The Goan Soul in Church Architecture

The Goan Soul in Church Architecture

  

by José Lourenço

The ancient city of Old Goa, known at various times as Elá and Cidade de Goa, has often been called Rome of the East. This is the part of Goa that has run the full course of four hundred and fifty-one years of Portuguese rule. Besides building the massive churches that grace Old Goa today, the Portuguese also brought the cashew to Goa, the brew of which is bandied as being synonymous with the Goan spirit. Potato, groundnut, tomato and chilly plants also came to Goa from other countries, via the erstwhile colonial rulers. As they grew in their new home, water and nutrients from the Goan soil surged through the veins of these new plants and trees. The flowers and fruits they gave bore the subtle flavours of the nourishing Goan soil. So when we look at the Christian artistic heritage of Goa – the architecture, sculpture and painting, we are bound to ask “What of the Goan soil runs in the blood of this art?”

Expressions of the simple red stone

The churches of Old Goa and all over Goa are built in laterite, the reddish and porous local stone that does not lend itself well to carving, but is easy to work with. After the massive forts of the Konkan belt, the great churches of Goa are the tallest and most massive expressions of this simple red stone. The lime mortars for these laterite walls came from calcinating local seashells, the wooden roofs and long rows of pews were hewn from local timber and the roof tiles were moulded from Goan clay. Local craftsmen have been ingenious in their decoration. The retable altar of the Church of Our Lady of Pilar, Goa Velha, has elegant volute curves flanking the central bay. On closer examination, these curves are made of local seashells, painted to give a golden glow.

Evolution of church architecture in Goa

In Baroque India, a study of Neo-Roman religious architecture in South Asia, José Pereira describes the evolution of church architecture in Goa. The early churches of Goa (1510-50) were built in the Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance styles of architecture. A Gothic ribbed vault in the Manueline style (Portuguese Gothic after Dom Manuel, King of Portugal) can still be seen in the Church of Our Lady of Rosary (1543-45) at Old Goa. A Manueline door portal can also be noted at the Church of St Francis of Assisi, Old Goa.

As Gothic gave way to Neo-Roman style in Mannerist expression, some fine churches were built in Old Goa on European models. The Sé Catedral (1562-1651) is an example of the hall church with its massive nave and aisles. The Church of Our Lady of Divine Providence (1656-61) attached to the Convent of St Cajetan, is laid out in the shape of a Greek Cross (all arms of equal length), with a dome at the centre.

In the second part of this period, the Indian style of the Neo-Roman emerged, with four typical features: The Diminuted Sanctuary plan was adopted, which like the Hindu temple has a large nave leading to a smaller sanctuary. The front of the church was divided into compartments by having multiple bays and storeys, thus creating a monumental façade, which is an aesthetic principle seen in Hindu temples. The standard proportions of the Classical orders (Tuscan, Ionic, Doric and Corinthian) were modified by the Mannerists, moving closer to the more flexible modulation of traditional Indian architecture. And fourthly, Indian motifs like the pot, bulb, lotus, amalaka and other fruits and plants were used alongside European motifs. The finials at the top of the façade of parish churches at Mapusa, Anjuna and Goa Velha show flower buds and those at Margao, Pomburpa and Nerul show baskets of flames.

Mannerism in turn refined into that exuberant, luxurious and dramatic style, the Baroque. Pereira considers the Holy Spirit Church of Old Goa (1661-68), Holy Spirit Church of Margao (1675-84), Santana at Talaulim (1681-95), Nossa Senhora da Piedade at Divar (1699-1724) as the finest Baroque churches in Goa.

  

A composite idiom

As the Indian Neo-Roman style kept evolving, Neo-Roman and Indo-Islamic styles combined to create a composite idiom. The elaborately carved figures at the base of pulpits in some churches display an artistic ambiguity. Was the local craftsman carving a mermaid or a naginn? Did a rakshasa inspire the carving of a European-styled grotesque?

The local Goan masons also came up with some clever innovations. To create the visual effect of seeing a dome at the top of a church, the masons built a wall that is curved at the front but is flat at the rear. The curved front even shows the classical parts of a dome – the drum, calotte and lantern. Such cupoliform façades can be seen in the parish churches of Calangute, Santo Estêvão, Assagão and Moira.

