  Hans Memling Virgin with child 2nd half of 15. Cent. © Divisão de Documentação Fotográfica do Insituto Português de Museus  Unknown artist Portrait of a noble 16. Cent. © Divisão de Documentação Fotográfica do Insituto Português de Museus  Albrecht Dürer Der hl. Hieronymus 1521 © Divisão de Documentação Fotográfica do Insituto Português de Museus  Pieter de Hooch Fröhliche Gesellschaft 1663-1665 © Divisão de Documentação Fotográfica do Insituto Português de Museus |
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Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon The Great Collections VIII. 26 March - 11 July 1999     
Odysseus is supposed to have founded it: Lisbon, the White City by the river. Noblesse oblige: Lisbon was drawn to the seas in alliance and affinity ever after. Explorers and missionaries, merchants and adventurers embarked from here, setting out for new shores; and on their return it was here that they felt European ground beneath their feet again. Lisbon has always seen itself as a European gateway to the world, without losing sight of intra-European developments. That is the story this exhibition tells. A collection is travelling. It is leaving its home high above the River Tagus – the green-windowed palace eponymously nick-named "Museu das Janelas Verdes" - and is moving to the River Rhine. Over 200 items - paintings, sculptures and sketches, gold craft and textiles, porcelain and furniture - not only represent the various focal points of the museum's collection but also invite the visitor in turn to travel through seven centuries of European art history. The development of art in Portugal from the Romanesque style of the 12th century to the Romanticism of the 19th century took place in constant dialogue with other centres of European culture. Pilgrim routes were also trade routes; dynastic ties benefited the exchange of ideas and of works of art; political alliances influenced the dominant taste of the day and the market situation of the artists. The works on exhibit in Bonn by Frei Carlos, Gregório Lopes, Josefa de Obidos and Domingos António de Sequeira fit naturally into this living network – together with Piero della Francesca, Hans Memling, Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Zurbarán and Raphael. And other ties emerge. A painting shows the broad riverbank with the Hieronymites' monastery in Belém above: This was the starting-point of the glorious Portuguese overseas expeditions. The widely-ramified ties linking Portugal with the lands of Africa and Asia and South America, and extending beyond the century of the major explorations, fostered cultural exchange between these diverse civilisations: the exhibition includes several extraordinary items attesting to this extremely rewarding interaction. Travel-pictures, stories, encounters. The magnificent 16th century altar retable of St. Aukta tells the story of the Portuguese virgin Aukta who followed St. Ursula to Cologne, where both were martyred together with their followers. The bloodbath precipitated by militant Huns provided enough impressive painting motifs for centuries thereafter. An unknown Portuguese master imbued this savage spectacle with the sophistication and elegance of a court event, reflecting the taste and the artistic sensibilities of Queen Eleanore of Portugal. Another "intercultural" encounter was less dramatic: in the 1540s, Portuguese and Japanese faced one other with astonishment. The arrival of "long-nosed" travellers wearing the extremely ample trousers of the time was recorded by contemporary Japanese artists in a number of impressive representations on folding paper screens. Two of these extremely rare objects are unquestionably among the highlights of the Bonn exhibition. Dialogue and the juxtaposition of widely diverse works of art not only define the inner structure of the eleven sections of the exhibition; beyond that, they make possible a survey – spanning epochs and cultures – of the objects which combine to form an impressive documentation of the passion for collecting that exists at the westernmost tip of Europe. Curators: Agnieszka Lulinska José Luís Gordo Porfírio email: Agnieszka Lulinska, Curator |
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