A sculptural fragment of Neptunian symbology and outstanding artistic quality, revealing an erudite sculptor of considerable mastery, possibly a follower of Jean de Rouen – perhaps one of the participants in the 1540s campaigns, directed by Juan de Castillo, at the Convent of Christ in Tomar. It was originally part of a larger composition, probably from a balcony window, or a small interior doorway setting, maybe in a cloister.

The fragment, of well-preserved reliefs and sharp edges, features two carved sides which, for easy identification, we will refer to as A and B. As expected, the two reverse faces were left in the rough.

Face A is fully carved with a set of motifs that can be included in three distinctive groups:

- A regular architectural cartouche of grotesque decoration, the typical “pendant” motifs that the Italian quattrocento would recreate and disseminate in the following century, mainly via the remarkable paintings by Bernardino Pinturicchio, Giovanni da Udine and others, which would evolve in very appealing fashions, in accordance with the artistic contexts in which they were established. Within the grotesque universe it is possible to identify six distinct motifs denouncing clear Italian influence.

- At the cartouche lower section (a.1), a rectangular frame encompassing its total width and part of the architectural motifs. The symmetric scrolls, finely carved in low and medium relief, and linked by a straight ironwork like element, evidence the sculptor artistic quality and technical mastery, revealing a control of carving only seldomly accomplished in Portugal.

- In parallel to the plain architectural frame that divides the carved areas, the third group of motifs comprises of two friezes. One a group of demi-spheres and a thread. The other a sequence formed by a demi cylinder, flanked by fine edged beads. The use of this decorative typology remits to classical Greco-Roman architecture and its decorative elements, an influential context widely disseminated in the 1500s, not only by well-known ancient treatises (Vitruvius) as well as by recently published ones (Alberti, Diego de Sagredo, Palladio, Serlio, etc.), but also by prints of Italian, Flemish, German, French, or peninsular origin.

Face B, corresponding to the inner window jamb face, more visible, revels a set of motifs of higher erudition and iconographic significance. It is restricted on one side by a fluted detail, which would mark the transition to the support wall, as is evident by the adjacent rough surface. On the opposite side, shallower fluting frames a central cartouche that features a sequence of six pendant motifs of grotesques, fantastic beasts and a square base cartouche that encases a set of low relief motifs that can be interpreted as of Neptunian iconography, including marine elements and a scallop shell surmounted by a trident – an allegory to Neptune -, both flanked by two stylized dolphins, as if in a heraldic composition.

Above, on a stool like platform of zoomorphic feet, a rounded candlestick foot of straight shaft, on which develops a succession of grotesque pendants: two stylized fish and two fantastic animals whose birdlike heads interlace; two mammal bodied face to face grotesques of hooved feet, which evolve into a reptile of dorsal spikes and long intertwined necks of parrot heads, with crooked and open beaks, recalling the dragons featured in medieval manuscripts, a repeating motif; a zoomorphic urn ending in anthropomorphic mask with garland or cap, surmounted by two sceptres of coiled ribbons and tassels or rattles – perhaps representing a jester, in an allegory to madness or to the transience of glory, a fashionable topical subject at the time. For their exceptional sculptural quality, these reliefs, characteristic of the Mannerism, constitute one of the fragment’s highlights.

Upon analysis of these ornamental elements, it is reasonable to refer a context in which Italian quattrocento motifs, featuring cartouches with classicist pendants and grotesques, were interpreted by someone within a Flemish trained master’s entourage, or inspired by a Flemish print. It is also noticeable the use of drawing, more trace than volume, as an invention of motifs not entirely Italian, but derived from the highly interesting universe of 15th century Italian grotteschi, remarkably decoded by the master sculptor, undisputed bearer of an artistic capacity that enabled him to harmonize motifs and influences.

The Italian Renaissance by way of France[1] - fundamentally through Nicolas de Chanterenne, Jean de Rouen and others, the Flemish sculptural art – with such sculptors as Olivier Van Ghent[2], Framengo, Orte, etc., who operated in Portugal, and a large scale import market (Mechlin and Brussels pieces), the Manueline, with masters and motifs combining the autochthonous practices typical of the late peninsular and European gothic, with the novel decorative grammars in the antique manner (in the manner of the ancient Classical art), and lastly the Mudejar – or the broad typology of Moorish influenced motifs, will systematically be present in Portugal throughout the whole of the 16th century.

The Italian grotteschi featured in this fragment are fundamental to how the Renaissance revolutionized decorative practices, be it in architecture, in luxury decorative arts and in painting, as well as in sculpture. It was indeed in the field of grotesques that the evolution of the decorative universes to be developed by the Mannerism, was more evidently accentuated, particularly by the creation in northern Europe during the 1550s and 1560s, and especially under Antwerp’s artistic influence, of new ornamental languages.

