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Updated: May 20, 2025
Inside there is nothing very remarkable in the structure of the church except the fine vaulting with its many moulded ribs, the large windows with their broken Manoelino heads, and the choir gallery which occupies nearly two bays at the west end. Vaulted underneath, it opens to the church by a large elliptical arch which springs from jambs ornamented with beautiful candelabrum shafts.
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.
Now, the base mouldings of these panelled pilasters either do not quite fit those of the fluted strips behind, or else are cut off against them, as are also the top mouldings of the fluted part; further, the fluted part runs up rather awkwardly into the vault, so that it seems reasonable to conjecture that these square renaissance pilasters and the arches may be an after-thought, added because it was found that the original buttresses were not quite strong enough for their work, and this too would account for the purely renaissance character of the carving on them, while the rest is almost entirely Gothic or Manoelino.
Round each of the two entrances runs a band of renaissance carving, and the flat reliefs in the divided tympanum are rather like some that may be seen in France, but otherwise the detail is all Gothic. Twisted shafts bearing the corbels, elaborate canopies, crocketed finials, all are rather Gothic than Manoelino.
The hill on which the palace is built being extremely steep, an immense retaining wall, some fifty or sixty feet high, bounds the courtyard on the west, and it is on the top of this wall that the loggia is built forming a covered way two stories in height and uniting the Manoelino palace on the north with some offices which bound the yard on the south.
The chancel, which is of two bays, one wide, and one to the east narrower, has a low vault with many well-moulded ribs springing from large corbels, some of which are Manoelino, while others have on them shields and figures of the renaissance. It still retains an original window on each side, small, round-headed, with a band of beautiful renaissance carving on the splay.
Two windows light the Pateo, one looking north and one south. They are both alike, and both are thoroughly Manoelino in style. They are of two lights, with well-moulded jambs, and half-octagonal heads.
The outer shafts of the jambs are carved like tree trunks, and the hood moulding like a thick branch is bent and interlaced with other branches. The additions made to the palace at Cintra by Dom Manoel are a complete treasury of Manoelino detail in its earlier phases.
Up in the town on the top of the hill the nave of the church of the Marvilla whose Manoelino door and chancel have already been mentioned is of about the same date. This nave is about one hundred feet long by fifty-five wide, has three aisles with wooden ceilings; the arcades of round arches with simple moulded architrave rest on the beautiful Ionic capitals of columns over twenty-six feet high.
Such a round moulding has already been seen forming an ogee over the windows at Sempre Noiva and over the chapter-house door at São João Evangelista, Evora, and there are at Evora two windows side by side, in one of which this round moulding forms a simple ogee, while in the other it forms a series of reversed curves after the true Manoelino manner.
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