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Updated: May 22, 2025
Before we left the house where we had been treated with such courteous hospitality the finest ranch-house in Matto Grosso, on a huge ranch where there are some sixty thousand head of horned cattle the son of our host, Dom Joao the younger, the jaguar-hunter, presented me with two magnificent volumes on the palms of Brazil, the work of Doctor Barboso Rodriguez, one-time director of the Botanical Gardens at Rio Janeiro.
Here all is purely Gothic, there there is a mixture of Gothic and renaissance details, and towards the west front an exuberance of carving which cannot be called either Gothic or anything else, so strange and unusual is it. Another church of almost exactly the same date is that of São João Baptista, the Matriz of Villa do Conde.
The interior of the Misericordia at Beja, a square, divided into nine smaller vaulted squares by arches resting on fine Corinthian columns, with altar recesses beyond, looks as if it belonged to the time of Dom João III., but if so the front must have been added later. This is very simple, but at the same time strong and unique.
Towards the end of King João's reign a man named João Vicente, noting the corruption into which the religious orders were falling, determined to do what he could by preaching and example to bring back a better state of things. He first began his work in Lisbon, but was driven from there by the bishop to find a refuge at Braga.
The large round arches have chamfered edges; the columns are monoliths of granite about eighteen inches thick; the bases and the abaci all romanesque in form, though many of the capitals, as can be seen from their shape and carving, are of the fourteenth or even fifteenth century, showing how Juan Garcia de Toledo, who rebuilt the church for Dom João I., tried, in restoring the cloister, to copy the already existing features and as usual betrayed the real date by his later details.
In shape it is a half-octagon set diagonally, and is upheld by circular corbelling. It was ready by the time Gregorio Lourenço wrote to Dom João III. in 1522, but still wanted a suitable finishing to its door. This Gregorio urged Dom João to add, but it was never done, and now the entrance is only framed by a simple classic architrave.
At midnight Guimara crept out of her room and ran to the place where D. Joaõ was waiting for her with the horse, which travelled one hundred leagues at each step. They mounted the horse and rode away. Early the next morning the princess Guimara was missed from the royal palace. Soon it was discovered that D. Joaõ was gone too, and also the best horse from the stables.
It has therefore been thought that Bacalhôa may be the mysterious palace built for Dom João II. by Andrea da Sansovino, which is mentioned by Vasari, but of which all trace has been lost. However, it seems more likely that it owes its classic windows to the younger Affonso de Albuquerque, son of the great Indian Viceroy, who bought the property in 1528.
If the church shows that Marcos Pires was not a great architect, the cloister still more marks his inferiority to the Fernandes or to João de Castilho, though with its central fountain and its garden it is eminently picturesque. Part of it is now, and probably all once was, of two stories.
Four years before Dom João died, his only son Affonso, riding down from Almerim to the Tagus to meet his father, who had been bathing, fell from his horse and was killed. In 1495 he himself died, and was succeeded by his cousin, Manoel the Fortunate.
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