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JOANA VASCONCELOS / TRAFARIA PRAIA /CURATED BY MIGUEL AMADO
Pavilion of Portugal 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia
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on the journey and on the path Jorge Barreto Xavier Secretary of State of Culture
i met joana vasconcelos at the end of the 1990s, but it was in 2003, when she set up her studio in oeiras, that we started up regular contact. at that time i was a councillor responsible for culture on the oeiras city council, and i had the opportunity to provide the studio that she used until recently, when she moved it to lisbon. i also had the opportunity to support her presence at the venice biennale in 2005, when she participated at the invitation of the curators of that edition of the event, as well as her exhibition at the pinacoteca do estado in são paulo in 2008, when i was director-general of the arts at the portuguese ministry of culture. this year, along with the minister of foreign affairs, i have nominated her as the official representative of portugal at the 55th international art exhibition – la biennale di venezia.
Vasconcelos has taken her place as one of the most important Portuguese persons in the field of art, both nationally and internationally. I will not speak of her qualities as an artist, which she revealed from a very early age. That work belongs to the critics. I will not speak of her empathy with her public, which has been demonstrated in the success achieved by her many different exhibitions, as that work is up to journalists. I will not speak of the value of her pieces on the art market, as that is the work of gallery owners and of dealers. But it is my duty to speak of her enterprising, competitive, enthusiastic, and positive qualities as a builder of the symbolic and as a synthesis of a set of values and expectations that make her an example of contemporary Portugal. Vasconcelos proposed a difficult program for the participation of Portugal at the Venice Biennale. The Portuguese state supports her to every extent possible, when circumstances are forcing it to restrain spending and reallocate resources. Her project has a financial and organizational dimension beyond the support received. Starting from the financial and institutional support provided by the Portuguese state, Vasconcelos and her team, alongside the curator, have obtained private support and secured several different collaborations that guarantee the quality of the official representation of Portugal in Venice. In the name of the Government of Portugal, I would like to thank all those who have supported this project. I believe that the daring journey from Lisbon to Venice of a River Tagus ferry is a metaphor for several different Portuguese paths, something that takes strength from frailty and then goes on to build, build, and build. We greatly need these voyages and paths.
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portugal: a glance at a long history Onésimo Teotónio Almeida 20 — 25
portugal-venice historical relations Francisco Bethencourt 26 — 33
trafaria praia Luís Miguel Correia 34 — 41
lisbon with venice inside it: the deck of the trafaria praia Raquel Henriques da Silva 72 — 77
great panoramas of lisbon : from the baroque to the contemporary Rosário Salema de Carvalho 94 — 105
within the art Carlos Fortuna 126 — 131
found objects, tiles, and textiles: on a ship-pavilion-work Miguel Amado 132 — 141
biographies 174 — 175
textes en français 178 — 201
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Undergoing renovations at Navaltagus shipyard, Seixal, Portugal
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Undergoing renovations at Navaltagus shipyard, Seixal, Portugal
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Undergoing renovations at Navaltagus shipyard, Seixal, Portugal
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Undergoing renovations at Navaltagus shipyard, Seixal, Portugal
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Onésimo Teotónio Almeida
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Portugal: A Glance at a Long History
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portugal: a glance at a long history Onésimo Teotónio Almeida
portugal, which likes to see itself as a “garden of europe planted at the seaside” (in the lines written by its poet tomás ribeiro), lives with the impression that europe has forgotten it by the seaside. indeed, a country like portugal still requires introduction to outsiders, even though it has had an extremely clear awareness of itself for 800 years, and has had more or less the same borders for 600 years, which is unique in europe. even in global terms i believe that only japan beats portugal in this aspect, because the pacific ocean sets it apart and defends it.
