The Portuguese Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in Portugal during the 15th and 16th centuries. Though the movement coincided with the Spanish and Italian renaissances, the Portuguese Renaissance was largely separate from other European Renaissances and instead was extremely important in opening Europe to the unknown and bringing a more worldly view to those European Renaissances, as at the time the Portuguese Empire spanned the globe.University, Brown, The John Carter Brown Library. "Portuguese Overseas Travels and European Readers". Portugal and Renaissance Europe. JCB Exhibitions. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
As the pioneer of the Age of Discoveries, Portugal flourished in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, with voyages to India, the Orient, the Americas, and Africa. This immense trade network would create an extremely wealthy Portuguese nobility and monarchy, that would become patrons for an immense flourishing of culture, arts, and technology in Portugal and all over the world.
Context
Diplomats, merchants, students, humanists, scholars, and artists, from all over Europe, were drawn to Portugal during its Renaissance. The maritime trade of the Age of Discovery played a decisive role in the evolution of the Portuguese Renaissance. Trade intensified contacts with important centres of the Italian Renaissance and it allowed a new commercial bourgeoisie to prosper and have excess funds to become patrons of the arts, much like the other Renaissances of Europe.
The discovery of new worlds and contact with other civilisations led to a cultural mix, which was reflected in the arts and literature of the Portuguese Renaissance. The contact with the civilisations of Africa and the East led to the importation of numerous objects of ceramics, textiles and furniture, precious woods, ivory and silk, in turn, led to the emergence of new artistic forms resulting cultural exchanges between Europe, and East Africa, through the Portuguese. The new trade of items with the newly discovered lands is also what allowed the Portuguese Renaissance to be funded, by creating a wealthy Portuguese nobility and merchant class.
It was Portugal's connection, through the vast Portuguese Empire, to a full world of trade, culture, and commerce, from Japan to Brazil and from the Azores to Goa, that allowed the Portuguese Renaissance to be born. Portugal's unique ability to interact and colonise other peoples (later called Lusotropicalism), permitted funding a flourishing Renaissance of its own; of arts, humanities, religion, and sciences alike, not just on the European mainland, but throughout its empire, due to the special link that the Portuguese Empire had to Portugal.
Arts The arts in the Portuguese Renaissance are a matter of historiographical dispute. This is because despite arts flourishing in this time, they did not follow the classicist aesthetic standards on which the Italians built their Renaissance. The arts of the Portuguese Renaissance were unique amongst other Renaissance arts. They were a mixing of Late Gothic style with the innovations of the fifteenth century and a Portuguese national twist all at once. The assimilation with the Italian Renaissance arts model only really begins around 1540, when Portuguese Renaissance artists started breaking away from their national norms and adapting their works to the classicist Italian and Spanish model, while still possessing a Portuguese flavour.Caetano, Joaquim. Ao Modo de ItáliaRibeiro, Maria Teresa P. D. A Escola do Mestre de Romeira e o Maneirismo Escalabitano: 1540-1620. Universidade de Coimbra, 1992. pp. 1-2 Serrão, Vítor. A pintura Maneirista em Portugal. Lisboa: Instituto de Língua e Cultura Portuguesa, 1991. p. 9
Architecture
In terms of architecture, much like many sections of the arts, the Portuguese Renaissance did not, initially or mainly, follow the path of the Renaissance elsewhere in Europe. These latter focused on the sophistication and simplicity of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Rather, Portuguese Renaissance in its architecture was largely a continuation and elaboration of the Gothic.
The profits of the spice trade, during the reigns of John II, Manuel I, and John III, financed the sumptuous and dominant style of the Portuguese Renaissance, the Manueline style. The Manueline was largely an intricate and complex style, with heavy gothic and light neo-classical influence, that was unique to Portugal.
The first known building in Manueline style is the Monastery of Jesus of Setubal, by the architect Diogo de Boitaca, one of the originators and masters of the style. The nave of the monastery's church, supported by spiral columns, reveals the attempt to render the balanced nave and aisles of a Hall church. This style reaches its climax in the church of Jerónimos Monastery, completed in 1520 by architect João de Castilho. Francisco de Arruda's Belém Tower and chapter window of the Convent of the Order of Christ, in Tomar, are some of the most famous examples of the Manueline style, and Portuguese Renaissance architecture as a whole.
Austere Renaissance classicism did not flourish much in the Portuguese Renaissance, but slowly established itself from the 1530s and onward, with the help of both foreigners and nationals, like Francisco de Holanda and Diogo de Torralva. The Hermitage of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in Tomar, by Diogo de Torralva, is an excellent examples of the pure Renaissance classical architecture from the Portuguese Renaissance. Some examples of the strong and pure classical Renaissance are Miguel de Arruda's Igreja da Graça, in Évora, Diogo de Arruda's Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa, in Vila Viçosa, and the Cloister of King D. John III, at the Convent of the Order of Christ, by Diogo de Torralva and Filippo Terzi, considered one of the most emblematic pieces of the Portuguese Renaissance. The Quinta da Bacalhoa and the Casa dos Bicos are good examples of strong classical Renaissance style palaces, which still hold Manueline tendencies.
