Baltazar Alvares seems to have been specially employed by the order of St. Benedict, for not only did he build their monasteries at Coimbra but also São Bento, now the Cortes in Lisbon, as well as São Bento da Victoria at Oporto, his greatest and most successful work. [Sidenote: Oporto, São Bento.] The plan is practically the same as that of São Bento at Coimbra, but larger. Here, however, there are no windows over the chapel arches, nor any dome at the crossing. Built of grey granite, a certain heaviness seems suitable enough, and the great coffered vault is not without grandeur, while the gloom of the inside is lit up by huge carved and gilt altar-pieces and by the elaborate stalls in the choir gallery. CHAPTER XVIII OTHER BUILDINGS OF THE LATER RENAISSANCE, TILL THE EXPULSION OF THE SPANIARDS In the last chapter the most important works of Terzi and of his pupils have been described, and it is now necessary to go back and tell of various buildings which do not conform to his plan of a great barrel-vaulted nave with flanking chapels, though the designers of some of these buildings have copied such peculiarities as the tall and narrow pilasters of which his school was so fond, and which, as will be seen, ultimately degenerated into mere pilaster strips. [Sidenote: Vianna do Castello, Misericordia.] But before speaking of the basilican and other churches of this time, the Misericordia at Vianna do Castello must be described.[166] The Misericordia of Vianna stands on the north side of the chief square of the town, and was built in 1589 by one João Lopez, whose father had designed the beautiful fountain which stands near by. It is a building of very considerable interest, as there seems to be nothing else like it in the country. The church of the Misericordia, a much older building ruined by later alteration, is now only remarkable for the fine blue and white tile decoration with which its walls are covered. Just to the west of it, and at the corner of the broad street in which is a fine Manoelino house belonging to the Visconde de Carreira, stands the building designed by Lopez. The front towards the street is plain, but that overlooking the square highly decorated. At the two corners are broad rusticated bands which run up uninterrupted to the cornice; between them the front is divided into three stories of open loggias. Of these the lowest has five round arches resting on Ionic columns; in [Illustration: FIG. 97. VIANNA DO CASTELLO. MISERICORDIA.] the second, on a solid parapet, stand four whole and two half 'terms' or atlantes which support an entablature with wreath-enriched frieze; corbels above the heads of the figures cross the frieze, and others above them the low blocking course, and on them are other terms supporting the main cornice, which is not of great projection. A simple pediment rises above the four central figures, surmounted by a crucifix and containing a carving of a sun on a strapwork shield. (Fig. 97.)