real additions made to the church. Though
of but moderate dimensions, it is one of the largest of Portuguese
cathedrals, being 175 feet long by 70 feet wide and 110 feet across the
transepts. It is also unique among the aisled and vaulted churches in
copying Batalha by having a well-developed clerestory and flying
buttresses.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL. GUARDA.]
The plan consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, a transept
projecting one bay beyond the aisles, and three apses to the east. At
the crossing the vault is slightly raised so as to admit of four small
round windows opening above the flat roofs of the central aisle and
transepts. The only peculiarity about the plan lies in the two western
towers, which near the ground are squares set diagonally to the front of
the church and higher up change to octagons, and so rise a few feet
above the flat roof. About the end of the fifteenth century two small
chapels were added to the north of the nave, and later still the spaces
between the buttresses were filled in with shallow altar recesses.
The likeness to Batalha is best seen in the Capella Mor. As the apse has
only three instead of five sides, the windows are rather wider, and
there are none below, but otherwise the resemblance is as great as may
be, when the model is of fine limestone and the copy of granite. The
buttresses have offset string courses, and square crocketed pinnacles
just as at Batalha; there has even been an attempt to copy the parapet,
though only the trefoil corbel table is really like the model, for the
parapet itself is solid with a cresting of rather clumsy fleurs-de-lis.
These pinnacles and this crested parapet are found everywhere all round
the church, though the pinnacles on the aisle walls from which the plain
flying buttresses spring are quite different, being of a Manoelino
design. Again the north transept door has evidently been inspired by the
richness of Batalha. Here the door itself is plain, but well moulded,
with above it an elaborately crocketed ogee drip-mould, which ends in a
large finial; above this rises to a considerable height some arcaded
panelling, ending at the top in a straight band of quatrefoil, and
interrupted by a steep gable. (Fig. 38.)
No other part of the outside calls for much notice except the boat-keel
corbels of the smaller apses, the straight gable-less ends to transept
and nave which show that the roofs are flat and paved, and the western
towers. These
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