilt altar-pieces and by the elaborate stalls in the choir gallery.