On the subject of grotteschi use in ornamentation, it is essential to highlight that cultural and artistic transmission contexts occur in diverse circumstances, namely via artist’s travels, Italian, Flemish or Peninsular, or patrons journeys (such as King Manuel I visits to Aragon or Santiago de Compostela), as well as by the importing of artworks, from Italy[3] or from Flanders[4], such as the sculptures from Mechlin, or the altarpieces from Antwerp and Brussels. A third route were the royal gifts, such as those Emperor Maximilian sent to Queen Eleanor, wife to João II of Portugal, or those that Emperor Charles V forwarded to his sister Eleanor of Austria in Portugal. A final path was via printed engravings and, in this instance, there were in Portugal two essential and preferential 16th century provenances; Italy, from where many works by Zoan Andrea, Nicoletto da Modena, Peregrino da Cesena, Mancantonio Raimondi, and others, arrived; and northern Europe (Flanders and Germany), with works by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Van Leiden, Heinrich Aldegrever, Cornelis Cort, Hans Vredeman de Vries and others, who disseminated their own forms and productions, mainly around grotesques, iron work - ferronerie – and a whole universe of fantastic elements much favoured by the Mannerism.

The reliefs decorative quality points quite clearly to a printed source, probably Flemish, and dating from the 1470s or 1480s decades, as the concept of Italian style cartouche, the observance of the typical quattrocento pendant organization, with the evident compositional vertical axis, corresponds to models that were abandoned by the end of the century.

In Nicolas Chanterenne’s work, excepting the Cistercian monasteries of Celas and Sintra, the later for the monarch himself (the altarpiece at Pena), for which he follows respectively Italian and German prints, the sculptor compositional inventiveness and decorative creativity move away from the influence of printed engravings or treatises, in the search for unique solutions. It is therefore within the universe of Jean de Rouen’s, and his School, that we must search for this type of language. But Rouen and his workshop work systematically with a favoured local raw material, the Ançã limestone, rather than with marble, as it is the case for our fragment. The carving quality and the accurate character of the chosen ornaments, some belonging to the referred grotesques group, point out to an artist of excellent technical mastery, but do not allow for a specific identity suggestion, among the various known as emerging from Rouen’s influence, and from which Tomé Velho is a major example.

Good quality sculpture, however, was not confined to the city of Coimbra. The campaigns at the Convent of Christ, in Tomar, under the direction of Juan de Castillo, are also major sculptural decoration commissions. In a first moment, in 1515, and later, during the 1540s, the sculptors accompanying this master reveal extraordinary formal quality, either when working in the Manueline style context, as in the lateral doorway of the monastic complex, or in the full Renaissance style, as in the dormitory chapel, in the cloisters, and particularly in the Immaculate Conception hermitage, in the monastery enclosure, or even at the few extant sections of the master’s planned cloister, partially dismantled by Diogo de Torralva. They are generally characters searching for identifiable work, specialized workmanship, but embedded in the vast campaigns developed beyond any artists identity, but instead focusing on the collective body of work, and its contribution for the overall vision of the project.

The combination of our fragment chosen motifs, coinciding with the typological universe used in Portugal, namely in the 1500s building cycles at the Convent of Christ – during the second campaign directed by Juan de Castillo (1547) – point to the 1530s, 40s and 50s, as the possible dating of this work.

Equally challenging, as well as relevant, is defining the patron’s profile, who was certainly an erudite, whether for the commissioning of a sculptural work of such nature, the choice of an expert artist capable of producing such artwork, the accepting of the chosen ornamental motifs or, above all, for the selection of motifs related to Neptune’s iconography.

For its sculptural quality it is fitting to attribute this sculptural fragment to a highly skilled follower of Jean de Rouen, knowing that his influence propagates through to the 17th century, in many religious as well as secular sculptural artworks, evolving rather naturally into an Antwerpian influenced Mannerism. Likewise, it is also conceivable that its author could have been one of the master sculptors associated to Juan de Castillo 1540s campaigns at Tomar.

Independently of its provenance or the identity of the commissioning patron, it is unquestionable that we are faced with an exceptional masterpiece.

(Text adapted from original appraisal report composed by Prof. Fernando Grilo, Agosto 2020)

[1] The introduction of the Renaissance by way of Italy, is due to the stay of Andrea Sansovino in Portugal during the reign of King Manuel I, who rather strangely did not leave behind a group of disciples who would carry on his work in the country Cfr. Fernando Grilo, Andrea Sansovino em Portugal no Tempo de D. Manuel I, Cadernos de História da Arte, I, Instituto de História da Arte da Faculdade de Letras, Lisboa, 1991, pp. 103 – 138 and also Fernando Grilo, Andrea Sansovino em Portugal, Art History MA Dissertation, Universidade de Lisboa, 1990.

[2] Fernando Grilo, “A escultura em madeira de influência flamenga em Portugal. Artistas e Obras”, O Brilho do Norte, Esculturas e escultores do Norte da Europa em Portugal na época manuelina, exhibition catalogue, pp. 75 – 116, Lisboa, 1998.

[3] Fernando Grilo, Andrea Sansovino em Portugal no tempo de D. Manuel I, Art History MA Dissertation, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1996, 3 vols.; Pedro Dias, A importação de obras de arte italiana em Portugal, Coimbra, 1998

[4]Fernando Grilo, “A escultura em madeira de influência flamenga em Portugal. Artistas e Obras”, O Brilho do Norte, Esculturas e escultores do Norte da Europa em Portugal na época manuelina, exhibition catalogue, pp. 75 – 116, Lisboa, 1998.