gable comes another English feature, a very large three-light window
running up to the very vault; at the top the mullions of each light are
carried up so as to intersect, with cusped circles filling in each
space, while the whole window to the top is filled with a veil of small
reticulated tracery. Above the top of the large window there is a band
of reticulated panelling whose shafts run down till they reach the
crocketed hood-mould of the window: and above this an elaborately
pierced and foliated parapet between the square pinnacles of the angle
buttresses, which like these of the apses are remarkable for the
extraordinary number (ten) of offsets and string courses.
The next five bays of the nave as well as the whole north side (which
has no buttresses) above the cloister are all practically alike; the
buttresses, pinnacles and parapet are just the same as those of the
transept: the windows tall, standing pretty high above the ground, are
all of three lights with tracery evidently founded on that of the large
transept window, but set very far back in the wall with as many as three
shafts on each side, and with each light now filled in with horrid wood
or plaster work. The clerestory windows, also of three lights with
somewhat similar tracery, are separated by narrow buttresses bearing
square pinnacles, between which runs on a pointed corbel table the usual
pierced parapet, and by strong flying buttresses, which at least in the
western bays are doubly cusped, and are, between the arch and the
straight part, pierced with a large foliated circle and other tracery.
The last three bays on the south side are taken up by the Founder's
Chapel (Capella do Fundador), in which are buried King João, Queen
Philippa, and four of their sons. This chapel, which must have been
begun a good deal later than the church, as the church was finished in
1415 when the queen died and was temporarily buried before the high
altar, while the chapel was not yet ready when Dom João made his will in
1426, though it was so in 1434 when he and the queen were there buried,
is an exact square of about 80 feet externally, within which an octagon
of about 38 feet in diameter rises above the flat roof of the square,
rather higher than to the top of the aisles. Each exposed side of the
square is divided into three bays, one wider in the centre with one
narrower on each side. The buttresses, pinnacles and corbel table are
much the same as before, but the parapet is much more elaborate and more
like French flamboyant. Of the windows the smaller are of four lights
with very elaborate and unusual flowing tracery in their heads; small
parts of which, such as the tracery at the top of the smaller lights, is
curiously English, while the whole is neither English nor French nor
belonging to any other national school. The same may be said of the
larger eight-light window in the central bay, but that there the tracery
is even more elaborate and extravagant. The octagon above has buttresses
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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