´Living from is far and from is art as painter´: relation between music images and the town of Borba, in the work of José de Sousa de Carvalho (1741-1795)

Abstract

Painter, sculptor and owner, integrated into an elite from Borba, José de Sousa de Carvalho (1741 — 1795) is the author of various paintings that are spread across public and private spaces, including the extremely rare musical and dance representations kept in the Town Hall of Borba. Father of Bernardo Germano de Carvalho (1777 — 1853), also a painter and an owner, and paternal grandfather of José Ignácio de Carvalho (1819 — 1887) who was a chorister in the Igreja Matriz (Mother Church) and a chaplain in the Colegiada da Misericórdia (Collegiate Church of Mercy) of Borba, Sousa de Carvalho documents in eight paintings on canvas that he paints de visu — to decorate, with great probability, his family residence, the Palace of Sousa Carvalho and Melo — moments of recre­ation of the borbense elite inherent to the contemporaneous taste, the domestic habits of growing sociability, and to the power and greatness of a wealthy telluric family. In this context, we will make a small contribution to the musical life of Borba between the end of the XVII century and the beginning of the XIX century, including unpublished notes concerning the, so far, unknown Pedro Gonçalves Mexia.