Portuguese art includes many different styles from many different eras.
Sculptures Portuguese sculptures can be best analysed by studying the many tombs of the 12th and 14th centuries that are found throughout Portugal. In the late 1700s, the colony of Brazil was the main influence in Portuguese sculpture. This can be seen by the increase in Baroque wooden sculpture during this time. Joaquim Machado de Castro, a famous Portuguese artist who lived around this time and is responsible for a lot of these works.
Painting Museums exhibiting paintings by Portuguese artists, outside Portugal, include the Hispanic Society of America (New York): Works – Collections – Hispanic Society of America and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Paintings with their own Wikipedia page are listed here :pt:Categoria:Pinturas de Portugal (in Portuguese).
12th to 14th centuries The most ancient Portuguese paintings are in illuminated manuscripts. The Apocalypse of Lorvão (one of the ten most important artistic works in Portugal according to the Europeana project), completed in 1189 in the scriptorium of the Lorvão monastery, near Coimbra, is the only manuscript of the Beatus of Liébana produced in Portugal during the Middle Ages. Some of the illustrations have a profane theme, as is also the case in the by the same author, and in several "Livros de Linhagens". The dates from the 12th century.
The Livro das Aves is a fine example of Romanesque art with Mudejar influences. It is a copy of Hugh of Fouilloy's De avibus, a moral treatise on birds. The livros de lindhagens are genealogies of Portuguese noble families illustrated with their coats of arms. They include Livro Velho de Linhagens (1270-1290), Livro de Linhagens do Deão (1343) and (1344). Cancioneiro da Ajuda is a collection of poems in Galician-Portuguese from the late 13th century with 17 miniatures of musicians.
The is a beautifully illustrated historical chronicle also compiled by Pedro Afonso, Count of Barcelos and illegitimate son of King Denis of Portugal.
Among the few very early names of Portuguese artists that have survived are those of two architects: , designer, between 1308 and 1311, of the cloister of Alcobaça Monastery, built at the request of King Denis of Portugal; and , first architect of Batalha Monastery. The Church of São Francisco (Porto) (completed around 1425) was decorated during the reign of João I (1385-1433) with a fresco of Our Lady of the Rose, attributed to . It is one of the oldest surviving murals in Portugal. Florentim, as his name suggests, was from Florence but died in Lisbon. Allegory of the Good and Bad Judge is a c. 15th-century fresco in the audience chamber of the old town hall of Reguengos de Monsaraz. There are other frescoes from the late 15th or early 16th century in the Chapel of Our Lady of Glory in Braga Cathedral (geometric panels showing the influence of Mudejar art or in Monsaraz (the Allegory of the Good and Bad Judge) and in the Ermida de Santo André in Beja, also attributed to the "Master of Monsaraz-Beja". The Sintra National Palace has a Coats-of-Arms Hall painted at the beginning of the 16th century, during the transition from Late Gothic to Renaissance. The palace is a mixture of Gothic, Manueline (or Portuguese Late Gothic), Moorish and Mudéjar styles.
First Portuguese Renaissance, 15th and early 16th centuries In 1428 the Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck travelled to Portugal to paint a portrait of Isabella of Portugal, daughter of King John I of Portugal in preparation for her marriage to the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good. There was already a Flemish influence on illuminations. The (1426 or 1428) is a very fine example of the art of Flemish illumination of the period to have reached Portugal.Made in Bruges for Edward, King of Portugal, it includes an illumination representing Santo António de Lisboa (better known here as "Saint Anthony of Padua" although he was born in Lisbon) and one of São Vicente de Saragoça (Saint Vincent), the patron saint of Lisbon.
The first known painter may be Álvaro Pires de Évora (fl. 1411-1434, presumably born in Evora). He left no traces until 4 November 1410, when together with Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, Lippo d'Andrea, Ambrogio di Baldese and Scolaio di Giovanni he painted frescoes, now lost, on the façade of the Palazzo del Ceppo in Prato (Tuscany). He seems to have grown in Portugal and spent his entire career in Italy. The Madonna triptych in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, bears the date 1434. Álvaro Pires is mentioned in Giorgio Vasari's Le Vite de' più Eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architettori (1568) and by José da Cunha Taborda, in Regras da arte da pintura, 1815. Around thirty works have been found by this artist. (c.1430-1434, tempera and gold on panel) was bought by the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, and Saint Como recently went on sale. Álvaro Pires de Évora may be the Master of Lourinhã, who painted , and .
The Lisbon Bible (1483) is considered "the most accomplished codex of the Portuguese school of medieval Hebrew illumination" and is now in the British Library. Samuel ben Samuel Ibn Musa (Samuel the Scribe), probably a Jew living in Portugal before the expulsion and forced conversions of December 1496, copied the biblical text but we do not seem to know who decorated the pages with birds and other animals and, mostly, flowers. The Foral of Évora (1501), decorated with flowers, animals and cherubs, is also remarkable.
