Nuno Gonçalves

Portuguese painter, the most important Portuguese painter of the 15th century. His work may be said to have initiated the Renaissance in Portuguese painting. He is first named in a document of 1450, when Afonso V (reg 1438–81) appointed him court painter. In 1470 a payment to him is recorded for an altarpiece painted for the chapel of the Palácio Real, Sintra, which, given the dedication of the chapel, probably represented the Pentecost (untraced). A document of 1471 states that Gonçalves replaced the painter Joao Eanes (fl. from 1454) as Pintor das Obras da Cidade de Lisboa (Painter of works for the city of Lisbon). His St Vincent Altar for Lisbon Cathedral was destroyed in 1755, no works certainly by his hand survive, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that he was responsible for the St Vincent polyptych (Lisbon Museum, c.1460-70), the outstanding Portuguese painting of the 15th century. The style is rather dry, but powerfully realistic, and the polyptych contains a superb gallery of highly individualized portraits of members of the court, including a presumed self-portrait. There are affinities with contemporary Burgundian and Flemish art, especially the work of Bouts.

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