A Flemish painter in Portugal: Dona Catarina's portrait and the circuit of praises in the court of Dom João III (1521-1557)

• Grant number: 22/08455-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: August 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Art Fundamentals and Criticism
• Principal Investigator: Cássio da Silva Fernandes
• Grantee: Janaina Silva Santana
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/15329-0 - Artistic Dialogues and Cultural Migrations: court portraiture in Portugal during the Reign of Queen Catherine of Austria (1507-1578), BE.EP.MS

Abstract

This research aims to study court portraits practices in Portugal in the Renaissance taking as main source Dona Catarina of Austria's portrait executed by the flemish painter Anthonis Mor, in 1552, when he was in the kingdom. It is assumed that the circulation of foreign artists accustomed to different clientele made the joanina court a privileged space of plastic and aesthetic confluence in the Iberian Peninsula. The proposed methodology assumes that the portraits emulated linguistic codes by the application, in the composition, of rhetorical and poetic procedures, which enables the hypothesis that, far from being isolated in a defined artistic field, the art of portrait functioned within a wider cultural universe, linked to humanistic circles. Furthermore, the political function performed by portraits, when signaling hierarchies in court and perpetuating the memory of its members, compose a vast territory of practices integrated in these materials by the notion of authority, territory that, with this project, we intend to analyze.