autiful shafts standing on high pedestals which rest

[Illustration: FIG. 87.

THOMAR.

CONVENTO DE CHRISTO.

STAIR IN CLAUSTRO DOS FILIPPES.]

[Illustration: FIG. 88.

THOMAR.

CHAPEL OF THE CONCEICAO.]

on corbels; the frieze of the cornice is carved much after the manner of
the window panel in the dormitory corridor at Thomar, and with long
masks where it projects over the shafts.

Below, the carved cornice and architrave are carried across the opening
as they are round the whole octagon, but the frieze is open and filled
with balusters. Behind, the whole space is spanned by a three-centred
arch, panelled like the passage arches at Thomar.

All the work is most exquisite, but it is not easy to see how the
horizontal cornice was to be brought into harmony with the higher
windows intended on the other seven sides, nor does the renaissance
detail, beautiful though it is, agree very well with the exuberant
Manoelino of the rest.

With the beginning of the Claustro dos Filippes the work of Joao de
Castilho comes to an end. He had been actively employed for about forty
years, beginning and ending at Thomar, finishing Belem, and adding to
Alcobaca, besides improving the now vanished royal palace and even
fortifying Mazagao on the Moroccan coast, where perhaps his work may
still survive. In these forty years his style went through more than one
complete change. Beginning with late Gothic he was soon influenced by
the surrounding Manoelino; at Belem he first met renaissance artists, at
Alcobaca he either used Manoelino and renaissance side by side or else
treated renaissance in a way of his own, though shortly after, at Belem
again, he came to use renaissance details more and more fully. A little
later at Thomar, having a free hand--for at Belem he had had to follow
out the lines laid down by Boutaca--he discarded Manoelino and Gothic
alike in favour of renaissance.

In this final adoption of the renaissance he was soon followed by many
others, even before he laid down his charge at Thomar in 1551.

In most of these buildings, however, it is not so much his work at
Thomar which is followed--except in the case of cloisters--but rather
the chapel of the Conceicao, also at Thomar. Like it they are free from
the more exuberant details so common in France and in Spain, and yet
they cannot be called Italian.

[Sidenote: Thomar, Conceicao.]

There is unfortunately no proof that the Conceicao chapel is Joao's
wor