Portugal, archbishop of Evora, built himself a small country house which
he called Sempre Noiva, or 'Ever New,' about the beginning of the
sixteenth century. It is now a ruin having lost all its woodwork, but
the walls are still well preserved. The plan is simple; a rectangle with
a chapel projecting from the eastern side, and a small wing from the
west end of the south side. All the ground floor is vaulted, as is the
chapel, but the main rooms on the first floor had wooden roofs, except
the one next the chapel which forms the middle floor of a three-storied
tower, which, rising above the rest of the building, has a battlemented
flat roof reached by a spiral stair. This stair, like the round
buttresses of the chapel, is capped by a high conical plastered roof. As
usual the whole, except the windows and the angles, is plastered and has
a sgraffito frieze running round under the cornice. There is a large
porch on the north side covering a stair leading to the upper floor,
where most of the windows are of two lights and very like those of the
pavilion at Evora. Two like them have the ogee moulding, and at the
sides a rounded moulding carried on corbels and finished above the
window with a carved finial. The capitals are again carved with leaves,
but the horseshoe arches have no cusps, and the mouldings, like the
capitals, are entirely Gothic; the union between the two styles, Gothic
and Arab, was already becoming closer.
Naturally Moorish details are more often found in secular than in
religious buildings: yet there are churches where such details exist
even if the general plan and design is Christian.
[Sidenote: São João Evangelista, Evora.]
Just to the north of the cathedral of Evora, Rodrigo Affonso de Mello,
count of Olivença, in 1485 founded a monastery for the Loyos, or Canons
Secular of St. John the Evangelist. The church itself is in no way
notable; the large west door opening under a flat arched porch is one of
these with plain moulded arches and simple shafts which are so common
over all the country, and is only interesting for its late date. At the
left side is a small monument to the founder's memory; on a corbel
stands a short column bearing an inscribed slab, and above the slab is a
shield under a carved curtain. Inside are some tombs--two of them being
Flemish brasses--and great tile pictures covering the walls. These give
the life of São Lorenzo Giustiniani, patriarch of Venice, and canon of
San Giorgio in Alga, where the founder of the Loyos had been kindly
received and whence he drew the rules of his order, and are interesting
as being signed and dated 'Antonius ab oliva fecit 1711.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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