Joao del Castilho: Vault of the sacristy in the convent of the Jerónimos, Belem. Lisboa_07 Print E-mail

[....] Assembling the vault

As we saw in the preceding vaults and, following Rodrigo Gil’s recommendations, the centering of a crossed rib vault start by the construction of a large platform that should be placed at the height of the tas-de-charges. On this platform we redesign the vault’s drawing in plan, and, in the places where the bosstones are located, wooden vertical sticks are placed with the appropriate height that each bosstone should attain on the platform (photo 14). Lastly, between each vertical stick are placed the wooden arcades on which the arches’ voussoirs are to land (photo 47).

Then the voussoirs are very carefully placed in the joints (photo 49-51) to make sure they are correctly supported and perfectly aligned. The bosstones are placed on the wooden piers’ ends paying attention to their vertical or tilted position. Gradually the essential rib work shows up: formerets, ogival and tiercerons (photo 52). Later, in between the bosstones and thanks to the tilted cut of their arm’s ends, the subsidiary ribs are placed by hanging (photo 53).

At the end, the vault is completely finished on its centering. We can definitely see its lowered form resulting from the use of oval arches (photo 54 and 55). We perceive its slightly curved lines, almost horizontal; the vertical bosstones linking the main ribs and the tilted ones at the subsidiary ribs’ crossings. The quadrefoil drawing, whose design, slightly closed in itself, is meant to connect with the subsidiary ribs of the neighboring vaults, thus creating decorative figures which exceed the boundaries of the vault. Exquisitely elegant, this vault sums up the important collection of vaults built by Joao del Castilho.

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