The impact of Franciscan Architecture in the Mediterranean context: singularities of the Portuguese case

In Portugal the 13th and 14th century architecture of the Franciscan order assumes an unusual originality in its option for specific solutions, disentailed from the models found in other territories. This originated a panorama of remarkable interest in the context of mendicant art which remains underexplored. The influence of foreign models, peninsular and transpyrenean, is only occasionally felt, since there is no integral transposition of models from other countries but rather the definition of a regionalized Franciscan architecture. This is exemplified by the connection with some German buildings (essentially visible in the preference for spaces with aisles) or with Italian Franciscan churches (in what concerns the composition of the elevation and occasionally in the nave and aisles typology and organization of the apses). On the contrary, the Galician and south of France Franciscan architecture had little reflection in the Portuguese territory. Furthermore, Portuguese Franciscan and Clarissan architecture also reveals an independence from the patterns of edification defined by other orders like the Cistercian. This leads to the creation of a “nationalized” architecture by the Portuguese Franciscans and Clarissan Nuns, defining a typology that does not stem from models observed in any other Franciscan territory nor from any other order. The result is an original scenario that achieves, due to its outstanding quality, a role of great relevance inside the panorama of the Mendicant Orders architecture of the 13th and 14th centuries.