Walter Crum Watson

“ In any northern country the seven small windows would not let in enough light, and the whole dome would be in darkness, but the sky and air of Portugal are clear enough for every detail to be seen, and for the gold on every moulding and piece of carving to gleam brightly from the blue background.
None of the ceilings of later date are in any way to be compared in beauty or richness with those of these two halls, for in all others the mouldings are shallower and the panels flatter. ”

“ The shafts are round, very like those at Batalha, and, like every inch of the arch and tracery mouldings, are covered with ornament; some are twisted, some diapered, some covered with renaissance detail. Broad bands too of carving run round the inside and the outside of the main arches, the inner being almost renaissance and the outer purely Manoelino. The vault of many ribs, varying in arrangement in the different walks, is entirely Gothic, while all the doors—except the double opening leading to the chapter-house, which has beautifully carved renaissance panels on the jambs—are Manoelino. ”

“ Next towards the chapel is another slender shaft, bearing two small statues one above the other, and outside it slender Gothic pinnacles and tabernacle work rise up to the capital. Up the outer side of the jambs are carved sharp pointed leaves, like great acanthus whose stalk bears many large exquisitely carved crockets. On the other side of the central hollow the diapered shaft is separated from the tiers of tiny pinnacles which form the inner angle of the jamb by a broad band of carving, which for beauty of design and for delicacy of carving can scarcely be anywhere surpassed. ”

“ There are at the angles deep square buttresses which end in groups of square spire-capped pinnacles all elaborately crocketed, and not at all unlike those at Batalha. Between these, in the chancel are narrow round-headed windows, whose mouldings are enriched with large four-leaved flowers, and on all the walls from buttress to buttress there runs a rich projecting cornice crowned by a wonderfully pierced and crested parapet; also not unlike those at Batalha, but more wonderful in that it is made of granite instead of fine limestone. ”

“ Filling the whole of the east end of the apse of the Capella Mor, the structure rises in a curve up to the level of the windows. Without the beautiful colouring of Master Vlimer's work at Coimbra, or the charm of the reredos at Funchal, with figures distinctly inferior to those by Master Nicolas at São Marcos, this Guarda reredos is yet a very fine piece of work, and is indeed the only large one of its kind which still survives. ”

“ 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 São Marcos, are cherubs' heads. ”

“ At the ends and between the tombs are square buttresses or pilasters ornamented on each face with renaissance corbels and canopies. The background of each recess is covered with delicate flowing leaves in very slight relief, and has in the centre a niche, with rustic shafts and elaborate Gothic base and canopy under which stands a figure of Our Lord holding an orb in His left hand and blessing with His right. The buttresses, on which stand curious vase-shaped finials, are joined by a straight moulded cornice, above which rises a rounded pediment floriated on the outer side. ”

“ It is of great depth and of considerable projection, the hollows of the mouldings being filled with square flowers below and intricate carving above. On this stands a high parapet of traceried quatrefoils, bearing a horizontal moulding from which springs an elaborate cresting; all being almost exactly like the cornice and parapet at Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding. ”

“ The chancel is entered, under a circular cusped window, by a wide round arch, whose outer moulding is curiously carried by shafts with capitals set across the angle as if to carry a vaulting rib; in the chancel itself the walls are double, the outer having the plain square-headed windows seen outside, and the inner very elegant two-light round-headed openings resting on very thin and delicate shafts, with a doubly cusped circle above. The vault, whose wall arches are stilted and slightly pointed, has strong well-moulded ribs springing from the well-wrought capitals of tall angle shafts. ”

“ At intervals down the sides are spiral pinnacles, at the corners columns bearing spheres, and at the south end a tall niche, elaborately carved, under whose strange canopy stand a Virgin and Child.
The most interesting features of the tower are the balconies. That on the south side, borne on huge corbels, has in front an arcade of seven round arches, resting on round shafts with typical Manoelino caps. A continuous sloping stone roof covers the whole, enriched at the bottom by a rope moulding, and marked with curious nicks at the top. The parapet is Gothic and very thin. ”

“ In Lisbon he rebuilt the central part of the town, laying out parallel streets, and surrounding the Praça do Commercio with great arcaded government offices; buildings remarkable rather for the fine white stone of which they are made, than for any architectural beauty. Indeed it is impossible to admire any of the buildings erected in Portugal since the earthquake; the palaces of the Necessidades and the Ajuda are but great masses of pink-washed plaster pierced with endless windows, and without any beauty of detail or of design. ”

“ The main front with its high corner towers and their steep slate roofs, and with its high centre-piece, is far more impressive, and the mere reiteration of its endless featureless windows gives the Escorial an appearance of size quite wanting to Mafra. Above all the great church with massive dome and towers rises high above all the rest, and gives the whole a sense of unity and completeness which the smaller church of Mafra, though in a far more prominent place, entirely fails to do. ”

“ Strange as are the details of these buttresses, still more strange are the windows of the chapter-house. Since about 1560 the upper cloister of the Filippes has covered the south side of the church so that the south chapter-house window, which now serves as a door, is hidden away in the dark. Still there is light enough to see that in naturalism and in originality it far surpasses anything elsewhere, except the west window of the same chapter-house. Up the jambs grow branches bound round by a broad ribbon. ”

“ Unfortunately in Portugal the bad taste of the eighteenth century has replaced all those that may have existed by great and heavy erections of elaborately carved wood. All covered with gold, the Corinthian columns, twisted and wreathed with vines, the overloaded arches and elaborate entablatures are now often sadly out of place in some old interior, and make one grieve the more over the loss of the simpler or more appropriate reredos which came before them. ”

