The Royal Public Library of the Court, after the National Library of Lisbon, had important roles in the unprecedented structure of heritage management, prepared by the Liberal State, intended to “collect, classify, record and save” thousands of objects, especially paintings, from the convents extinct in 1834.
Concerns about the conservation and restoration of works that were getting in the custody of the National Library, manifested themselves at different times as a result of various sensibilities of the directors of the institution. The restoration interventions, undertaken between 1835 and 1913 by several restorers, show the evolution of principles on the subject, but mainly the historical value assigned to that pictorial set superimposed on their artistic appreciation.