The Golden Age of the Portuguese Renaissance

In Lisbon, the capital of the kingdom facing the ocean, the arrival of Flemish painters influenced the history of European painting. After the first lights of Nuno Gonçalves (active from 1450 and before 1492), the Lisbon workshops, federated around Jorge Afonso (active between 1504 and 1540), adopted a new way of painting, based on a perfect mastery of the oil technique. These painters combined bluish landscapes imbued with poetry, precious fabrics and accessories, details of refined architecture with a sharp and sometimes comical sense of observation and narration, creating a highly original synthesis between the pictorial inventions of the Flemish and Italian Renaissance and Portuguese culture.
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