The inside was of the usual pattern, except that the pilasters were not
coupled between the chapels, that they were panelled, and that above the
low chapel arches there are square windows looking into a gallery.
[Sidenote: Torreão do Paço.]
Besides these churches Terzi built for Philip a large addition to the
royal palace in the shape of a great square tower or pavilion, called
the Torreão. The palace then stood to the west of what is now called the
Praça do Commercio, and the Torreão jutted out over the Tagus. It seems
to have had five windows on the longer and four on the shorter sides, to
have been two stories in height, and to have been covered by a great
square dome-shaped roof, with a lantern at the top and turrets at the
corners. Pilasters stood singly between each window and in pairs at the
corners, and the windows all had pediments. Now, not a stone of it is
left, as it was in the palace square, the Terreno do Paço da Ribeira,
that the earthquake was at its worst, swallowing up the palace and
overwhelming thousands of people in the waves of the river.
[Sidenote: Coimbra, Sé Nova.]
Meanwhile the great Jesuit church at Coimbra, now the Sé Nova or new
cathedral, had been gradually rising. Founded by Dom João III. in 1552,
and dedicated to the Onze mil Virgems, it cannot have been begun in its
present form till much later, till about 1580, while the main, or south,
front seems even later still.[164]
Inside, the church consists of a nave of four bays with side chapels--in
one of which there is a beautiful Manoelino font--transepts and chancel
with a drumless dome over the crossing. In some respects the likeness to
São Vicente is very considerable; there are coupled Doric pilasters
between the chapels, the barrel vault is coffered, and the chapel arches
are extremely plain. But here the likeness ends. The pilasters are
panelled and have very simple moulded capitals; the entablature is quite
ordinary, without triglyphs or mutules, and is broken round each pair of
pilasters; the coffers on the vault are very deep, and are scarcely
moulded; and, above all, the proportions are quite different as the nave
is too wide for its height, and the drum is terribly needed to lift up
the dome. In short, the architect seems to have copied the dispositions
of Santo Antão and has done his best to spoil them, and yet he has at
the same time succeeded in making the interior look large, though with
an almost Herrera-like clumsiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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