Characteristics
This decorative style is characterized by virtuoso complex ornamentation in portals, windows, columns and arcades. In its end period it tended to become excessively exuberant as in Tomar.
Several elements appear regularly in these intricately carved stoneworks:
- elements used on ships: the armillary sphere (a navigational instrument and the personal emblem of Manuel I and also symbol of the cosmos), spheres, anchors, anchor chains, ropes and cables.
- elements from the sea, such as shells, pearls and strings of seaweed.
- botanical motifs such as laurel branches, oak leaves, acorns, poppy capsules, corncobs, thistles.
- symbols of Christianity such as the cross of the Order of Christ (former Templar knights), the military order that played a prominent role and helped finance the first voyages of discovery. The cross of this order decorated the sails of the Portuguese ships.
- elements from newly discovered lands (such as the tracery in the Claustro Real in the Monastery of Batalha, suggesting Islamic filigree work, influenced by buildings in India)
- columns carved like twisted strands of rope
- semicircular arches (instead of Gothic pointed arches) of doors and windows, sometimes consisting of three or more convex curves
- multiple pillars
- eight-sided capitals
- lack of symmetry
- conical pinnacles
- bevelled crenellations
- ornate portals with niches or canopies.
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