Portuguese Architecture Part 14

At Funchal the roof is on a larger scale: there is no division into squares, but the rafters are knotted together with much greater elaboration, and the flat part is like the chapel roof at Cintra, entirely covered with interlacing strips forming an intricate pattern round hollow octagons.

[Sidenote: Sala dos Cysnes, Cintra.]

The simple boarding of the earlier roofs may well have led to the two wonderful ceilings at Cintra, those in the Sala dos Cysnes, and in the Sala dos Brazes or dos Escudos, but the idea of the many octagons in the Sala dos Cysnes may have come from some such roof as that at Caminha, when the octagons are so important a feature of the design. In that hall swans may have first been painted for Dom Joo, but the roof has clearly been remade since then, possibly under Dom Manoel. The gilt ornament on the mouldings seem even later, but may of course have been added afterwards, though it is not very unlike some of the carving on the roof at Caminha, an undoubted work of Dom Manoel's time.

This great roof in the Swan Hall has a deep and projecting cla.s.sical cornice; it is divided into three equal parts, two sloping and one flat, with the slopes returned at the ends. The whole is made up of twenty-three large octagons and of four other rather distorted ones in the corners, all surrounded with elaborate mouldings, carved and gilt like the cornice. From the square or three-sided s.p.a.ces left between the octagons there project from among acanthus leaves richly carved and gilt pendants.

In each of the twenty-seven octagons there is painted on a flat-boarded ground a large swan, each wearing on its neck the red velvet and gold collar made by Dona Isabel for the real swans in the tank outside. These paintings, which are very well done, certainly seem to belong to the seventeenth century, for the trees and water are not at all like the work of an artist of Dom Manoel's time. (Fig. 50.)

[Sidenote: Sala dos Escudos, Cintra.]

Even more remarkable is the roof of the Sala dos Brazes or dos Escudos--that is 'of the s.h.i.+elds'--also built by Dom Manoel, and also retouched at the same time as that in the Sala dos Cysnes. This other hall is a large room over forty feet square. The cornice begins about twelve feet from the ground, the walls being covered with hunting scenes on blue and white tiles of about the end of the seventeenth century. The cornice, about three feet deep and of considerable projection, is, like all the mouldings, painted blue and enriched with elaborate gilt carving. On the frieze is the following inscription in large gilt letters:

Pois com esforcos leais Servicos foram ganhadas Com estas e outras tais Devem de ser comservadas.[100]

The inscription is interrupted by brackets, round which the cornice is returned, and on which rest round arches thrown across the four corners, bringing the whole to an equal-sided

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 49.

CAMINHA. ROOF OF MATRIZ.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 50.

PALACE, CINTRA. SALA DOS CYSNES.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CINTRA.

Portugal.

Old Palace.

Sala dos Brazes.]

octagon. These triangular s.p.a.ces are roofed with elaborate wooden vaults, with carved and gilt ribs leaving s.p.a.ces painted blue and covered with gilt ornament. Above the cornice the panelling rises perpendicularly for about eleven feet; there being on each cardinal side eight panels, in two rows of four, one above the other, and over each arch four more--forty-eight panels in all. Above this begins an octagonal dome with elaborately carved and gilt mouldings, like those round the panels, in each angle and round the large octagon which comes in the middle of each side. The next stage is similar, but set at a different angle, and with smaller and unequal-sided octagons, while the dome ends in one large flat eight-sided panel forty-five feet above the floor. All the s.p.a.ce between the mouldings and the octagons is filled with most elaborate gilt carving on a blue ground. Nor does the decoration stop here, for the whole is a veritable Heralds' College for all the n.o.blest families of Portugal in the early years of the sixteenth century. The large flat panel at the top is filled with the royal arms carved and painted, with a crown above and rich gilt mantling all round.

In the eight panels below are the arms of Dom Manoel's eight children, and in the eight large octagons lower down are painted large stags with scrolls between their horns; lastly, in each of the forty-eight panels at the bottom, and of the six s.p.a.ces which occur under each of the vaults in the four corners; in each of these seventy-two panels or s.p.a.ces there is painted a stag. Every stag has round its neck a s.h.i.+eld charged with the arms of a n.o.ble family, between its horns a crest, and behind it a scroll on which is written the name of the family.[101]

The whole of this is of wood, and for beauty and originality of design, as well as for richness of colour, cannot be surpa.s.sed anywhere. 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.

[Sidenote: Coimbra Misericordia.]

