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Portuguese Architecture

Chapter 26: INDEX
By Walter Crum Watson
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About This Book

This work surveys the built heritage across Portugal, starting with prehistoric and Celtic hill settlements and sacrificial stones, then Roman remains such as temples and pavements, through medieval churches, monasteries and fortifications, to later Renaissance and Baroque developments. It combines on-site observations, measured plans and numerous illustrations with discussion of geographic and linguistic context, stylistic features, and inscriptions. Appendices include lists of books consulted, notes, and an index, and the author emphasizes first-hand descriptions and local research in presenting monuments and architectural typologies.

Oporto, Hospital and Factory.

Much more correct, and it must be said commonplace, are the hospital and the English factory—or club-house—in Oporto. The plans of both have clearly been sent out from England, the hospital especially being thoroughly English in design. Planned on so vast a scale that it has never been completed, with the pediment of its Doric portico unfinished, the hospital is yet a fine building, simple and severe, not unlike what might have been designed by some pupil of Chambers.

The main front has a rusticated ground floor with round-headed windows and doors. On this in the centre stands a Doric portico of six columns, and at the ends narrower colonnades of four shafts each. Between them stretches a long range of windows with simple, well-designed architraves. The only thing, apart from its unfinished condition, which shows that the hospital is not in England, are some colossal figures of saints which stand above the cornice, and are entirely un-English in style.

Of later buildings little can be said. Many country houses are pleasing from their complete simplicity; plastered, and washed pink, yellow, or white, they are devoid of all architectural pretension, and their low roofs of red pantiles look much more natural than do the steep slated roofs of some of the more modern villas.

The only unusual point about these Portuguese houses is that, as a rule, they have sash windows, a form of window so rare in the South that one is tempted to see in them one of the results of the Methuen Treaty and of the long intercourse with England. The chimneys, too, are often interesting. Near Lisbon they are long, narrow oblongs, with a curved top—not unlike a tombstone in shape—from which the smoke escapes by a long narrow slit. Elsewhere the smoke escapes through a picturesque arrangement of tiles, and hardly anywhere is there to be seen a simple straight shaft with a chimney can at the top.

For twenty years after the end of the Peninsular War the country was in a more or less disturbed state. And it was only after Dom Miguel had been defeated and expelled, and the more liberal party who supported Dona Maria ii. had won the day, that Portugal again began to revive.

In 1834, the year which saw Dom Miguel's surrender, all monasteries throughout the country were suppressed, and the monks turned out. Even more melancholy was the fate of the nuns, for they were allowed to stay on till the last should have died. In some cases one or two survived nearly seventy years, watching the gradual decay of their homes, a decay they were powerless to arrest, till, when their death at last set the convents free, they were found, with leaking roofs, and rotten floors, almost too ruinous to be put to any use.

The Gothic revival has not been altogether without its effects in Portugal. Batalha has been, and Alcobaça is being, saved from ruin. The Sé Velha at Coimbra has been purged—too drastically perhaps—of all the additions and disfigurements of the eighteenth century, and the same is being done with the cathedral of Lisbon.

Such new buildings as have been put up are usually much less successful. Nothing can exceed the ugliness of the new domed tower of the church of Belem, or of the upper story imposed on the long undercroft. Nor can the new railway station in the Manoelino style be admired.

Probably the best of such attempts to copy the art of Portugal's greatest age is found at Bussaco, where the hotel, with its arcaded galleries and its great sphere-bearing spire, is not unworthy of the sixteenth century, and where the carving, usually the spontaneous work of uninstructed men, shows that some of the mediæval skill, as well as some of the mediæval methods, have survived till the present century.

BOOKS CONSULTED

  • Hieronymi Osorii Lusitani, Silvensis in Algarviis Episcopi: De rebus Emmanuelis, etc. Cologne, 1597.
  • Padre Ignacio da Piedade e Vasconcellos: Historia de Santarem Edificada. Lisboa Occidental, 1790.
  • J. Murphy: History and Description of the Royal Convent of Batalha. London, 1792.
  • Raczynski: Les Arts en Portugal. Paris, 1846.
  • Raczynski: Diccionaire Historico-Artistique du Portugal. Paris, 1847.
  • J. C. Robinson: 'Portuguese School of Painting' in the Fine Arts Quarterly Review. 1866.
  • Simões, A. F.: Architectura Religiosa em Coimbra na Idade Meia.
  • Ignacio de Vilhena Barbosa: Monumentos de Portugal Historicos, etc. Lisboa, 1886.
  • Oliveira Martims: Historia de Portugal.
  • Pinho Leal: Diccionario Geographico de Portugal.
  • Albrecht Haupt: Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Portugal. Frankfurt A.M., 1890.
  • Visconde de Condeixa: O Mosteiro da Batalha em Portugal. Lisboa & Paris.
  • Justi: 'Die Portugiesische Malerei des 16ten Jahrhunderts' in the Jahrbuch der K. Preuss. Kunstsammlung, vol. ix. Berlin, 1888.
  • Joaquim Rasteiro: Quinta e Palacio de Bacalhôa em Azeitão. Lisboa, 1895.
  • Joaquim de Vasconcellos: 'Batalha' & 'São Marcos' from A Arte e a Natureza em Portugal. Ed. E. Biel e Cie. Porto.
  • L. R. D.: Roteiro Illustrado do Viajante em Coimbra. Coimbra, 1894.
  • Caetano da Camara Manoel: Atravez a Cidade de Evora, etc. Evora, 1900.
  • Conde de Sabugosa: O Paço de Cintra. Lisboa, 1903.
  • Augusto Fuschini: A Architectura Religiosa da Edade Média. Lisboa, 1904.
  • José Queiroz: Ceramica Portugueza. Lisboa, 1907.

INDEX