Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
In most of these buildings, however, it is not so much his work at Thomar which is followed except in the case of cloisters but rather the chapel of the Conceição, also at Thomar. Like it they are free from the more exuberant details so common in France and in Spain, and yet they cannot be called Italian.
Effecting a movement in rear, Massena and his lieutenants occupied all the positions from Santarem to Thomar, eager to instal themselves upon the two shores of the Tagus, to seize upon Abrantes, and to invest the English each day more closely in their lines. Already discontent was great in Lisbon, where provisions arrived with difficulty.
Seeing therefore how close the intercourse was between Lisbon and India, it is perhaps no wonder that, in his very interesting book on the Renaissance Architecture of Portugal, Albrecht Haupt, struck by the very strange forms used at Thomar and to a lesser degree in the later additions to Batalha, propounded a theory that this strangeness was directly due to the importation of Indian details.
Leaving the Claustro dos Filippes for the present, we must return to Batalha for a little, and then mention some buildings in which the early renaissance details recall some of the work at Thomar. The younger Fernandes had died in 1528, leaving the Capellas Imperfeitas very much in the state in which they still remain.
The work must have been carried out quickly, since on the vault of the upper cloister there is the date 1562 a date which shows that the whole must have been practically finished some eighteen years before Philip of Spain secured the throne of Portugal, and that therefore the cloister should rather be called after Dona Catharina, who ordered it, than after the 'Reis Intrusos, whose only connection with Thomar is that the first was there elected king.
Here in the quiet old convent of Thomar, the Convento de Christo, the strife of the past months seems like a dream.
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.
But, that it was not only such details as doors and monuments that began to show the result of the coming of the Frenchmen is seen in the work of João de Castilho, after he first left Thomar for Belem.
Santa Cruz at Coimbra is entirely Manoelino, but is too large and too full of the work of the foreigners who brought in the most beautiful features of the French renaissance to be spoken of now. Another is the church at Gollegã, not far from the Tagus and about half-way between Santarem and Thomar. It is a small church, with nave and aisles of five bays and a square chancel.
This monument is indeed one of the most pleasing pieces of renaissance work in existence, and one would be tempted to attribute it to João de Castilho were it not that it is more French than any of his work, and that in 1525 he can hardly have come back to Thomar, where the Claustro da Micha, the first of the new additions, was only begun in 1528.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking