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Updated: May 8, 2025
Diogo de Torralva had been nominated to direct the works in Thomar in 1554, but did nothing to this cloister till 1557 after Dom João's death, when his widow, Dona Catharina, regent for her grandson, Dom Sebastião, ordered him to pull down what was already built, as it was unsafe, and to build another of the same size about one hundred and fifteen feet square, but making the lower story rather higher.
Not long after this front was built, Dom Manoel in 1494 began a new parish church at Thomar, that of São João Baptista. The plan of this church is that which has already become so familiar: a nave and aisles with wooden roof and vaulted chancel and chapels to the east, with here, the addition of a tower and spire to the north of the west front.
But it was not only Terzi's churches which were copied at Coimbra. While the Sé Nova, then, and for nearly two hundred years more, the church of the Jesuits, was still being built, the architect of the chief pateo of the Misericordia took Diogo de Torralva's cloister at Thomar as his model.
Now here again, as at Thomar and Batalha, Haupt has seen a result of the intercourse with India; both in the balconies and in the turret roofs he sees a likeness to a temple in Gujerat; and it must be admitted that in the example he gives the balconies and roofs are not at all unlike those at Belem.
Thomar has already been seen in the twelfth century when Dom Gualdim Paes built the sixteen-sided church and the castle, and when he and his Templars withstood the Moorish invaders with such success.
If João de Castilho and his brother Diogo were really natives of one of the Basque provinces, they might rightly be included among the foreign artists who played such an important part in Portugal towards the end of Dom Manoel's reign and the beginning of that of his son, Dom João III. Yet the earlier work of João de Castilho at Thomar shows little trace of that renaissance influence which the foreigners, and especially the Frenchmen, were to do so much to introduce.
But before following him back to Thomar, his additions to the abbey of Alcobaça must be mentioned, as there for the last time, except in some parts of Belem, he allowed himself to follow the older methods, though even at this early date 1518 and 1519 renaissance forms are beginning to creep in.
Here at Thomar the only difference is that the arches are very much wider, there being but five on each side, and that the bell-shaped capitals are covered with finely carved conventional vine-leaves arranged in two rows round the bells.
Since the material a kind of marble is much less fine than the stone used at Batalha or in Coimbra or Thomar, the carving is naturally less minute and ivory-like than it is there, and this is especially the case with the foliage, which is rather coarse. The statues too except perhaps Prince Henry's are a little short and sturdy.
He lived and worked at Evora, and is said by his son Francisco to have been the first in Portugal 'to make known a pleasing manner of painting in black and white, superior to all processes known in other countries. When the convent of Thomar was being finished by Dom João III., some large books were in November 1533 sent on a mule to Antonio at Evora to be illuminated.
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