Portuguese Plain Style architecture

also: Estilo Chão

style 16th century Portugal Europe

Portuguese Plain Style architecture - Estilo Chão, the 'plain style' - is a 16th-century Portuguese architectural style related to early Mannerism, marked by austerity and sobriety of form. The term was coined by the American art historian George Kubler, who defined it as vernacular architecture, related to a living dialect more than to the authors of Classical Antiquity. It emerged from a change in taste under King John III, who sought 'clarity, order, proportion and simplicity', and first found expression in a series of hall-churches in Leiria, Portalegre and Miranda do Douro in the 1550s; it supplanted the ornate Manueline as Portugal's favored architecture, and the military architect Miguel de Arruda played an important role in its affirmation. Classical geometry and golden proportions govern compact, orthogonal, straight-lined forms, deliberately left undecorated so that gilding, tiles or paint could be applied whenever resources allowed.

Faro (Algarve, Portugal): Episcopal Palace on the Largo da Sé (square)
Faro (Algarve, Portugal): Episcopal Palace on the Largo da Sé (square)CC BY-SA 4.0 (credit: Marc Ryckaert) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Bare, unadorned surfaces that avoid applied decoration
  • Rectangular, compact, orthogonal plans governed by classical geometry and golden proportions
  • Straight lines defining nearly every element of mass and opening
  • Squat, fortified, low and clean massing that keeps a human scale
  • Single nave and deep chancel, side aisles turned into interconnected chapels, with twin bell towers and simple portals
  • Austere Mannerist restraint replacing the ornamental vocabulary of the Manueline

Key figures

  • Miguel de Arruda (fl. 1532-1563) — Mestre de obras and King's Master of Works whose buildings affirmed the style's austere idiom
  • John III of Portugal (1502-1557) — King whose taste for clarity, order, proportion and simplicity set the style's direction
  • George Kubler (1912-1996) — Art historian who named and defined Estilo Chão

Example works

  • Royal hall-churches of Leiria, Portalegre and Miranda do Douro — Building campaign of King John III (1550s)
  • Church of Nossa Senhora da Graça, Évora — Miguel de Arruda (c. 1540)

Sources

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