In Coimbra there are two, both good examples of a simpler form of such ceilings. They are, one in the Misericordia--the headquarters of a corporation which owns and looks after all the hospitals, asylums and orphanages in the town--and one in the great hall of the University. The Misericordia, built by bishop Affonso de Castello Branco about the end of the sixteenth century, has a good cloister of the later renaissance, and opening off it two rooms of considerable size with panelled ceilings, of which only one has its original painting. A cornice of some size, with brackets projecting from the frieze to carry the upper mouldings, goes round the room, and is carried across the corners so that at the ends of the room the ceiling has one longer and two quite short sides. The lower sloping part of the ceiling all round is divided into square panels with three-sided panels next the squares on the short canted sides; the upper slope is divided in exactly the same way so that the flat centre-piece consists of three squares set diagonally and of four triangles. All the panels are painted with a variety of emblems, but the colours are dark and the ceiling now looks rather dingy.

[Sidenote: Sala dos Capellos University.]

The great hall of the University built by the rector, Manoel de Saldanha, in 1655 is a very much larger and finer room. A raised seat runs round the whole room, the lower part of the walls are covered with tiles, and the upper with red silk brocade on which hang portraits of all the kings of Portugal, many doubtless as authentic as the early kings of Scotland at Holyrood. Here only the upper part of the cornice is carried across the corners, and the three sides at either end are equal, each being two panels wide.

As in the Misericordia the section of the roof is five-sided, each two panels wide. All the panels are square except at the half-octagonal ends where they diminish in breadth towards the top: they are separated by a large cable moulding and are painted alternately red and blue with an elaborate design in darker colour on each. (Fig. 51.)

The effect is surprisingly good, for each panel with its beautiful design of curling and twisting acanthus, of birds, of mermaids and of vases has almost the look of beautiful old brocade, for the blues and reds have grown soft with age.

[Sidenote: Santa Clara, Villa do Conde.]

Before finally leaving wood ceilings it were better to speak of another form or style which was sometimes used for their decoration although they are even freer from Moorish detail than are those at Coimbra, though probably like them ultimately derived from the same source. One of the finest of these ceilings is found in the upper Nuns' Choir in the church of Santa Clara at Villa do Conde. The church consists of a short nave with transepts and chancel all roofed with panelled wooden ceilings, painted grey as is often the case, and in no way remarkable.

The church was founded in 1318, but the ceilings and stalls of both Nuns' Choirs, which,

[Sidenote: Convent, Aveiro.]

one above the other take up much the greater part of the nave, cannot be earlier than the first half of the seventeenth century. Like the other ceilings it is polygonal in section, but unlike all Moorish ones is not returned round the ends. Above a finely carved cornice with elaborate frieze, the whole ceiling is divided into deeply set panels, large and small squares with narrow rectangles between: all alike covered with elaborate carving, as are also the mouldings and the flat surfaces of the dividing bands. Here the wood is left in its natural colour, but in the nave of the church of a large convent at Aveiro, where the general design of the ceiling is almost the same, pictures are painted in the larger panels, and all the rest is heavily gilt, making the whole most gorgeous.

As time went on wooden roofs became less common, stone barrel vaults taking their place, but where they were used they were designed with a ma.s.s of meaningless ornament, lavished over the whole surface, which was usually gilt. One of the most remarkable examples of such a roof is found in the chancel of that same church at Aveiro. It is semicircular in shape and is all covered with greater and smaller carved and gilt circles, from the smallest of which in the middle large pendants hang down.

These circles are so arranged as to make the roof almost like that of Henry VII. Chapel, though the two really only resemble each other in their extreme richness and elaboration. This same extravagance of gilding and of carving also overtook altar and reredos. Now almost every church is full of huge ma.s.ses of gilt wood, in which hardly one square inch has been left uncarved; sometimes, if there is nothing else, and the whole church--walls and ceiling alike--is a ma.s.s of gilding and painting, the effect is not bad, but sometimes the contrast is terrible between the plain grey walls of some old and simple building and the exuberance behind the high altar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 51.

COIMBRA. HALL OF UNIVERSITY.]

CHAPTER X

EARLY MANOELINO

Affonso V., the African, had died and been succeeded by his son Joo II.

in 1487. Joo 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bility. 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 s.h.i.+p after s.h.i.+p 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 Co, 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 Joo changed to Good Hope.

Dom Joo 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 Joo 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 Joo 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. Damio 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, a.r.s.enals, 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.