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Updated: June 4, 2025
Farther up the Tagus at Abrantes, in the church of Santa Maria do Castello, are some more tombs of the same date, more than one of which is an almost exact copy of the princes' tombs at Batalha, though there is one whose arch is fringed with curious reversed cusping, almost Moorish in appearance.
He would not have had far to go to see real reticulated panelling, for the church is covered with it; but an even more likely source of this reticulation might be found in the beautiful Moorish panelling which exists on such buildings as the Giralda or the tower at Rabat, and if we find Moors among the workmen at Thomar there may well have been some at Batalha as well.
Dined with Pinto Basto and met Fonseca. 16th, to Caldas. 17th, to Alcobaca; then drove on to Batalha, and slept at Leiria. These great monasteries, now deserted, with their architecture and their tombs, are of the highest interest. 18th.
Of course, when looking for parallels with such a special object in view it is easy enough to find them, and to see resemblances between the cloister windows at Batalha and various screens or panels at Ahmedabad; and when we find that a certain Thomas Fernandes had been sent to India in 1506 as military engineer and architect; that another Fernandes, Diogo of Beja, had in 1513 formed part of an embassy sent to Gujerat and so probably to the capital Ahmedabad; and that Fernandes was also the name of the architects of Batalha, it becomes difficult not to connect these separate facts together and to jump to the quite unwarrantable conclusion that the four men of the same name may have been related and that one of them, probably Diogo, had given his kinsmen sketches or descriptions on which they founded their designs.
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.
Phillips tells us, that 'in the monastery of Batalha is the tomb of Don John, son of King John I. of Portugal, which is ornamented by the representation of strawberries, this prince having chosen them for his crest, to shew his devotion to St John the Baptist, who lived on fruits. This is rather a curious notion, for though the Scripture tells us of St John the Baptist, that when in the wilderness 'his meat was locusts and wild honey, we have no reason to suppose that he lived always even on these.
From what is left it seems that the church was more like what Batalha was planned to be, rather than what it became under the direction of Huguet: but the downfall of the nave has been so complete that it is only possible to make out that there must have been a well-developed clerestory and a high vaulted central aisle.
There is but one other Battle Abbey in the world Batalha in Portugal which covers the plain of Aljubarota, where Joao I. won his kingdom from Castile; and as his wife was a daughter of John of Gaunt, a most noble and high-minded princess, it is most probable that she suggested the work after the example of her great ancestor; nay, when the visitor enters the nave, and is reminded by the architecture of Winchester, it seems as if Philippa of Lancaster might have both proposed the foundation, and sent to England for the plan, to the Architect and Bishop, William of Wykeham.
So far, beyond the great refinement of the details, there has been nothing very characteristic of João de Castilho, but when we find that the pilasters of the choir and apse, as well as the choir and transept arches, are panelled in that very curious way with strips crossing each other at long intervals to form diamonds which João employed in the passage arches in the Thomar dormitory and in the loggia at Batalha, it would be natural enough to conclude that this chapel is his work, and indeed the best example of what he could do with classic details.
These pinnacles and this crested parapet are found everywhere all round the church, though the pinnacles on the aisle walls from which the plain flying buttresses spring are quite different, being of a Manoelino design. Again the north transept door has evidently been inspired by the richness of Batalha.
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