The first famous Portuguese painter is Nuno Gonçalves (active c. 1450 - died before 1492), whose work was influenced by Flemish art, as were many of his successors. Gonçalves is best known for his polyptych, Saint Vincent Panels (now in the (MNAA),MNAA: . A list of the paintings in the MNAA: :pt:Lista de pinturas do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga six paintings showing a group of 58 figures representing the court and the various social classes of 15th-century Portuguese society in a monumental and solemn assembly around the figure of Saint Vincent, who is represented twice. The painting is characterized by figures with expressive faces and a detailed definition of the costumes, marking the beginning of the Renaissance in Portugal. The same museum owns a Martírio de São Vicente atado à coluna, around 1470. (Vincent of Saragossa is the patron saint of Lisbon).
The is still by an anonymous painter.
Jorge Afonso (c. 1470–1540) is the painter of the altarpiece at the Madre de Deus Convent in Lisbon (now at the MNAA). The church of the Monastery of Jesus of Setúbal was decorated with a 14-panel, painted altarpiece by him (). The MNAA houses Jorge Afonso's Adoração dos Pastores (Adoration of the Shepherds), which shows a tiled floor in perspective and realistic male faces, while the Virgin has a gothic touch. In the third shepherd's left hand are what may be a tin milk pail and spoons, while the second has a rebec on the floor in front of him, and there is a concert of angel musicians in the opposite corner of the canvas.
A whole generation of Portuguese painters was educated in Afonso's workshop, including Cristóvão de Figueiredo, Garcia Fernandes, Gregório Lopes and (known for his Adoração dos Reis Magos in the MNAA), (credited with the paintings in the Convent of de Tarouca) and possibly even the famous Vasco Fernandes (c. 1475 – c. 1542), better known as Grão Vasco. The identity of the the is still unknown.
The MNAA owns Cristóvão de Figueiredo's The Marriage of Saint Ursula with Prince Conan (1522-1525). His Monastery of the Holy Cross in Coimbra (1521-1530) still shows the influence of Dürer. Figueiredo may be the of the . He collaborated with Garcia Fernandes on The Resurrection of Christ (1530-1535) which was bought by the Louvre in 2023 (RFML.PE.2023.26.1).
The MNAA houses a Martírio de S. Sebastião by Gregório Lopes, who also painted a Virgin and Child with the angels, and the Adoration of the Magi in a village in Auvergne. He collaborated with Jorge Leal on the Visitation. Lopes introduced the «Primeiro Maneirismo de Antuérpia» (First Antwerp Mannerism) to Portugal. Between 1533 and 1534, he collaborated with Garcia Fernandes and Cristóvão de Figueiredo, in Lamego, on the panels for the .
Grão Vasco moved from a markedly Nordic influence - clearly seen in the altarpiece of Viseu Cathedral, where he worked with painters of Flemish origin - to an Italianising influence. The arrival of Miguel da Silva from Rome to the Bishopric of Viseu (1525-1540), the patron who, among other things, commissioned him to paint the five great altarpieces for the cathedral, including that of St. Peter, was a decisive event in his aesthetic career. The Last Supper dates from 1535. A clearer shift towards the Italian model only began to be noticed around 1540, when the rigorous classicism of the High Renaissance had already disappeared and the dominant trend in Italy was already Mannerism. He painted several triptychs (, and ).
Francisco Henriques (active 1508–1518), born in Amsterdam and trained in Bruges perhaps under Gerard David, arrived in Portugal around 1500. He led the workshop for Viseu Cathedral's altarpiece, mentoring the young Vasco Fernandes. In 1518, he was commissioned for a prestigious project in Lisbon, collaborating with Garcia Fernandes, Cristóvão de Figueiredo, and Gregório Lopes. Unfortunately he died of the plague in 1518. The MNAA houses quite a few of his paintings, including Ultima ceia (Last Supper, c.1508) and Paixão dos (c1508). He also painted . The painting Inferno is attributed to one "", possibly one of Francisco Henriques's pupils.
Unlike the previous painters, (active 1517-1540), a Hyeronimite monk, had no contact with Jorge Afonso or his pupils: he worked almost exclusively for his monastic order. Nevertheless, his style is similar to Afonso's in works such as , and Bom pastor (The Good Shepherd), 1520-30.
As for , he was active in Coimbra between 1491 and 1518 and is remembered notably for his . He is probably the .
It is now accepted that the Livro do Armeiro-Mor (1509), which contains the Portuguese Armorial, is the work of a Portuguese illuminator, João do Cró. Another such book was the (1521- 1541) by António Godinho, clerk to King João III. The 1675 Thesouro de Nobreza is a very late example of a manuscript armorial.
The Book of Fortresses (1509–1510 by ) contains sketches or outlines of all the 56 Portuguese border castles, these sketches include elements of perspective and topographical awareness.
The , attributed to (between c. 1517 and c. 1538). The first historical reference to him dates from 1518, when he was in Portugal. He probably died in Portugal, where his son Francisco de Holanda was born.