Exceptional rosewood table produced in the second quarter of the 17th century, during the period of Portuguese/Spanish Dynastic Union (1580-1640).[1] According to the art historian Bernardo Ferrão, this style characterizes “ineradicably, some of the most splendid and purest Portuguese made furniture”, albeit inspired by contemporary Spanish prototypes.[2]

Of rectangular projecting top, the table case features two identical drawers, filling its total length and free of ornamentation, excepting for the bronze cross shaped lock escutcheons of Fleurs de Lys finials. In the opposing side, the presence of two simulated drawer fronts with equivalent bronze elements, signals its use as a centre table.

Shaped as lyre uprights, the curving square section legs reveal the influence of Italian tables in the Iberian Peninsula[3]. The legs are laterally joined by square cut stretchers, defined by a central disc that extends into symmetrical balusters and completes the lyre design. Lengthwise they are connected by turned baluster shaped stretchers interspersed by rings. The table is assembled with circular iron bolts visible on both sides.

Identically to trestle tables, this typology was conceived for writing and reading, and albeit their similarity with another type of more common writing tables known in Portugal as “bancas”, particularly in their projecting top[4], they do differ from the latter in being smaller, for mostly lacking drawers, and for the sinuous shape of their legs. In this period, it was customary to cover tables with brocades, tapestries and other expensive textiles, a practice that, in Portugal, endured through time.[5]

The table general restraint, particularly evident on its plain top, enhances the light tones of the rare honey-coloured rosewood, as well as the elegant profiles of legs and stretchers. Similarly shaped examples of inlaid linear and geometric decorated tops and drawer fronts are also recorded (Fig. 1), as are others produced in solid Brazilian mahogany, chestnut, walnut, etc., or with veneered and inlaid tops and drawer fronts. The prototype was also replicated in late 16th and 17th century Indo-Portuguese tables which, as such, reflect analogous formal aesthetics. From this latter group stand out their winding volute feet, also present in cabinet stands, commonly seen in furniture made in the Portuguese Northern Indian territories or in Goa, the former of more elaborate decorative compositions, in which the outlined and inlaid motifs portray coiling Indian symbolic jatayu (Fig. 2)[6]. In these instances, this typically Indian ornamental element, portraying the vulture son of Garuda, the mythical bird, and Rama’s friend[7], assumes a particular apotropaic dimension.

On a par with the unmistakable Spanish character of Hispanic-Arabic furniture from the late 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Renaissance furniture was strongly impacted by the austere taste of King Felipe II’s architect, Juan de Herrera. Effectively, in the second half of the 16th century, Iberian furniture was characterized by a “dramatic and inflexible sobriety”[8] for which contributed the earlier Sumptuary Laws enacted in 1560 by King Sebastião, which invoked to “the luxury of costume, home and table”, and were directed at regulating Portuguese ways and customs.[9]

Effectively, throughout the sixty years of Dynastic Union, when the rivalry between European States for the control of the Portuguese overseas territories was most intense, the Sumptuary legislation originating from King Manuel I statutory precepts, aimed at refraining the ostentation and excessive spending of courtiers, nobility and wealthy bourgeois, was eventually enacted (1583-1609) with additional restrictions, in King Filipe I reign.[10] These regulations, to which others of religious scope derived from the Counter-Reformation movement (1545-1648) were also added, impacted on art production as a whole, an therefore also on furniture, thus emphasizing the sobriety, and simultaneously the sophistication, that this table aesthetics qualities do convey. In furniture history terms, the Dynastic Union period corresponds to the artistic Mannerism and reflects the impact of contemporary Spanish models[11].

Analogous Portuguese tables that were taken to India, became templates for a local production combining European prototypes with exotic materials, production techniques, and ornamental motifs, many of Hindu origin, that substantiate the intercultural and artistic exchanges with the East.

The distinctive combination between the sobriety of this table’s top and drawer fronts, enhancing the beauty of the rosewood timbers, and the sophistication of its lower section, enables an interesting hybridity characteristic of the Portuguese furniture produced in that historic moment, still to be enhanced and reinforced.

Leonor Liz Amaral

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DIAS, Pedro, Mobiliário Indo-Português, Gráfica de Coimbra, Lda., 2013.

FERRÃO, Bernardo, Mobiliário Português, A Centúria de Quinhentos, Vol. 2

FREIRE, Fernanda Castro, 50 dos Melhores Móveis Portugueses, Colecção A Minha Escolha, Chaves Ferreira Publicações, 1995.

FREIRE, Fernanda Castro; PEDROSO, Graça; HENRIQUES, Raquel Pereira, Mobiliário, Móveis de Conter, Pousar e de Aparato, Vol. II, Fundação Ricardo Espírito Santo e Silva, Museu-Escola de Artes Decorativas Portuguesas, 2002.

MARROCANO, João H., “Mobiliário Português de Estilo Nacional”, Res Mobilis, Revista Internacional de investigación en mobiliário y objetos decorativos, Vol. 10, nº 11, 2021.

TEIXEIRA, Sara Sousa, A Arte Indo-Português na Ilha de Moçambique: Um Intercâmbio de Formas e de Gostos, MA Dissertation, Open University, 2022.

[1] Following from the defeat and demise of King Sebastião at Ksar el-Kebir, and in the absence of any direct heirs, King Felipe II of Spain, a grandson of King Manuel I of Portugal, inherited the Portuguese Crown, as Filipe I. This Dynastic Union, also referred to as “Filipino” period, lasted until the restoration of the Portuguese independence in 1640.

[2] FERRÃO, Bernardo, O Mobiliário Português, Vol. 2, 1990, p. 39; MEDEIROS, Maria do Céu, O Mobiliário na Pintura do Séc. XVII em Portugal, MA Dissertation, Faculty of Humanities, University of Lisbon, 2015, p. 28.

[3] MARROCANO, João H., “Mobiliário Português de Estilo Nacional”, Res Mobilis, Revista Internacional de investigación en mobiliário y objetos decorativos, Vol. 10, nº 11, 2021, p. 49.

[4] FREIRE, Fernanda Castro; PEDROSO, Graça; HENRIQUES, Raquel Pereira, Mobiliário, Móveis de Conter, Pousar e de Aparato, Vol. II, Fundação Ricardo Espírito Santo e Silva, Museu-Escola de Artes Decorativas Portuguesas, 2002, p. 156.

[5] Idem, 2002, p.160.

[6] DIAS, Pedro, Mobiliário Indo-Português, 2013, p. 72.

[7] TEIXEIRA, Sara Sousa, A Arte Indo-Português na Ilha de Moçambique: Um Intercâmbio de Formas e de Gostos, MA Dissertation, Open University, 2022, Appendix I, p. 14.

[8] FERRÃO, Bernardo, O Mobiliário Português, Vol. 2, 1990, p. 4.

[9] In MARROCANO, João H., “Mobiliário Português de Estilo Nacional”, Res Mobilis, Revista Internacional de investigación en mobiliário y objetos decorativos, Vol. 10, nº 11, 2021, p.51.

[10] FERRÃO, Bernardo O Mobiliário Português, Vol. 2, 1990, p. 62.

[11] Spanish lyre shaped legs tables featured iron tethers in alternative to the characteristic stretchers of Portuguese tables.