July 03 • Church  of the São Francisco , Porto 

21h30 • Concert Portuguese Polyphony

 

 

The São Francisco [St Francis] Convent's central location in the city of Porto, in a privileged position nearly overlooking the Douro river, highlights this monument that dates back to medieval times and has been the object of several modifications over the centuries, during a broad span that ranges from the 1400s to the 1800s.

The staircase that presently leads to the entrance of the Monument Church, as the building has been lately described, also forks out towards the entrances of the Customs House and the church of the Third Order of St Francis, a temple that is decorated in a resolutely Neoclassical style, in marked contrast with the aesthetics of both the Monument Church and the Plenary Chamber of the neighbouring Dispatch House.

Fronting the staircase's top landing is the São Francisco Church's entrance, an imposing Baroque composition grafted onto the temple's Gothic structure that illustrates the not always harmonious blend of styles that characterises the various parts of the building.

The church's magnificence comes from the combination of medieval architecture with a series of gilt woodwork campaigns that took place throughout the 1700s. In the side chapels, architectural elements added during the Renaissance can also be seen, increasing the diversity of identifiable styles.

Across the whole of Porto, this eruption of gilt woodwork can only find its match in the Church of the Santa Clara Convent, in the upper part of the city. This temple possesses greater unity and balance, thanks to the decorative horror vacui that, over the first half of the 1700s, lined its whole interior with gilded carvings. Several other noteworthy religious buildings, however, were also enriched by such materials, made possible by the prosperity of the 1700s.  

Let us now return to the São Francisco Church, whose south-facing Gothic rose-window filters, through its chromatic polyphony, the light that falls on the temple's naves, heightening the chiaroscuro effects. The golden mass of the carvings creates a view that never fails to greatly impress visitors. 

On the Gospel side, we are immediately drawn to the gilt woodwork of the retable of Our Lady of the Rose, which frames the medieval fresco from which it draws its name. Next in this sequence of carved wonders is the elegant, portentous retable of the Tree of Jesse. Created at the workshop of Filipe da Silva and António Gomes with the help of Braga sculptor Manuel Carneiro Adão, it displays the polychrome splendour of the vestments of the ancestors of St Joseph, who tops the sculptural composition.

Perfectly displaying the excellence of the Porto woodcarving school, the Rococo gates of the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrow (1764), on the Epistle side, spread like a filigree of gilt and carved wood. The art of Francisco Pereira Campanhã, one of the main Porto master carvers of the Enlightenment, attained remarkable expressive heights in this retable, which was executed between 1764 and 1765. The gates take pride of place among this whole, lending it national importance for their erudite form and graceful aesthetic effect. 

Other noteworthy features include the Carneiros Chapel, on the south arm of the transept, and, on the Epistle side, the retable of the Holy Martyrs of Morocco, designed by Manuel Pereira da Costa Noronha and surmounted by a relief depicting the Martyrs in Japan, not forgeting the two pulpits decorated with Franciscan heraldry and elaborate canopies.

The columns that separate the central nave from the side naves are covered in gilt woodwork, which wraps them like ivy, creating an effect that enhances their verticality. Here and there, ornamental paintings mimic various types of stone, namely marbles of different colours.

On several locations across the church can be seen the gilded and carved coats of arms of some of the most important noble families of Porto, like the Sá or the Brandão, who chose this temple to host their chapels.

If the basic tenet of Christian aesthetics is 'For God, Only the Best', then the succeeding generations of Franciscan friars in Porto were extraordinarily successful in fulfilling it. (GVS).