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Updated: May 27, 2025
In the towers the lowest of the four stages is relieved by a little arcade of six trefoiled arches, with detached shafts, fluted capitals, and dripstones not trefoiled and terminating in heads. In their enrichment these arcades resemble the windows of the central compartment.
As a whole, I think that the Kashmirian architecture, with its noble fluted pillars, its vast colonnades, its lofty pediments, and its elegant trefoiled arches, is fully entitled to be classed as a distinct style.
Inside, the capitals of the chapel arches as well as their rich cuspings are very like those of the founder's chapel; the capitals having octagonal abaci and stiff vine-leaves, and the trefoiled cusps ending in square vine-leaves, while the arch mouldings are, as in King João's chapel, more English than French in section.
Briefly, this is a Greek temple pediment, in which, doubtful of their power to carve figures beautiful enough, they cut a trefoiled hold for ornament, and bordered the edges with harlequinade of mosaic. They then call to their help the Greek sea-waves, and let the surf of the AEgean climb along the slopes, and toss itself at the top into a fleur-de-lys.
Here, as in the clerestory, the mouldings are delicately varied. The central shafts alone of the mullions have capitals. On each side of every window are three shafts, all with capitals. Below the windows runs an arcade of very simple panelling, four divisions to each window, and two trefoiled arches in each division.
Here we see first an arcade of four trefoiled lancets, of greater depth than those underneath; while the uppermost stage has a large pointed window, with a lancet on each side, and above each lancet a quatrefoil in a circle. The arches of the window and lancets are highly enriched with carving. Below the parapet is a good corbel table.
Though in some features related to the doors at Santarem or the Madre de Deus the door here is much more elaborate and even barbaric, but at the same time, being contained within a simple gable-shaped moulding under a plain round arch, with no sprawling projections, the whole design as is the case with the university chapel at Coimbra is much more pleasing, and if the large outer twisted shafts with their ogee trefoiled head had been omitted, would even have been really beautiful.
On the front are Christ, the Virgin, and S. John in relief, with a frieze of a hunting subject, the figures beneath trefoiled arches on twisted columns; on the back, SS. Anselm, Ambrose, and Marcella; on the ends, SS. Peter and Paul, and a king and queen. Bianchi says these are thirteenth century; Mr. T.G. Jackson says fifteenth, which is more likely.
The niches are trefoiled and ogee-headed, with crockets and finials and octagonal colonnettes between, springing from corbels, and crowned with imbricated pinnacles; they have piercings resembling window tracery, with rosettes between each repetition.
The two other rose windows have six spokes instead of eight, the trefoiled arches have foliage, and the inner moulding of the bounding circles is continuously waving. The spokes in all three windows have the dog-tooth on each side. On each side of the lower part of these windows is a trefoil-headed niche containing a figure.
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