“ The inside of the church is in singular contrast to the floridness of the outside. The clustered piers are exceptionally large and tall; there is no triforium, and the side windows are set so far back as to be scarcely seen. The capitals have elaborate Gothic foliage, but are so square as to look at a distance almost romanesque. In front of each pier triple vaulting shafts run up, but instead of the side shafts carrying the diagonal ribs as they should have done, all three carry bold transverse arches, leaving the vaulting ribs to spring as best they can. ”

“ In the middle over the large division it is fringed with the intersecting circles of curved branches, while from the top to the blue-painted apse vault with its gilded ribs and stars a forest of pinnacles, arches, twisting and intertwining branches and leaves rises high above the bishop's arms and mitre and the two angels who uphold them. ”

“ Not unlike the vaulting at Villar is that of the Matriz or mother church of Alvito, a small town in the Alemtejo, nor can it be very much later in date. Outside it is only remarkable for its west door, an interesting example of an attempt to use the details of the early French renaissance, without understanding how to do so—as in the pediment all the entablature except the architrave has been left out—and for the short twisted pinnacles which somehow give to it, as to many other buildings in the Alemtejo, so Oriental a look, and which are seen again at Belem. ”

“ Yet no one who sees it can help falling a victim to its fascination, for perhaps its only real fault is that the great cusps and finials are on rather too large a scale for the rest. Not even the greatest purist could help admiring the exquisite fineness of the carving—a fineness made possible by the limestone, very soft when new, which gradually hardens and grows to a lovely yellow with exposure to the air. ”

“ This great space is covered by an immense vault, upheld by no central shaft; arches are thrown across the corners bringing the square to an octagon, and though not very high, it is one of the boldest Gothic vaults ever attempted; there is nowhere else a room of such a size vaulted without supporting piers, and probably none where the buttresses outside, with their small projection, look so unequal to the work they have to do, yet this vault has successfully withstood more than one earthquake. ”

“ Another reason for writing about Portugal instead of about Spain is that the country is so much smaller that it is no very difficult task to visit every part and see the various buildings with one's own eyes: besides, in no language does there exist any book dealing with the architecture of the country as a whole. There are some interesting monographs in Portuguese about such buildings as the palace at Cintra, or Batalha, while the Renaissance has been fully treated by Albrecht Haupt, but no one deals at all adequately with what came before the time of Dom Manoel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The window with its mouldings is much narrower than the door, and is joined to the tall pinnacles which rise to the right and left of the great opening by Gothic flying buttresses. Between the side pinnacles and the central mass of the window a curious rounded and bent shaft rises from the hood-mould of the door to end in a semi-classic column between two niches, and from the shaft there grow out two branches to support the corbels on which the niche statues stand. All this is very like the great south door of the Jeronymite monastery at Belem, the work of Diogo's brother João de Castilho ”

“ Beyond Dom Manoel and his wife are square shafts with more niches and figures, and beyond them again flatter niches, half Manoelino, half renaissance. The rest of the west front above the ruined porch is plain except for a large round window lighting the choir gallery. The north-west tower does not rise above the roof.
Outside, the church as a whole is neither well proportioned nor graceful. The great mass of the transept is too overwhelming, the nave not long enough, and above all, the large windows of the nave too large. ”

“ The whole surface has been covered with exquisite arabesques like those below the reredoses in the cloister at Santa Cruz, but they have now almost entirely perished.
Above the entablature a second story rises forming a sort of portico. At the corners are square fluted Corinthian pilasters; between them in front runs a balustrading, divided into three by the pedestals of two slender columns, Corinthian also, and there are others next the pilasters. The entablature has been most delicate, with the finest wreaths carved on the frieze. Over the canted sides are built small round-domed turrets. ”

“ The pattern of Alvito is one of the finest, and is found again at Santarem in the church of the Marvilla, where the lower tiles are all of singular beauty and splendid colouring, blue and yellow on a white ground. Other beautiful tiled interiors are those of the Matriz at Caldas da Rainha, and at Caminha on the Minho. Without seeing these tiled churches it is impossible to realise how beautiful they really are, and how different are these tiles from all modern ones, whose hard smooth glaze and mechanical perfection make them cold and anything but pleasing. ”

“ But by far the most original of all the buildings of this later renaissance is the monastery of Nossa Senhora da Serra do Pilar in Villa Nova de Gaya, the suburb of Oporto which lies south of the Douro. Standing on a high granite knoll, which rises some fifty feet above the country to the south, and descends by an abrupt precipice on the north to the deep-flowing river, here some two hundred yards wide, and running in a narrow gorge, the monastery and its hill have more than once played an important part in history. ”

“ The dome is divided into panels of various shapes by broad flat ribs with coarse mouldings. The chancel and choir beyond have barrel vaults divided into simple square panels.
The church then, though interesting from its plan, is—inside especially—remarkably unpleasing, though it is perhaps only fair to attribute a considerable part of this disagreeable effect to the state of decay into which it has fallen—a state which has only advanced far enough to be squalid and dirty without being in the least picturesque. Far more pleasing than the church is the round cloister behind. ”

“ When elected at Thomar in 1580, Philip ii. of Spain had sworn to govern Portugal only through Portuguese ministers, a promise which he seems to have kept. He was fully alive to the importance of commanding the mouth of the Tagus and the splendid harbour of Lisbon, and had he fixed his capital there instead of at Madrid it is quite possible that the two countries might have remained united.
For sixty years the people endured the ever-growing oppression and misgovernment. ”

“ If the stalls at Santa Cruz are the only examples of this period still left on the mainland, the Sé Velha possesses the only great mediæval reredos. In Spain great structures are found in almost every cathedral rising above the altar to the vault in tier upon tier of niche and panel. Richly gilded, with fine paintings on the panels, with delicate Gothic pinnacles and tabernacle work, they and the metal screens which half hide them do much to make Spanish churches the most interesting in the world. ”