e unfinished
when Dom Manoel came to the throne in 1495, and though he did much
towards carrying on the work it was unfinished when he died in 1521 and
so remains to the present day. It is in designing this chapel that
Huguet showed his greatest originality and constructive daring: a few
feet behind the central apse he planned a great octagon about
seventy-two feet in diameter, surrounded by seven apsidal chapels, one
on each side except that next the church, while between these chapels
are small low chambers where were to be the tombs themselves. There is
nothing to show how this chapel was to be united to the church, as the
great doorway and vaulted hall were added by Dom Manoel some seventy
years later. When Dom Duarte died in 1438, or when Huguet himself died
not long after,[81] the work had only been carried out as far as the
tops of the surrounding chapels, and so remained all through his son's
and his grandson's reigns, although in his will the king had specially
asked that the building should be carried on. In all this original part
of the Capellas Imperfeitas there is little that differs from Huguet's
work in the church. The buttresses and corbel table are very similar
(the pinnacles and parapets have been added since 1834), and the apses
quite like those of the church. (Fig. 36.)

The tracery of the chief windows too is not unlike that of the lantern
windows of the founder's chapel except that there is a well-marked
transome half-way up--a feature which has been attributed to English
influence--while the single windows of the tomb chambers are completely
filled with geometric tracery. Inside, the capitals of the chapel arches
as well as their rich cuspings are very like those of the founder's
chapel; the capitals having octagonal abaci and stiff vine-leaves, and
the trefoiled cusps ending in square vine-leaves, while the arch
mouldings are, as in King Joao's chapel, more English than French in
section. There is nothing now to show how the great central octagon was
to be roofed--for the eight great piers which now rise high above the
chapel were not built till the time of Dom Manoel--but it seems likely
that the vault was meant to be low, and not to rise much above the
chapel roofs, finishing, as everywhere else in the church, in a flat,
paved terrace.

The only important addition made during the reigns of Dom Affonso V. and
of Dom Joao II. was that of a second cloister, north of the Claustro
Real, and still