Against the rules of geography, Portugal has managed to preserve itself, as sovereign territory, in the western corner of the Iberian Peninsula, an achievement that even Catalonia couldn’t manage. No historian can explain such stubbornness, particularly when it is said that one of the marks of the collective character of the Portuguese people is that of easygoing and mild habits. But, over the centuries, touching on this key of identity has made them immediately forget all softness and mildness, and only the force of arms has spoken in the dialogue that guaranteed them their much-prized independence. This is a moment to recall Blaise Pascal and his reasons of the heart that intelligence does not understand. They are inheritances from long ago that are of great importance in Portugal. The one thousand kilometers of coastline, riddled with beaches and tourist advertising, encourage that image of lightness in life, softened by the waves and sunbathing.
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Onésimo Teotónio Almeida
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Yet the reality of the Portuguese imaginary is something different. And understandably so. It is still a mystery to historians that such a small country began the expansion of Europe beyond its borders when in the 15th century its sailors set off into the Atlantic in search of new lands and seas. First they gained some experience along the African coastline, and then gained enthusiasm from the discovery of islands whenever they moved away from terra firma. Then there was the European pressure to find an alternative route for the spice trade, after the fall of Constantinople made it so much more difficult for Christians to make the trade route to the Orient. The will to find a solution led the Portuguese to India, thus removing the central role that such places as Venice had previously enjoyed in that commercial activity. Those were years of wild euphoria in which Portuguese sailors set out for the four corners of the planet, to China and Japan, to Newfoundland and Brazil, and sailed around the world for the first time. It was a century of pioneering achievements in world history that even to this day fuels the Portuguese imagination, no matter how much effort may be expended in channelling the country’s attention toward the future. Luís Vaz de Camões, the great Renaissance poet who celebrated those epic events, is still a national emblem. Fernando Pessoa, another great poet, a modernist from the first half of the 20th century, made a good attempt at creating a new epic projected into the future, a “Portugal-becoming,” but the tyranny of the past held out, and still holds out, softly felt and supported. Likewise, no one is capable of clearly explaining the strange break that took place after those decades of Herculean effort. The historian George Winius suggests that perhaps Portugal spread itself too thinly over routes that were too tenuous. It did not have enough people to send to all the places its sailors reached, and thus was limited to a network of dotted points only linked by journeys by ship. Some of these points were dissolved into local cultures, while others mixed with the locals and grew, as in Brazil and Angola. And—in another mystery—the global network that continued until China took over Macao lasted longer than any other empire, only falling when, at the end, the winds of history in the second half of the 20th century blew strongly and unfavourably. The result of all this was, however, a dispersed language set up in enclaves (one of them being the size of half a continent, as is the case of Brazil). This was added to by so many other enclaves formed by the Portuguese who, in the centuries after the global adventure of the 16th century, emigrated to these and other points on the planet: United States of America, various countries in South America, Canada, Australia, South Africa. Seeking a term that might give its name to this network of Lusophone spaces (luso is the adjective deriving from the original name of Portugal, Lusitânia), they invented lusofonia, which is not totally accurate because it bears the etymological (and ideological) marks of the European root that
Portugal: A Glance at a Long History
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is so strongly set within it. Today, when Brazil (and even Angola) stand up to the former colonial power, they feel it is a little culturally remote. The idea that language unites is somewhat volatile, yet it continues and persists, but after all it only reflects something deeper: the common culture that generated it. And the cultural affinities are there to be seen. The network of routes that Winius mentions are still evident today, added to by those that centuries of emigration have also created, transforming the Lusophone space into something that transcends geography. This is largely a universe of memories and affections that have many different facets, including the negative marks left by the errors of empire and colonization. The supposition of European cultural and racial superiorities left visible scars that the spirit of present times brings back to life. And yet one can see throughout this world the circulation of narrow paths like lines of ants that inevitably cross over each other because they follow routes that have long been established. There is the fear that all of this may be no more than a Portuguese attempt to indirectly recuperate