Looking up at the columns and stained glass windows inside the Founder s Chapel inside the monastary at Batalha Portugal.
Looking up at the columns stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings inside the Founder s Chapel which itself is inside the monastary at Batalha Portugal João I and his English wife Philippa of Lancaster are interred in the Founder s Chapel or Capela Do Fundador Also interred are their four youngest sons including Henry the Navigator. This square chapel was built between 1426 and 1434 by the architect Huguet on orders of King João I to become the first royal pantheon in Portugal. It gives a perfect synthesis between Flamboyant Gothic and the English Perpendicular style, as Philippa of Lancaster had brought along a few English architects. The chapel consists of three notional bays and a central octagon buttressed by eight piers, adorned with crockets, supporting deeply stilted arches. The joint tomb of king João I and his wife Philippa of Lancaster stands under the star vault of the octagon. Their statues lie in full regalia, with clasped hands (expressing the good relations between Portugal and England) and heads resting on a pillow, under elaborately ornamented baldachins. The coats of arms of the Houses of Aviz and Lancaster are put on top of these baldachins, together with the insignia of the order of the Garter. On the cover plate of the tomb are inscribed in repetition the motto of the king Por bem (For the better) and the queen Yl me plet (Il me plaît - I'm pleased). This octagon is surrounded by an ambulatory with complex vaulting. At the south wall stand from left to right in a row of recessed arches the tombs of their for sons : prince D. Pedro, Henry the Navigator (under a baldachin), D. João and D. Fernando (also called Infante Santo). D. Fernando died in Fez as a prisoner of the Moors. The three tombs on the west wall are copies of the originals of King Afonso V (1433-1481), John II (1445-1495) (empty because the soldiers of Masséna have thrown away the bones) and his son D. Afonso (who died through an accident at the age of seventeen).
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Photo credit: © B.A.E. Inc. / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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