called the Cloister of Affonso. This cloister is as
plain and wanting in ornament as everything else about the monastery is
rich and elaborate, and it was probably built under the direction of
Fernao d'Evora, who succeeded his uncle Martim Vasques as master of the
works before 1448, and held that position for nearly thirty years.
Unlike the great cloister, whose large openings must, from the first,
have been meant for tracery, the cloister of Affonso V. is so very plain
and simple, that if its date were not known it would readily be
attributed to a period older even than the foundation of the monastery.
On each side are seven square bays separated by perfectly plain
buttresses, each bay consisting of two very plain pointed arches resting
on the moulded capitals of coupled shafts. Except for the buttresses and
the vault the cloister differs in no marked way from those at Guimaraes
and elsewhere whose continuous pointed arcades show so little advance
from the usual romanesque manner of cloister-building. Above is a second
story of later date, in which the tiled roof rests on short columns
placed rather far apart, and with no regard to the spacing of the bays
below. Round this are the kitchens and various domestic offices of the
convent, and behind it lay another cloister, now utterly gone, having
been burned by the French in 1810. Such are the church and monastery of
Batalha as planned by Dom Joao and added to by his son and grandson, and
though it is not possible to say whence Huguet drew his inspiration, it
remains, with all the peculiarities of tracery and detail which make it
seem strange and ungrammatical--if one may so speak--to eyes accustomed
to northern Gothic, one of the most remarkable examples of original
planning and daring construction to be found anywhere. Of the later
additions which give character to the cloister and to the Capellas
Imperfeitas nothing can be said till the time of Dom Manoel is reached.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.

BATALHA.

CAPELLAS IMPERFEITAS.

_From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._]

CHAPTER V

THE EARLIER FIFTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Guimaraes.]

Besides building Batalha, King Joao dedicated the spoils he had taken at
Aljubarrota to the church of Nossa Senhora da Oliviera at Guimaraes,
which he rebuilt from the designs of Juan Garcia of Toledo. The most
important of these spoils is the silver-gilt reredos taken in the
Spanish king's travelling chapel. It is in