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Editorial

2024-03-02T14:06:42-08:00

Recensão Crítica do Livro Le vin & la musique: accords et désaccords

2024-03-03T13:25:13-08:00

Florence Gétreau

Bordeaux, Gallimard | La Cité du Vin, 2018, 144 pp., 87 il.

ISBN: 978-2-07-277160-6

The Beautiful Stone of Briteiros, Beautiful Stone of Life

2024-03-02T14:16:06-08:00

The Pedra Formosa of Briteiros is explained in light of the symbolic forms sculpted on the surface, like a facade, and its meaning is discussed in comparison with other “beautiful stones” and objects found in these monuments of the Castro settlements. The observations made in this article pertain to the group of buildings located in the region of Minho and Douro, facing the Atlantic Ocean, which have been interpreted as baths or saunas, and more recently, considered within the context of a warriors’ rite of rebirth. We propose a new hypothesis: the monuments would have a function associated with maternity and childbirth, they would be like ‘maternity houses’ or ‘birthing houses’. The use of these spaces would be functional and ritualistic, against a mythological background; their implantation in the landscape is significant in relation to outstanding places of the territory and settlements, and the architectural composition of the known cases denotes an anthropomorphic analogy. This hypothesis makes visible and highlights the social representation of woman and the vital role of motherhood, fertility and life in engendering a community.

Mudéjar Mural Paintings in the Hall of The Paços do Infante, in the Convent of Christ, Tomar

2024-03-02T14:35:23-08:00

The aim of this article is to answer questions concerning the remains of mural paintings found on one of the walls delineating the hall of the Paços do Infante of the Convent of Christ in Tomar. These paintings must have been part of an extensive decorative programme undertaken to embellish this architectural complex, since fragments of paintings with Mudéjar decorative motifs can still be found along almost all of its length. This study is part of our doctoral thesis, which focuses on Mudéjar decoration in Portuguese mural painting from the 15th and 16^th centuries. The aim of this article is to understand the techniques used, how this painting fits into what is known as Portuguese Mudéjar decoration and its connection to Spanish Mudéjar decoration. To this end, we undertook a formal analysis, a study of the history of this space and a comparison with other Portuguese paintings with this type of decorative grammar and also with Spanish Mudéjar works of art. It was thus understood that the craftsman who executed them (who was not supposed to be “Moorish”) adapted the decoration to the space, following a typical Mudéjar scheme, an unusual phenomenon in Portuguese Mudéjar mural painting.

The New Artistic Paradigma in a Changing Society: Art Theory and the New Conception of Imagery in the 16th Century

2024-03-02T14:47:31-08:00

The aim of this article is to illustrate changes in the artistic paradigm in the 16^th century, underpinned by the vast body of literature that has been produced on the subject. On the threshold of this century, the image acquires a new status based on a new conception of shapes, while under the heading of beauty in which the new subjectivity is objectified, it moves away from and rejects the more direct realism of the Quattrocento. The rise of Neoplatonism and the formulation of a new Theory of Art contributed in a decisive way to this change in the artistic paradigm.

Michelangelo’s work (artistic and poetic) was one of the pillars of the new artistic concept, and Francisco de Holanda was one of its exponents, although his treatises were not widely disseminated. According to the new ideological trend, the values of this subject, based on a culture built on the pre-eminence of the object, leave room for the affirmation of a certain aristocratic ideal that privileges individual differentiation, as well as the return in force of the imagination and affectivity, running counter to the exaggerated rationalism of 15th-century Classicism. Upholding its ideal and subjective character, the dominant aesthetic of the Cinquecento gives a new meaning to the image, expressing a stylistic emphasis on volumetric plasticity and spatial composition.

"In Conformity with those who serve the most Christian King": a journey through King João V's french furniture orders

2024-04-16T03:17:46-07:00

In the 1720s and 1730s, King João V of Portugal (1689-1750) commissioned furniture and ornamental objects from French court artists in order to decorate his palaces. Knowledge of many of these pieces – genuine jewels made according to the renewed artistic formulas emerging in the French cultural and artistic context of the first half

of the 18th century – remains sparse, due to the lack of scientific investment in this domain. Retrieving precious primary sources, conserved in the National Library of France and in the Torre do Tombo of Lisbon (Portugal), the main objective of the present work is to make known the context in which these orders were shipped, analysing the contexts of French artistic production at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, the Duke of Orléans’ government and the beginning of the era of Louis XV. Likewise, by adopting an analytical and comparative approach to the processes of evolution and continuity/discontinuity of the artistic formulas that characterise several of the pieces of furniture designed in these three contexts, this investment is also shown to be essential to the field of the art market where similar artistic objects are included.

The Most Valuable Jewel in a House: the Library of Dom João de Mendonça, Bishop of Guarda

2024-03-02T15:05:34-08:00

In the artistic panorama of 17th and 18th century Portugal, the bishops are among the main actors whose patronage is still largely unstudied. In this context, we find people who were notable in their time for their enormous intellect and erudition. Among these figures is Dom João de Mendonça (1673-1736), the bishop who governed the diocese of Guarda for twenty-three years and seven months, and whose legacy is mainly associated with the Gardens of the Bishop’s Palace in Castelo Branco. Based on the analysis of the posthumous inventory (1736), and following the principle ‘tell us what you read and we will tell you who you are’, we will present the content of his extensive and valuable library, which reveals a man with a wide-ranging view of human existence.

