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It is also more pleasing than any other contemporary building in Portugal, and the detail, though very rich, is more restrained. This may be due to the nationality of João de Castilho, for some of the work is almost Spanish, for example the buttresses, the pinnacles, and the door with its trefoiled drip-mould.
Again, instead of the whole rising up with a great pinnacled niche to pierce the cornice and to dominate parapet and cresting, the drip-mould of the window only gives a few ugly twists, and leaves a blank space between the window head and the straight line of the cornice and parapet; a line in no way improved by the tall rustic cross or the four broken pinnacles which rise above it.
Here the door itself is plain, but well moulded, with above it an elaborately crocketed ogee drip-mould, which ends in a large finial; above this rises to a considerable height some arcaded panelling, ending at the top in a straight band of quatrefoil, and interrupted by a steep gable.
The drip-mould is also treated in the common Manoelino way with large spreading finials. Above the cornice, which is less elaborate than in the nave, was a short octagonal drum capped by a low spire, now replaced by a poor dome and flying buttresses. The west door once opened into a three-aisled porch now gone.
The drip-mould, instead or merely surrounding the half octagon, is so broken and bent as to project across it at four points, being indeed shaped like half a square with a semicircle on the one complete side, and two quarter circles on the half sides, all enriched by many a small cusp and leaf.
Immediately above the great arch is a round-headed window, and on either side between it and the buttresses are two rows of statues and niches in tiers separated by elaborate statue-bearing shafts and pinnacles. Statues even occupy niches on the window jamb, and a Virgin and Child stand up in front on the end of the ogee drip-mould of the great arch.
It has a drip-mould covered with closely set balls, and four orders of mouldings of which the second is a broad chamfer with a row of flat four-leaved flowers; the abacus is well moulded, but the capitals, which are somewhat bell-shaped, have the bell covered with rude animals or foliage which are still very romanesque in design.
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