Batalha Monastery
— — the limestone the kings could not finish.
Not only on a wall.
“The Monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória in Batalha, central Portugal, was begun in 1386 to fulfil a vow made by King João I after his army's victory at Aljubarrota. Work continued for a hundred and thirty years across seven kings, and the cloisters became the workshop where the Manueline style learned its grammar. The Capelas Imperfeitas, the Unfinished Chapels, were never roofed.
Batalha Monastery, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória stands in the small town of Batalha, in Portugal's Leiria district, about a hundred and twenty kilometres north of Lisbon. King João I founded it in 1386 in fulfilment of a vow made before the Battle of Aljubarrota on 14 August 1385, when his outnumbered Portuguese army defeated the Castilian invasion and secured the Aviz dynasty. Construction continued under seven Portuguese monarchs until about 1517. The site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage monument in 1983.
Batalha is built from a pale local limestone that took the chisel finely and weathered to a soft honey-cream. The flamboyant Gothic of the original campaign gives way, after 1490, to the early Manueline carving of Mateus Fernandes the Elder: twisted rope mouldings, armillary spheres, the monogram of João I knotted into the portal. The Capelas Imperfeitas, the octagonal Unfinished Chapels at the east end, were left open to the sky when Manuel I diverted funds to Jerónimos in Lisbon.
The chapter house holds a single vault unbuttressed across nineteen metres, the largest of its kind built in medieval Europe, considered so dangerous during construction that only condemned prisoners were assigned to remove the centring. The vault stands. South light enters through the rose window above the west portal and crosses the nave at midday, picking out the tomb of João I and Philippa of Lancaster in the Founder's Chapel. The Unfinished Chapels, open to the sky, change with the weather.