The definitive study of Goan church architecture in recent times is Whitewash, Red Stone (Yoda Press, 2011) by Paulo Varela Gomes, a professor of architectural history at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He strongly asserts that the Indo-Portuguese architecture that stands in Goa today was a manifestation of the material culture of a group of Goan people who were converted to Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries. In his introduction, he says: “They were buildings by Goans, designed by Goan architects and masons, including Goan Catholic priests, and in many cases, commissioned by Goan landowners or local Goan communities … Goan churches were ‘native’ buildings.”

Classical design features eventually decayed over the decades. A once clearly defined Pozzoan Pediment (crowning the Holy Spirit Church, Margao) slowly lost its form and proportions in other churches to end up as a crude imitation. Later builders of structures in the last decades of colonial rule continued to mimic the old Neo-Roman churches though they had no knowledge or intuition of the rules of proportion and composition that made those early churches look so elegant. The Art Deco style that came to Goa in the early nineties was expressed in the façades of some rebuilt churches, as at Cuncolim and Bambolim. The cemetery at Velim has a stepped façade, a familiar Art Deco motif.

Goan Eclectic, Indian Memory

In Baroque India, Pereira sees the parabloid form of the Indian Nagara temple in the profile of structures like the retable of the Our Lady of Divine Providence church as well as in the shape of the piazza (church square) crosses in Goa. He also explores the stylistic similarities between the Goan temple lamp tower and these piazza crosses.

The retables (carved screens behind the altar) of the old churches of Goa show varied styles. The Iconostasis style has the screen divided into compartments which show various icons or images from the life of the patron saint as that of St Catherine of Alexandria in the Sé Catedral at Old Goa. Aedicule retables have a dominant niched icon at the centre. Retables in the trono form have a series of stepped platforms that culminate in a ‘throne’ upon which the main statue is mounted as in the churches of Loutulim, Candolim and Chinchinim. A contribution of the Goan Eclectic style here is the wooden carved Festooned Arch that hugs the curve of the sanctuary vault and frames the altar screen.  Finely crafted vines entwine the twisting Salomonic columns in the transept altar of the Sé Catedral. The Pot-base column, a basic motif in traditional Indian architecture has been adapted to the Neo-Roman style in many religious structures.  

In modern times, the mural on the sacristy vault at the St Joaquim Chapel at Borda, Margao, was painted by the aforementioned polymath José Pereira. It depicts the Goan ethos well through the imagery of a village market, a cowshed, feast traditions and the local flora and fauna elaborately flanking Christ in repose. This mural was executed in the true fresco method, where the painting was done on a still wet coat of lime plaster. He also produced a mural titled ‘Christ and Creation’ – featuring native animals and plants – in acrylic paint on the vault of the Our Lady of Rosary Chapel at Fatorda, Margao.

The passage of Goa from its pre-Portuguese past and through its colonial period can be seen at the Museum at the Pilar Seminary at Goa Velha, lovingly maintained by Fr. Cosme José Costa. A carved granite stone of a penitent Maria Magdalena (dated 1733) also features symbols from other religions – a lingam and a bodhi tree. Another exhibit, a 17th century wooden statue depicts a meditative Christ reminiscent of the shepherd Lord Krishna sitting on a rocky pedestal. There are chappals on his feet and he holds a globe under one hand and rests his other elbow on a skull. Several such sculptures in ivory or wood were made, representing a fusion between Christ the Good Shepherd and Lord Krishna the flute playing shepherd; between Christian belief and Asian art form.

Even the tombstones in Goan cemeteries are a valuable heritage that show the passage of time and cultural tradition. Soft words carved in marble tell of a family’s sorrow, and of the achievements of men and women long gone. At the bottom of many old marble plaques are the letters P.N.A.M., exhorting the passerby to say an Our Father and Hail Mary (Pater Noster, Ave Maria – in Latin) for the soul of the departed. As the decades passed, those letters were replaced by A.B.N.M. – Amche Bapa Noman Morie – in Konkani.

It is important that the architectural and artistic Indo-Portuguese legacy in Goa be seen and protected for what it is – not just an imitation of a foreign culture, but a period of unique creative manifestation of the people of Goa. If a Goan church is cut, it is Goan blood that flows.

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