Saint Vincent Panels

This is a work of great symbolic importance in Portuguese culture and a unique "collective portrait" in the history of European painting. The six paintings are attributed to Nuno Gonçalves (active 1450-1491), the royal painter for King Alfonso V. They represent a group of 58 characters surrounding a double figuration of St Vincent, and compose a solemn and monumental representative assembly of the Court and various layers of Portuguese society of that time, in an act of veneration to the patron and inspirer of the fifteenth-century military expansion in the Maghreb. These figures, clearly stated in volumes, as characterised by the significant concentration of faces and attitudes, and also by the exquisite pictorial definition of costumes and props, seem to combine the purpose of a narrative evocation with a contemplative vision in this ceremonial act. Although fully understanding the intention and the meaning of the work remains problematic, apparently the author of the canvases was painter Nuno Gonçalves, and that they were originally part of the retable of St Vicente in Lisbon Cathedral (c. 1470). They are named according to the proposed designations in 1909 by José de Figueiredo, as the Panel of the Friars, the Fishermen, the Prince, the Archbishop, the Knights and the Relic (text by Maria João Vilhena).