Outside, the main door, also of Arrabida marble, is large and pointed,
with many mouldings and two empty niches on each side. It has little
trace of Manoelino except in the bent curves of the upturned drip-mould,
and in the broken lines of the two smaller doors which open under the
plain tympanum. The nave window is of two lights with simple tracery,
but in the chancel, which was ready by 1495, the window shows more
Manoelino tendencies. It is of three lights, with flowing tracery at the
head, and with small cusped and crocketed arches thrown across each
light at varying levels. There are niches on the jambs, and the outer
moulding is carried round the window head in broken curves, after the
manner of Resende's house at Evora. Though the chancel is square inside,
the corners outside are cut off by a very broad chamfer, and a very
curious ogee curve unites the two.
The cloisters to the north are more usual. The arches are round or
slightly pointed, and like the short round columns with their moulded
eight-sided caps and sides, are of Arrabida marble. Half-way along each
walk two of the columns are set more closely together, and between them
is a small round arch, with below it a Manoelino trefoil; there is too
in the north-west corner a lavatory with a good flat vault.
[Sidenote: Beja, Conceição.]
At Beja the church of the Conceição, founded by Dom Manoel's father, has
been very much pulled about, but the cornice and parapet with Gothic
details, rope mouldings, and twisted pinnacles still show that it also
was built when the new Manoelino style was first coming into use.
[Sidenote: Castle.]
In the ruins of the Castle there is a very picturesque window where two
horseshoe arches are set so close together that the arches meet in such
a way that the cusps at their meeting form a pendant, while another
window in the Rua dos Mercadores, though very like the one in Resende's
house in Evora, is more naturalistic. 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.
[Sidenote: Paço, Cintra.]
The additions made to the palace at Cintra by Dom Manoel are a complete
treasury of Manoelino detail in its earlier phases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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