CHAPTER XVII

THE LATER RENAISSANCE AND THE SPANISH USURPATION

This earlier style did not, however, last very long. Even before the death of Dom João 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 Gonçalo Bayão, 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 João's death, when his widow, Dona Catharina, regent for her grandson, Dom Sebastião, 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 São 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 Sebastião 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 Sebastião's reign was the coming of Filippo Terzi from Italy to build São 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, Graça.]

A little to the south of the cathedral of Evora, and a little lower down the hill, stands the Graça or church of the canons of St. Augustine. Begun during the reign of Dom João III., the nave and chancel, in which there is a fine tomb, have many details which recall the Conceicão 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 Sebastião, 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 Graça 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 João III. died in 1557 he was succeeded by his grandson Sebastião, 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 Gonçalves da Câmara, a Jesuit, was confessor to the young king.

Between them Dom Sebastião 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 Sebastião 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 Sebastião 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 Guimarães, 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 João 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 São Roque, begun about 1570.[162]

[Sidenote: Lisbon, São 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 Antão, Sta. Maria do Desterro, and São 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: São Vicente de Fora.]

Though not the first to be built, São 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 SÃO 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 _praça_ 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.

SÃO VICENTE DE FORA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 94.

LISBON.

SÃO 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 São 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 São Vicente submitted to him in 1590. This plan, signed by him in November 1590, was drawn by João 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 São 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 Antão.]

After São Roque the first church begun by Terzi was Santo Antão, now attached to the hospital of São José. Begun in 1579 it was not finished till 1652, only to be destroyed by the earthquake in 1755. As at São 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 São 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: Torreão do Paço.]

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 Torreão. The palace then stood to the west of what is now called the Praça do Commercio, and the Torreão 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 Paço 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, Sé Nova.]

Meanwhile the great Jesuit church at Coimbra, now the Sé Nova or new cathedral, had been gradually rising. Founded by Dom João 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 São 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 Antão 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 Antão. 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 Antão 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 façade 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 Antão, it looks as if it and the front of the Sé Velha had been very much alike. Santo Antão 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 Sé 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 Sé 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.

SÉ 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, Sé 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 Sé 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, São Domingos.]

The oldest seems to be the church of São 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 Sé 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 São 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 São 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, Graça.]

Almost exactly the same is the Graça church next door, both very plain and almost devoid of interest outside.

[Sidenote: São Bento.]

Equally plain is the unfinished front of the church of São Bento up on the hill near the botanical gardens. It was designed by Baltazar Alvares for Dom Diogo de Murça, 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 São 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 Graça, 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 São Vicente, or on that of the Sé 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 Sé Nova.[165]

[Sidenote: Lisbon, São 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 São Bento, now the Cortes in Lisbon, as well as São Bento da Victoria at Oporto, his greatest and most successful work.

[Sidenote: Oporto, São Bento.]

The plan is practically the same as that of São 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.

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