its lost hegemony. (And there are those who take literally Pessoa’s statements such as “My homeland is the Portuguese language,” or his zeal for creating a new empire, that of the Portuguese language.) History reveals, however, particular signs that attenuate a neo-imperialist attitude on the part of the former colonizing power. What other country ever switched its imperial capital to a colony, as Portugal did when the king took his court to Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, to flee Napoleon’s invading troops? And there were those who suggested transferring the capital of Portugal to Luanda in Angola. This took place in the second half of the 20th century, when the last leaders of the empire (António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano) refused to let it go. The strangest aspect of this whole picture is the de facto absence of an economic or political project of hegemony. When seriously pressed for their reasons for considering the maintenance of these Portuguese-language interchanges to be so important, Portuguese people usually end up admitting that they are mainly connections based on affections. “Ideological rationalization!,” state those who are most politicised toward the left. But not even these individuals can avoid being on the same wavelength when they are talking from abroad. And all of this just makes the mystery more complex. The 400 years that followed the maritime adventure of the 1500s came to an end in 1974, specifically after the revolutionary movement begun on April 25, 1974. It was impossible to prolong a fruitless struggle against the winds of history. Suddenly the young men in the armed forces who were having to act in Africa in stubborn defence of the dying empire became the leaders of a revolution that had never been seen before. The empire collapsed
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Onésimo Teotónio Almeida
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in a moment, and instead of funeral flowers, there was in the country an overwhelming festival of red carnations celebrating freedom and the future. At a stroke, Portugal was in the hands of its young people. It was a collective delirium, a utopia unexpectedly sown in that garden planted by the seaside. In 1980, a contemporary Portuguese writer, Almeida Faria, wrote an epistolary novel entitled Lusitânia. At the beginning of the story, a Portuguese man who happens to be in Venice exchanges correspondence with family members in Portugal. In the meantime, a letter from Portugal, dated April 25, 1974, tells him of the death of his father. For any reader who is unaware of the history of Portugal, this detail of the date of the famous revolution of the carnations would mean nothing. Yet it is the key to the story. Without the slightest allusion to the political events of that day, this letter simply announces a personal incident: the death of his father. It is not necessary to be a follower of Freud for one to understand the symbolism. An 800-year-old country had suddenly lost its father, and it seemed like all of its past was being buried at that moment. Four hundred years with its back turned to Europe and of insolent adventures in the “Brazils,” “Indias,” and “Chinas” ended abruptly with an immense desire to come home, to forget the centuries that had passed, to reorganize life and seek some form of reintegration with modern Europe. At the beginning the enthusiasm was for the so-called socialist Europe, but the young people soon realized—or maybe they did not realize, but external powers made them see it—that they could enjoy themselves in destroying the past. They should, however, exist in relation to the future because they would either fall in with their European neighbors of the North and the Center, or they would go back again to being once again “proudly alone,” as their former leader Salazar intended. Except now marching to a different drum. These were tough years of struggling, and the allusion to Freud may be prolonged here. It has been a close struggle between the principles of pleasure and reality, with the latter having won, as usually happens in nonfictional history. Portugal reentered Europe. But it did so in fits and starts, because once again the tyrannical weight of the past was felt; it did not evaporate as quickly as the generation of the 25th of April of 1974 believed it would. This group is still determining the destiny of Portugal and is well aware of the fact that the time the Portuguese people set out paths and futures is long gone. Many people resigned themselves to accepting that others should open up the path, while they would enjoy a calm retirement pension, thus adding to the troops of those who, having greatly celebrated the European alliance, are now regretful about such a rushed marriage. As Pessoa, now much more quoted than Camões, might have stated, they wished “to go to India and rest.” Meaning, leaving off utopian dreams and accepting Portugal’s
