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the town of Pontevedra into prominence during the first half of the sixteenth century. They provide interesting insights into the social factors that favoured the development of this kind of structure, and remind us of Macao's pre-eminence in the region due to the trade with Japan.
From Late Gothic times the town became the centre of a cofraria or confraternity of Pontevedra seamen in the southern region of Galicia. Its wealthy trading ships sailed to Portugal, France and Italy and the church's construction by the cofraria was a direct result of the city's commercial prosperity.7
Cornelis of Holland and Juan Nobre, probably a Portuguese, started work on the façade of the church in 1541. These master masons and their team of artists actually superimposed their large carved Late Gothic decoration onto the front of an early sixteenth-century church.
This highly decorative "stone altarpiece" is in fact fitted, in imitation of a real main altarpiece, into the apse-like space created by the wall of the church and the two large plain buttresses framing it. Apart from its function as a refined embellishment to the church and city, the sole reason that such a large decorative work should be erected outdoors on top of a high hill was evidently that it could be seen for miles around and from the river below, especially by seamen and traders aboard ship.
It is divided into five bays, comprised of a large central bay and two adjoining narrow ones at either side, divided horizontally into five storeys. The three lower storeys are sculptured and stand forward, away from the two upper ones executed in lower relief. Stone steps lead to a sumptuous terrace and to an equally sumptuous façade (Fig. 3).
In spite of its 1541 date, rather outmoded Early Plateresque baluster columns are used throughout. But there is little one can say against the delightful Netherlandish fantasy of these columns and their carving (Fig. 4).
More important to my arguments are the reliefs of its central bay. They have as focus a depicting the Dormition of Mary, which in style recalls Gothic retables of the School of Cologne and others (Fig. 5).8
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the town of Pontevedra into prominence during the first half of the sixteenth century. They provide interesting insights into the social factors that favoured the development of this kind of structure, and remind us of Macao's pre-eminence in the region due to the trade with Japan.
From Late Gothic times the town became the centre of a cofraria or confraternity of Pontevedra seamen in the southern region of Galicia. Its wealthy trading ships sailed to Portugal, France and Italy and the church's construction by the cofraria was a direct result of the city's commercial prosperity.7
Cornelis of Holland and Juan Nobre, probably a Portuguese, started work on the façade of the church in 1541. These master masons and their team of artists actually superimposed their large carved Late Gothic decoration onto the front of an early sixteenth-century church.
This highly decorative "stone altarpiece" is in fact fitted, in imitation of a real main altarpiece, into the apse-like space created by the wall of the church and the two large plain buttresses framing it. Apart from its function as a refined embellishment to the church and city, the sole reason that such a large decorative work should be erected outdoors on top of a high hill was evidently that it could be seen for miles around and from the river below, especially by seamen and traders aboard ship.
It is divided into five bays, comprised of a large central bay and two adjoining narrow ones at either side, divided horizontally into five storeys. The three lower storeys are sculptured and stand forward, away from the two upper ones executed in lower relief. Stone steps lead to a sumptuous terrace and to an equally sumptuous façade (Fig. 3).
In spite of its 1541 date, rather outmoded Early Plateresque baluster columns are used throughout. But there is little one can say against the delightful Netherlandish fantasy of these columns and their carving (Fig. 4).
More important to my arguments are the reliefs of its central bay. They have as focus a depicting the Dormition of Mary, which in style recalls Gothic retables of the School of Cologne and others (Fig. 5). 8
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