Photograph: Santiago MaciasPhotograph: Santiago MaciasPhotograph: Santiago MaciasPhotograph: Santiago MaciasPhotograph: Santiago MaciasPhotograph: Santiago Macias


Name of Monument:

S. Brás chapel

Location:

Évora, Portugal

Date of Monument:

Around 1482–5

Period / Dynasty:

Mudéjar

History:

The church was built at the far end of the town's main square, in a place where a short time earlier a makeshift hospital had been built of wood to combat an outbreak of the plague, and it was dedicated to S. Brás, a doctor by profession and protector against diseases of the throat. A small fair called the Candle or Candlemas fair was traditionally held on the day before the festival of the patron saint (3 February). Originally there was a house for the hermit, separate but very close to the chapel. It is now one of the town's parish churches.

Description:

A small church with a rectangular plan (nave measuring 16.90 m x 6.63 m; apse measuring 3.50 m x 4.50 m), a separate building standing approximately 30 m from the late-medieval wall, built on the site where a temporary hospital had been set up to deal with an outbreak of the plague. The church, oriented east–west, has an outer narthex (antechurch) with an ogival vault opening through three pointed arches standing on short half-columns with plant-patterned capitals, and is strengthened all round by cylindrical buttresses, with zoomorphic gargoyles, ornamented by merlons and topped by cylindrical pinnacles with crockets (decorative features) at the highest points, a pioneering design which was followed in other late-Gothic buildings in the region. On the cornice there are fragments of a bar of sgraffito of geometric motifs (spine patterns, chequered patterns, ovals, lozenges with concave sides) clearly of Mudéjar influence. The mass of walls, with few openings, is decorated all the way round with prismatic battlements, which gives it the appearance of a fortified church, beneath which, on the chevet (eastern end) and at the top of the buttresses, runs a moulding in relief made of stucco with a scheme of sloping arches, horseshoe arches, trefoils and clover leaves, all of it patterned with guttae and saw-tooth shapes, like a Lombardy frieze. The chevet of the church, with rounded edges, stands out slightly in relation to the rest of the building, showing the religious service support rooms which flank the chancel and which are lit through pointed arch windows.
The nave is roofed by a semi-circular barrel vault, and the apse is roofed by an elliptical vault and decorated, as is the nave, by panels of green and white glazed tiles, in geometric compositions, dating from 1575, in the Hispano-Moresque style.
The church is built of brick, entirely plastered, with the gargoyles, tops of the pinnacles, capitals and mouldings of the openings made of fine-grained granite from the Évora region. The roof is made of half-round unglazed tiles, in the traditional style of the region.

View Short Description

The Chapel of St Brás in Évora was built in AH 887–90 (AD 1482–5). Its structural elements (brickwork with few external openings and a semi-cylindrical tile roof) and decorative elements (Hispano-Morisco tile panelling in the apse and the nave) make this church typical of the Mudéjar style of the time. This assessment is supported by fragments from a strip of engraved geometric motifs from the cornice and a stucco moulding from above the merlons at the eastern end of the church and the buttresses, which depicts keel arches, horseshoe arches, trefoils and clovers.

How Monument was dated:

The document from the bishop authorising the construction of the church (1480) is extant as are documents from the king urging its construction (1483). From an eyewitness account by a German intellectual, Jerome Munzer, we know that it was already used for worship in 1490. Slightly later than the S. Brás Chapel, which served as a model, various other very similar small churches were built in the region, for instance the S. Sebastião Chapel in Alvito and Santo André Chapel in Beja.

Selected bibliography:

Espanca, T., Inventário Artístico de Portugal: Distrito de Évora, Vol. VII, Lisbon, 1966.
Pereira, P., “Do 'Modo' Gótico ao Manuelino (Séculos XV–XVI)”, in História da Arte Portuguesa, ed. P. Pereira, Vol. II, Lisbon, 1995, pp.41–2.
Pérez-Embid, F., El Mudejarismo en la Arquitectura Portuguesa de la Época Manuelina, Seville, 1944.
Vieira da Silva, J., O Tardo-Gótico em Portugal: A Arquitectura no Alentejo, Lisbon, 1989.

Citation of this web page:

Manuel J. C. Branco "S. Brás chapel" in Discover Islamic Art, Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. 2024. https://islamicart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=monument;ISL;pt;Mon01;20;en

Prepared by: Manuel J. C. BrancoManuel J. C. Branco

Manuel J. C. Branco, mestre em História da Arte pela Universidade de Lisboa, foi responsável pelo Centro Histórico de Évora (1994-97) e director da revista de cultura A Cidade de Évora (1994-2001). É autor de entradas do Inventário de Monumentos Nacionais da Direcção-Geral de Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais (Portugal) e de numerosos estudos: "A Fundação da Igreja do Bom Jesus de Valverde e o tríptico de Gregório Lopes", in A Cidade de Évora, n.º 71-76; "Évora, Centro Histórico Patrimonio de la Humanidad" in La ciutat històrica dins la ciutat (Girona, Universitat de Girona, 1997); "Renascimento, Maneirismo e Estilo Chão em Évora", in Do Mundo Antigo aos Novos Mundos (Lisboa, C.N.C.D.P., 1998); "Igreja e convento de S. Francisco de Évora - Evolução do sítio do século XIII ao século XIX", in Revista Monumentos, n.º 17 (Lisboa, DGEMN, 2002).

Translation by: Gilla Evans
Translation copyedited by: Monica Allen

MWNF Working Number: PT Z

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Islamic Dynasties / Period

Mudejar period


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