Manueline architecture explained

The short answer

Manueline is the name for a Portuguese way of building and decorating at the turn of the 16th century, called after King Manuel I. The glossary published by the operator of the Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower defines it as "an exclusively Portuguese artistic and architectural expression dating from the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth century, associated with the reign of King Manuel I (1495–1521)", combining Flamboyant Gothic with Spanish Plateresque influences. It blends late Gothic forms with naturalistic motifs, nautical references and royal and religious symbols, in the glossary's words.[1]

The operator treats it as a variant of late Gothic rather than a new architecture. The glossary places it inside Flamboyant Gothic, the phase it characterises by exuberant decoration.[1] The monastery page calls it "a Portuguese variant of Late Gothic architecture". One correction is worth knowing before looking at any example: at the Jerónimos Monastery, the operator says most of the maritime motifs now visible are 19th-century restoration work, not 16th-century carving.[2]

What the motifs are

Three emblems recur on the official pages, and they are a practical way to recognise the style:

• The armillary sphere, a globe of rings: in Boitaca's decoration at Jerónimos, on the Belém Tower's façade beside Manuel I's arms, and on the portal of the governors' palace at Óbidos.[8][3][2]
• The Cross of the Order of Christ: in the same Jerónimos decoration and along the Belém Tower's parapet.[3][2]
• The royal coat of arms: on the Belém Tower's southern façade and in its rooms.[3]

Around them come the forms that give Manueline its texture. The Belém Tower page counts the stone cables that encircle the building, the knots that end them and the naturalistic motifs among "elements characteristic of Manueline symbolism".[3] The Jerónimos page describes Diogo Boitaca's decoration as royal and religious symbols combined with naturalistic, fantastical and mythological elements.[2]

The Belém Tower adds one more detail: a stone rhinoceros at the base of a corner turret on the western bastion. The tower page explains that King Manuel's Indian rhinoceros reached Lisbon in May 1515, while the tower was being built.[3]

Jerónimos: where the style meets the Renaissance

The Jerónimos Monastery's own page shows that it is a building of several styles, not only a Manueline one. Boitaca, who directed the works from 1502 to 1516, combined decorative elements inherited from the late Gothic with the influences that "would come to shape what became known as the Manueline style". His church has a single nave on ornamented columns under a complex ribbed vault.[2]

His successors moved away from it, according to the same page. João de Castilho, in charge from 1517, introduced forms that combined the Plateresque with the more classical language of the Renaissance; Diogo de Torralva, from 1540, used a more Italianate decoration whose Renaissance parapet contrasts with the Manueline openings of the gallery below it; and Jerónimo de Ruão's later High Chapel broke with the more distinctly Manueline language of the church.[2]

The Belém Tower, begun in 1514 by Francisco de Arruda and virtually complete by 1519, shows the same vocabulary on a fortress. Its page credits Arruda with Oriental influences in the domed cupolas on the turrets, and says a doorway with Plateresque motifs was probably carved at the Jerónimos building site by a sculptor of Castilho's team.[3] The Jerónimos and Belém Tower guide covers visiting the two monuments.

Manueline or Neo-Manueline?

In the 19th century the Jerónimos Monastery was restored, and after a central section then under construction collapsed in 1878, the works followed the Neo-Manueline style, a Romantic revival of the decoration of Manuel's reign. The operator says that revival drew on "nautical motifs associated with Portuguese maritime expansion and voyages", and that most of the maritime-themed elements now visible at Jerónimos, the ropes, fish, anchors and ships, are in the sections restored during the 19th century. The tombs of Camões and Vasco da Gama in the church are Neo-Manueline too, sculpted by Costa Motta.[2]

The glossary still lists nautical references as part of Manueline itself.[1] XTOUR's reading is that both statements can be true: the glossary describes the style, and the monastery page describes which carvings at one building are original. What follows for a visitor is narrower. At Jerónimos, a rope or an anchor cannot be assumed to be 16th-century work.

Beyond Lisbon: where official pages name it

Official pages outside Lisbon tie the style to several buildings, in different words:

• Batalha. Museus e Monumentos de Portugal describes the monastery as running from the late Gothic to "the decorative profusion of the Manueline".[4] The Batalha municipality calls it a great work of Portuguese Gothic from which "the new artistic current of the Manueline" spills out.[5] The regional tourism board puts the first Manueline decoration in the Royal Cloister and calls the entrance of the Unfinished Chapels distinctly Manueline.[6] The monastery is covered in the Batalha and Alcobaça guide.
• Tomar. At the Convent of Christ, Museus e Monumentos de Portugal names a "nave manuelina" built by Diogo de Arruda from 1510 to 1513 and finished by João de Castilho from 1513 to 1515, and the Chapter House window, which it calls a symbol of Portuguese maritime expansion and of Manuel's imperial idea of Portugal.[7] The convent, and the dates other official pages give the window, are covered in the Convent of Christ guide.
• Óbidos. The municipality lists the castle's architecture as including Manueline, singles out the governors' palace's Manueline windows onto its courtyard, and classifies the town's pillory, set up probably after Manuel's charter of 1513, as Manueline.[9][8] They are described in the Óbidos guide.
• Évora. The municipality's World Heritage page says the city's numerous palaces and convents of Manueline inspiration, some of granite, date from the 15th century.[10]
• Coimbra. The University of Coimbra's visit pages say the present architecture of Saint Michael's Chapel dates from the 16th century, in the reign of King Manuel, but the page does not call it Manueline.[11] XTOUR does not apply the label for it.

Two of these differ from the Jerónimos glossary on dates or labels. Évora's page dates its Manueline-inspired buildings to the 15th century, while the glossary dates the style from the late 15th to the early 16th century and ties it to a reign that began in 1495.[1][10] Coimbra's page dates a building to Manuel's reign without naming the style; a building of Manuel's reign is not by that fact a Manueline building.[11]

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not rank Manueline buildings, publish visiting hours or prices for any of them, or list every building in the style. It describes only buildings whose official pages it could read. Visiting details for the main examples are in the Jerónimos and Belém Tower guide, the Évora guide and the Coimbra University guide.