Articles
ENRamalho Ortigão's Manueline: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Transgression
When Ramalho Ortigão affirms that the Tomar window is "the most eloquent, most convinced, most poetically patriotic, most tremblingly Portuguese work that the talent for sculpting and making stone sing …
The Convent of Christ: Eight Centuries of History
When in 1160 King Afonso Henriques donated the primitive fortress of Ceras to the Order of the Temple, recently founded in Jerusalem and already established in Portuguese territory since 1128, …
The Tomar Window Under Ramalho Ortigão's Magnifying Glass
The famous window of the Chapter Room opens in the eastern façade of the Convent of Christ, facing east, in an arrangement that is not accidental: the morning light bathes …
Legacy and Contemporary of Ramalho's Thought
When The Cult of Art in Portugal was published in 1896, it had all the characteristics of being just another one of those books that shake consciences for a brief …
The Unfinished Chapels: An Incomplete Poem in Stone
If the Batalha Monastery was, for Ramalho Ortigão, "the great marble book, the immortal poem, the Portuguese Divine Comedy," then the Unfinished Chapels were the most mysterious and disturbing canto …
Ramalho's Heritage Pedagogy
But the most original—and perhaps most current—aspect of Ramalho Ortigão's thought resided in his pedagogical conception of heritage. For him, the question was not limited to technical issues of conservation …
Ramalho and the Batalha Monastery as a Case Study
Half a century after King Ferdinand II's visit, Ramalho Ortigão found himself before the same monument, but at an even more critical phase of its history.
The Metaphor of Threatened Heritage
The contrast was devastating. On one side, the glory of the foundation: a victorious king, the greatest architects of Europe summoned, the entire nation committed to a work that would …
The Monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória: Historical and Symbolic Context
Among all Portuguese monuments, the Batalha Monastery occupied, for Ramalho Ortigão, a singular and almost sacred place.
Cloisters of Celas Convent
When Ramalho Ortigão visited the Convent of Celas in the late 19th century, the small Cistercian monastery founded by D. Sancha, daughter of King Sancho I, faced an unprecedented threat: …
A Journey on the Tagus
When the steamer departs from Cais do Sodré toward Cascais on a September morning in 1876, the Tagus stretches before the passengers "in all its majesty, like a small Mediterranean," …
Sebastião da Gama: The Poet of Arrábida
<p>When in 1924 a boy with the full name Sebastião Artur Cardoso da Gama was born in Vila Nogueira de Azeitão, no one could imagine that this child, whose life …