Painting
Painting was one of the more distinguishing factors of the Portuguese Renaissance, being one of the more contrasting arts to the other Renaissances of Europe. Painting in the Portuguese Renaissance was largely sober and almost exclusively religious, being more in line with the Northern Renaissance in nature, not following the pomp and excess of the Italian and Spanish Renaissances.
Portuguese Renaissance painting was largely in contact with Flemish style.Caetano, Joaquim. O Melhor Oficial de Pintura que Naquele Tempo Havia Links between the two movements reached a new level, in 1430, with the marriage of Isabel of Aviz, Infanta of Portugal, to Philip III, Duke of Burgundy. While the marriage was in negotiations, the Burgundian court sent the famed Jan van Eyck to paint the Portrait of Isabel of Aviz. Van Eyck remained in Portugal for over a year, where he established a school of art, alongside Olivier de Gand and Jean d'Ypres.Vasconcellos, Joaquim de. A Pintura Portuguesa nos Séculos XV e XVI. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1929. pp. 10-12. This school gave origin to the School of Masters of the Sé Cathedral of Angra do Heroísmo, which was fostered by Jácome de Bruges.
Nuno Gonçalves, author of the Saint Vincent Panels and designer of the Pastrana Tapestries, is considered one of the precursors of Portuguese Renaissance painting.Britannica Educational Publishing, One hundred most influential painters and sculptors of the Renaissance, p.101 In his panels, considered one of the most important pieces of painted art in Portuguese history, he depicts prominent figures of Portuguese nobility, royalty, and clergy of the time with a dry style but powerfully realistic. His concern of portraying each figure individually, shows heavy Flemish influence, and foreshadows later Renaissance concerns.Sandra Sider, Handbook to life in Renaissance Europe, p.76
At the beginning of the 16th century, various schools of painters were active throughout Portugal and its empire, often in collaboration with foreigners. A common trend amongst these schools was to give credit to their works of art as a school, and leave the actual author anonymous, making it difficult to attribute authorship. Even amongst those painters that gave their name to their works, it is complicated to verify the total validity of authorship due to the habit of collective works. A famous example of this was by court painter Jorge Afonso, whose pieces were often worked on by his colleagues at court, such as Frei Carlos, Francisco Henriques, Cristóvão de Figueiredo, Garcia Fernandes, Gregório Lopes, and Jorge Leal, amongst others. In Northern Portugal, a similar group existed, centered on Vasco Fernandes, alongside Gaspar Vaz and Fernão de Anes.Rodrigues, Dalila. Vasco Fernandes, Esboço Biográfico. In Grão Vasco e a Pintura Europeia do Renascimento. Lisboa: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1992
During the Portuguese Renaissance, the largest center of learning and arts was Lisbon, which thrived as a great city of Europe, because of its privileged position as a major trading center, open to a constant flow of new information, cultures, and finance.Serrão, p. 13 Lisbon was a true center of the European Renaissance, where artists and scholars from the corners of Europe came to try to make money. The rich Lisbon nobility funded countless paintings, often for either religious institutions in Lisbon or in their feudal estates. The Portuguese royal court often transferred between Lisbon, Coimbra, a former capital of Portugal, and Évora, which allowed these three cities to establish themselves as the largest centers of the Portuguese Renaissance. In Coimbra, the School of Coimbra was founded by Vicente Gil and his son, Manuel Vicente.Dias, Pedro — Vicente Gil e Manuel Vicente, pintores da Coimbra Manuelina. Coimbra: Câmara Municipal de Coimbra 2003. Catálogo da Exposição. In Évora, Manuel I of Portugal established a rich court, which would see its height under his son, Cardinal Infante Henrique of Aviz, Archbishop of Évora, who founded the University of Évora and its school of arts.
Sciences
As the pioneer in Age of Discovery, Portugal and its Renaissance attracted experts in astronomy, mathematics, and naval technology, which made Portugal a technical and scientific capital of Europe. During the Portuguese Renaissance, there was a plethora of technical works being created, such as mappa mundi, globes, treatises on the art of sailing, scripts, reports of shipwrecks, itineraries, and studies on tropical medicine.
Among the treatises on astronomy, oceanography, and nautical studies, major works included the following: Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, 1506, Duarte Pacheco Pereira Treaty on the Sphere, 1537, Pedro Nunes Route Map of the Purple Sea, 1541, João de Castro Ars Nautica, 1555, Fernão de Oliveira Manuscript on the Production of Naus, 1580, Fernão de Oliveira
Pedro Nunes, one of the first Europeans to apply mathematics to cartography, discovered the concept of rhumb lines, later applied to the Mercator projection, which, in 1569, revolutionized cartography. He was also the inventor of several measuring apparatus, including the nonius, to measure fractions of a degree.
With Vasco da Gama's arrival in India and the Portuguese Empire's expansion into that land, many scientists were sent eastward to study and compile new drugs from medicinal plants. The botanist Tomé Pires and physicians Garcia de Orta and Cristóvão da Costa collected and published works on new plants and local medicines.
Cartography