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Founded by Justa Rodrigues, Dom Manoel's nurse, in 1487 or 1488 and designed by one Boutaca or Boitaca, it was probably finished sooner than the church at Caldas, and is the best example in the country of a late Gothic church modified by the addition of certain Manoelino details. Unfortunately it was a good deal injured by the great earthquake in 1755, when it lost all pinnacles and parapets.
Judging also from the style, for the windows show many well-known Manoelino features, while the detail of the great south door is more purely Gothic, they too and the walls may be the work of Boutaca or of Lourenço Fernandes, while the great door is almost certainly that of João de Castilho.
In any case, when João de Castilho came the building was not nearly finished, for in 1522 he received a thousand cruzados towards building columns and the transept vault. But even more important to the decoration of the building than either Boutaca or João de Castilho was the coming of Master Nicolas, the Frenchman whom we shall see at work at Coimbra and at São Marcos.
The first architect was that Boutaca who, about ten years before, had built the Jesus Church at Setubal for the king's nurse, Justa Rodrigues, and to him is probably due the plan. Boutaca was succeeded in 1511 by Lourenço Fernandes, who in turn gave place to João de Castilho in 1517 or 1522.
It is impossible now to say how much each of these different architects contributed to the building as finished. At Setubal Boutaca had built a church with three vaulted aisles of about the same height. The idea was there carried out very clumsily, but it is quite likely that Belem owes its three aisles of equal height to his initiative even though they were actually carried out by some one else.
He was doubtless the Boitaca or Boutaca of the Jesus Church at Setubal and afterwards at Belem, though none of his work at Setubal in any way resembles anything he may have done here.
A little later at Thomar, having a free hand for at Belem he had had to follow out the lines laid down by Boutaca he discarded Manoelino and Gothic alike in favour of renaissance. In this final adoption of the renaissance he was soon followed by many others, even before he laid down his charge at Thomar in 1551.
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