July 09 • Parish church of St. Victor, Braga

21h30 • Concert Portuguese Polyphony

 

 

The parish church of São Víctor (1686-1698), built in Braga between 1686 and 1698, is a project by Michel de l'École, a French military engineer who worked extensively in Northern Portugal during the Restoration wars and for several years after that. The construction was commissioned by archbishop Dom Luís de Sousa, who must have been impressed by the Frenchman's curriculum, which included works like the fortresses of Valença de Minho and Monção, the São Francisco Xavier Fort, popularly known as Castelo do Queijo [Castle of Cheese], in Porto, and the main chapel of the Nossa Senhora da Oliveira Collegiate Church, in Guimarães. From what we can see in the Braga church, l’École was quite conversant with Minho traditional architecture, not only in terms of design, but also of the selection of materials and their role as part of an overall scenic synthesis, in combination with azulejo tiles and gilded wood carvings. Besides that, the fact that Pascoal Fernades, a local master builder, supervised the church's construction may also have greatly influenced the final result. 

The church, which replaces a previous temple, has been described by Robert Smith as an important example of his concept of the Portuguese Baroque as a 'total art', in which gilded carvings and azulejo murals harmonise with the architecture in accordance with a predefined programme. In fact, the side walls of the single nave do not display the traditional articulative elements of classical architecture, namely pilasters and capitals. Thus, the storied white-and-blue azulejo tiles hold pride of place, completely lining the side chapels and the lighting openings, another important Baroque visual element. There is no doubt, then, that this project has from the start opted to use ceramic tiles, which actually spread to the main chapel and to the back of the church's front, rising from the pavement to the dome above the upper choir.  

The church's architecture is Mannerist: its front is rigidly controlled by an abstract geometric grid, in which are placed the entrance door, the niches, the pediment with the arms of the archbishop who commissioned the work and two large rollwerk Flemish-style cartouches (elements that were brought to Braga architecture by Manuel Luís, during the archbishopric of Friar Agostinho de Jesus). This concern with precision and control is also visible in the decision to place the bell-tower in the back of the building, which completely frees the front's design and leaves its elongated proportions untouched and perfectly legible. In fact, the first temple in Braga to display such features was the Nossa Senhora do Pópulo Church, built by the same Manuel Luís for the same Dom Friar Agostinho de Jesus.

Inside, traditional stylistic definitions lose all meaning. The azulejo murals have been attributed to the most important master painter working in Lisbon at the time, a Spaniard named Gabriel del Barco, who was considered a pioneer in Portugal due to the large scale of his works. The tile murals in the nave depict scenes from the life of Braga saints, while the ones in the main chapel display biographic episodes of the church's patron, St Victor. On that restless liquid mass of blue and white reposes, in full disrespect of classic tectonics, the weight of the earth, materialised as the dark granite of the vaulted ceiling. At the back, the gold of the main retable, a Portuguese Baroque piece by Porto master carver Domingos Lopes is a Heaven, or a door to Heaven, in the manner of late Minho Romanesque portals, which can be reached only after walking through the nave's visual tunnel. Preceding it, in rhetorical reaffirmation, is the gigantic gilded pelmet that tops the arch. More than architectural details, it is via a refined approach to a building as a whole that the Minho Baroque is able to materialise and synthesise epiphanies of the sacred. Even if that synthesis resorts here to a decidedly Mannerist overall concept... (JFA)