Tall columns and stained glass windows inside the ornate monastery at Batalha Portugal
Tall columns and stained glass windows inside the ornate monastery at Batalha Portugal where King Duarte and his wife Leonor are entombed along with João I and his English wife Philippa of Lancaster. The church is vast and narrow (22m) in proportion to its height ( m). The nave was raised to its present height by the second architect Huguet, altering the proportions of the church and giving it its present aspect. Its interior gives a sober and bare impression by its complete lack of ornaments and statues in the nave. The ribbed vaults, supported by compound piers, are closed by ornamented keystones. Light enters the church through ten stained-glass windows of the clerestory and the tall, traceried windows in the side walls and the transept and through the two rows of lanciform windows in the choir. The choir extends into two-bay transepts and consists of five apsidal chapels, with the central one projecting. Batalha probably had the first workshop for stained-glass windows in Portugal. The art was introduced in Portugal by German artists from the regions of Franconia and Nuremberg. The oldest windows date back to the end of the 1430s. But the Manueline, ogival stained-glass windows in the choir date from the 1520s and 1530s and were produced by Portuguese masters, among them Francisco Henriques. They represent scenes from the lives of Christ and Maria: the Visitation, the Epiphany, the Flight to Egypt and the Resurrection of Christ. The architect Mateus Fernandes and his wife are buried under a marble tomb-slab close to the portal. The tomb of the knight Martim Gonçalves de Maçada, who saved the king's life during the battle at Aljubarrota, can be found close to the Capela do Fundador.
Size: 3360px × 5040px
Photo credit: © B.A.E. Inc. / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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