Museu Nacional do Azulejo
Museu Nacional do Azulejo is a Lisbon museum dedicated to the azulejos, the ceramic tiles typical of Portugal .
Building (former Madre de Deus monastery)
Founded in 1509 by Eleanor of Portugal (Dona Leonora de Bragança), sister of King Manuel I of Portugal and widow of King John II of Portugal, the Clarissin Monastery of Madre de Deus ( Mother of God ) was almost completely destroyed in the 1755 earthquake. Today's monastery church is a work of the Baroque . The two-storey Renaissance cloisters were spared the earthquake. King John III of Portugal had the monastery expanded; after the earthquake, King John V of Portugal had it restored and rebuilt. The Manueline facade was reconstructed by the architect João Maria Nepomuceno . In the church itself, you can see Dutch azulejos, a coffered ceiling , talha Dourada and paintings from the Portuguese school of the 16th century. King John III is shown in paintings. and his wife Catherine of Castile . In 1834, secularization also took hold of this monastery, which was initially used as an asylum . One of the chapels is dedicated to St. Anthony. Queen Eleanor is buried in the monastery.
The museum
The museum, housed in the cloisters and buildings that have been preserved, opened in 1960. The first director was the azulejo researcher João Miguel Santos Simões . It has had the title of "National Museum" since 1980 and has been virtually independent of the Museum of Ancient Art ( Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga ). The collection gives an overview of the development of tile art over the centuries. The most important tile paintings are a view of the city, which shows Lisbon 25 years before the earthquake of 1755, and a 25-meter-long tile picture made of 1,300 tiles. Another series of paintings is the Nossa Senhora da Vida panel from 1580, which depicts the birth of Jesus on more than 1300 tiles, as well as azulejos portraits of the English King Charles II of England and his Portuguese wife Catherine von Braganza . The azulejos panels mostly date from the 15th to the 19th century and come from dissolved monasteries in the country or private houses of the upper classes. The history of tiling in Portugal and the different forms of production are presented, as well as modern and contemporary azulejo art.
The collection includes numerous tiles from Arabia , North Africa and Flanders , such as those by the Flemish tile master Jan van Bogaert .
A workshop for the restoration of the panels and the repair of the collection of several million tiles is also located in the house.
swell
- Knauer Kulturführer - Portugal, Weltbild-Verlag, 1998.
- Merian-Lisbon, Graefe and Unzer Verlag, 2005.
- Art and History Lisbon, Bonechi-Verlag, undated
- Merian-Lisbon (booklet), Jahreszeitenverlag, 2004.
- Jörg Schubert- Lisbon, 1981, Pinguin-Verlag.
See also
Web links
Coordinates: 38 ° 43 ′ 28 " N , 9 ° 6 ′ 50" W.