July 10 • Church of São Lourenço, Porto

19h30 • Concert Portuguese Polyphony

 

 

The São Lourenço [St Lawrence] Church – still known to many as the Grilos ['Crickets', a popular nickname for the Discalced Augustinians] Church – is located on a terrace in the hill on top of which the Porto Cathedral stands. The temple's privileged position in the urban tangle of Porto is, however, somewhat diminished by its difficult access.

The most salient features on the church's imposing Mannerist front, built during the 16th and 17th centuries, include its magnificent entrance, two bell-towers flanked by a pair of large volutes and, above the entrance, a cartouche with the arms – overlapping a Maltese cross – of Friar Luís Álvares de Távora, bailiff of Leça, knight of the Order of Malta, and the main driving force behind the temple's construction. Unlike what happened with his family name, scratched out from his tomb after the Távora family had been accused (in 1758) of attempting regicide, which led to the execution of many of its members, the coat of arms would escape defacement, and thus remains a token of Távora iconography. Another element connected to Luís Álvares de Távora is his elephant-borne marble tomb, which can be seen in the main chapel, on the Gospel side.  

While the church front is aesthetically uniform, its inside presents decorations from several different times, ranging from the 1600s to the following century's Baroque style (visible in the Purification retable) and even later Neoclassical works, such as certain retables and stucco decorations. 

Inside the church, the most important element is the retable of the Chapel of Our Lady of the Candles, in the transept on the Gospel side, which is one of the finest reliquary retables in Portugal. A piece of Joanine woodwork done in a moment of transition between two styles, the valance at the top already indicates a coming change in taste. The quality of the carving is visible throughout the retable, which includes a sculpture of Our Lady of the Candles at its centre and a relief depicting the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple at its top. The retable, designed by António Vital Rifarto (1729), would be executed between 1729 and 1730 by master carvers Francisco Correia and António Pereira. A few years later, in 1733, Pedro da Silva Lisboa gilded it.

The Neoclassical style is present in the main altar and the side altars. Their retables, in keeping with the dictates of an age in which ornamentation was becoming progressively simpler, combine the white of the basic structure with the gold of the decorative elements. Along the nave, Neoclassical motifs continue as stucco bouquet-like compositions on the arcatures, highlighting the cadence of the chapels across the single nave in a final artistic intervention in the temple. There are also a number of erudite stucco compositions that adorn the cupola of the skylight that crowns the chapel on the transept's Epistle side. 

The paintings on the walls include canvases by such 1800s artists as João Baptista Ribeiro or, at a later date, Marques de Oliveira (1882). Such additions from the  19th century are, in general terms, rather rare in terms of religious buildings in Northern Portugal. 

Another Neoclassic piece is the woodwork enveloping the pipe organ, which combines surfaces painted white with gilded decorative elements, such as urns and festoons, on the balcony and on the organ case itself. The musical instrument is topped by an elegant bicephalous eagle, a figure that, though quite common during the Baroque, had in the meantime fallen from favour as a decorative motif, and was not being extensively used in such pieces. 

Wood is the most important material in the decoration of the sacristy, as its ceiling, fitted cupboards, massive chest of drawers and central retable attest, as well as the spectacular frames that contain portraits of notable Jesuits and the bailiff Luís Álvares de Távora. Also worthy of mention are the marble lavabo and the Joanine monochrome tiles on the walls, which increase the room's scenic quality.

Thanks to the complex variety of styles in both its interior and exterior, this building is a veritable repository of different aesthetics: its visitors can observe a range of elements dating from the 1500s until the 20th century, in a multiplicity of ornamental approaches that enrich the Porto artistic legacy. (GVS)