Baroque Architecture - Portugal and Portuguese Empire

Portugal and Portuguese Empire

Nothwithstanding a prodigality of sensually rich surface decoration associated with Baroque architecture of the Iberian Peninsula, the royal courts of Madrid and Lisbon generally favoured a more sober architectural vocabulary distilled from 17th-century Italy. The royal palaces of Madrid, La Granja, Aranjuez, Mafra, and Queluz were designed by architects under strong influence of Bernini and Juvarra. In the realm of church architecture, Guarini's design for Santa Maria della Divina Providenza in Lisbon was a pace-setter for structural audacity in the region (even though it was never built).

In Portugal, the first fully Baroque church was the Church of Santa Engrácia, in Lisbon, designed by royal architect João Antunes, which has a Greek cross floorplan and curved facades. Antunes also designed churches in which the inner space is rectangular but with curved corners (like the Menino de Deus Church in Lisbon), a scheme that is found in several 18th century churches in Portugal and Brazil. The court of John V, on the other hand, favoured Roman baroque models, as attested by the work of royal architect Ludovice, a German who designed the Royal Palace of Mafra, built after 1715.

By the mid-18th century, northern Portuguese architects had absorbed the concepts of Italian Baroque to revel in the plasticity of local granite in such projects as the surging 75-metre-high Torre dos Clérigos in Porto. The foremost centre of the national Baroque tradition was Braga, whose buildings encompass virtually every important feature of Portuguese architecture and design. The Baroque shrines and palaces of Braga are noted for polychrome ornamental patterns, undulating roof-lines, and irregularly shaped window surrounds.

Brazilian architects also explored plasticity in form and decoration, though they rarely surpassed their continental peers in ostentation. The churches of Mariana and the Rosario at Ouro Preto are based on Borromini's vision of interlocking elliptical spaces. At São Pedro dos Clérigos, Recife), a conventional stucco-and-stone façade is enlivened by "a high scrolled gable squeezed tightly between the towers".

Even after the Baroque conventions passed out of fashion in Europe, the style was long practised in Brazil by Aleijadinho, a brilliant and prolific architect in whose designs hints of Rococo could be discerned. His church of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos at Congonhas is distinguished by a picturesque silhouette and dark ornamental detail on a light stuccoed façade. Although Aleijadinho was originally commissioned to design São Francisco de Assis at São João del Rei, his designs were rejected, and were displaced to the church of São Francisco in Ouro Preto instead.