Colours for Mourning. Ceramic Tiles in Spanish Cemeteries

2024-03-02T15:16:35-08:00

La imagen que de los cementerios tenemos a veces es gris. El gris de la piedra, del cemento, del hormigón, de los caminos… pero no siempre fue así. Hubo un tiempo en el que, en algunos cementerios, brillaban los colores, los que procedían de la multitud de azulejos cerámicos que cubrían los nichos y algunas de las sepulturas a ras de suelo del camposanto. El azulejo, menospreciado en su humildad, fue durante decenas de años, el material escogido por las gentes para endulzar la muerte, para dar una nota de color al lugar donde se deposita el recuerdo. El presente estudio pretende realizar una caracterización de los tipos de azulejos que se usaron en los cementerios españoles por medio de lo que se practicó en una parte del territorio valenciano: concretamente, cien cementerios de la provincia de Castellón.

The Royal Monastery of São Dinis de Odivelas: First Study of the Process That Dispersed the Monastic Collection

2024-03-03T12:47:20-08:00

This paper examines the process which dispersed the moveable heritage of the Monastery of São Dinis de Odivelas, founded by King Dinis at the end of the 13th century, through an analysis of the inventories compiled from 1886 in the wake of the nationalisation of the dissolved convent. The inventories, stored in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, and never previously studied, demonstrate the importance of inventorying movable and immovable assets from the point of view of their conservation, thus providing a basis for further research on the subject. The first part of the paper describes the monastic complex when it came into the possession of the State, as presented in the unpublished Memórias descritivas of 1887 and 1889, also kept in the national archive. These reports reveal the state of abandonment and decay of the monastery, which had already been stripped of its rich and valuable possessions. The concluding section then deals with the vicissitudes of a precious chapiter, a rare architectural piece dating from the foundation of the convent, disputed between different institutions, which has now disappeared, presented here as an emblematic case-study of the fate of most of the Odivelas monastic heritage.

To Wear or Not to Wear? The Women Who Dared to Parade Réne Lalique’s Jewellery

2024-03-03T12:59:06-08:00

Since 1895, when René Lalique (1860-1945) first exhibited his jewellery in Paris, some of his creations were perceived as eccentric museum pieces and considered unwearable by some critics. More than a century later, the same question still stands about these jewels: were they wearable or not? Although they frequently resemble works of art that should be displayed in a museum, these pieces were actually made to be worn, but not by just anyone. In this sense, the aim of our essay is to reflect upon the wearers of these jewels, namely the women who dared to display them on their apparel. By categorising them in separate groups, we intend to understand who wore Lalique’s jewellery and what connection they had with their pieces. This will allow us to better understand the importance of the wearer in the reading and study of jewellery.

The Artwork as Currency for Trade. The Transactions Between Gustave Fayet and the Merchants Between 1900 and 1910

2024-03-03T13:05:49-08:00

This article analyses the exchange of artworks between Gustave Fayet (1865-1925), a central artist and collector of the early 20th century, and Parisian art dealers. Based on unpublished archives, this work paints a portrait of a singular collection of modern art, mainly due to the multiple exchanges that allowed Fayet to gather more than 800 pieces by major artists and several masterpieces. From Impressionism to Fauvism, via Post Impressionism and Symbolism, the artworks collected by Fayet correspond not only to his artistic inclinations, but also to the laws of supply and demand. This collection, a true testimony to the tastes of art lovers in France, also reflects the evolution and fluctuations of the modern art market at the beginning of the century.

The Docile Subject: Susan Buck-Morss e Byung-Chul Han Revisited

2024-03-03T13:16:59-08:00

Contemplative distance makes it possible to fetishise 19th-century novels of manners. These generally represent bourgeois affairs that awaken admiration in the reader and can lead to the alienation of the self and escapism.

This behaviour is not without antecedents, i.e. the phenomena of 19th-century alienation in the works of Alexandre Herculano, Eça de Queiroz and Mary Shelley. We explore a key Kantian concept based on Susan Buck-Morss’s study “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered”: autogenesis, a state of alienation of the übermensch that aims at rationalising the world. Alienation will therefore be regarded in two distinct but not incompatible ways: one that acts within the subject, via narcotics and other psychological depressants, and another that manifests outside the subject, via theatre productions and dioramas of alienation in social space. From taverns to dioramas, man seeks, through a series of anaesthetic tools, to soften the blows of everyday life. This mental predisposition, portrayed by Herculano and Queiroz and thoroughly analysed by Buck-Morss and Byung-Chul Han, repositions man’s sensibilities of the 18th and 19th centuries towards the cult of sensation via the omnipresence of anaesthetic objects. We will provide an overview of 19th-century states of alienation in the light of Buck-Morss’ study and explain how this state is updated within the framework of Byung-Chul Han’s Saving Beauty.