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geopolitical place as a destination, learning to use the generosity of nature that such an amenable landscape and climate has granted it. Thinking of the country as a petite plaisance, as Marguerite Yourcenar called her house on the island of Mount Desert, in Maine, on the coast of the United States of America. But Portugal is full of surprises. Just like its landscape, which in such an exiguous territory surprises one at every turn with new angles, the same is true of its people. One only needs to scratch a little at the surface to discover a layer of young people moving in a frenzy of creativity on all levels. For those who know the country, this is not unexpected. The last decades have shown a great number of remarkable practitioners in several different areas: José Saramago (literature), Manoel de Oliveira (film), Paula Rego (art), António Damásio (science), Álvaro Siza (architecture), and Emmanuel Nunes (music), among others. In fact, this generation is multiplying, and there does not appear to be any branch of human achievement, from arts and humanities to science and technology, that does not, every other day, produce good news for Portugal. It might be one more young person receiving an international award, another member of a team discovering a scientific fact, a new voice, a new sports star, a skilled hand painting something unexpected, or an invention with great commercial possibilities. Even in fado, the traditional genre of Portuguese music. There is an unending supply of new names and faces transforming this music, which has always been so associated with the neighborhoods and back alleys of old Lisbon, into something that can be heard and appreciated in Japan or New York, as it touches a chord of human, and universal, sensitivity. These last years have been tough. Those who have the mournful kind of fado in their heart, who accept the fate that history seems to have reserved for us, even point to the weather that we have been given this spring of 2013. It is a winter that has yet to end, where April never seems to be born, confirming the uselessness of fighting against historical time. As if even the famous song “Avril au Portugal,” which was for decades an icon of Portugal abroad, no longer makes sense today. But a further—and attentive—look must be taken at this new generation of artists, inventors, and creators of all kinds. It can be those who insist on remaining in Portugal, or those who take advantage of the old routes to go back to the world our ancestors opened up, or even those who venture into routes that have never been traced before. Each is one more manifestation of that strange vitality that goes on resisting the past, that keeps its personality in Iberia, and that makes a point of existing, reminding us that 800 years of history does not sit easily with fashionable trends. The new generation may go with the flow, and even invite others to surf in the Portuguese waves, but it is capable of making waves as well.
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Francisco Bethencourt
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Portugal-Venice: Historical Relations
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portugal-venice: historical relations Francisco Bethencourt
portugal’s relations with italy became formalized in the middle ages, thanks to increasing maritime trade between the mediterranean and the north atlantic. throughout this period lisbon functioned as a stopping-off point due to its position on the western coast of the iberian peninsula. between the 12th and the 15th centuries, venetians and genovese controlled several different territories and trading posts throughout the mediterranean, with their activity stretching as far east as the black sea (at least up until the conquest of constantinople by the ottomans in 1453). the asian luxury trade was one basis of their wealth.
The economic importance of Portugal lay fundamentally in the export of salt. Northern France, Flanders, and England had access to the cereals growing in the north of Europe, which were much coveted by southern Europe; at the same time they were developing metallurgy and woolen textiles. In the 16th century, the population of Flanders was 40 percent city-based, and it was by far the most important city population in Europe. This urban concentration brought with it a specialization of functions and diversified markets. This is why Flanders, followed by England, became specialized in maritime transportation, and then competed with the Venetians and the Genovese. The Portuguese kings used the Italians’ maritime experience to create their military fleet. In 1316, King Denis invited the Genovese mariner Pessagno to be admiral of the fleet,
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and the latter brought pilots and sailors with him. The enormous expansion of Portugal’s maritime trade sparked innovations in its shipbuilding, which was a sign of its increasing autonomy, although the exploration journeys made along the African coast were partly carried out by Italian navigators, particularly Nicoloso da Recco, Alvise da Cadamosto, and Antoniotto Usodimare. The presence of Christopher Columbus in Lisbon, the Portuguese city of Funchal on the island of Madeira, and West Africa between 1476 and 1485, as well as the fact that he married a Portuguese woman, Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, is testimony to the long-standing and deep-rooted Genovese community in Portugal. Carried out between 1496 and 1498, Vasco da Gama’s sea voyage to India broke the Venetian monopoly on the distribution of spices in Europe. Caravan traffic from India to the Mediterranean through Persia and the Ottoman Empire to Aleppo, Syria, was taken by surprise when the sea route opened up. This crisis produced an enormous flow of information between Lisbon and Venice, which is clearly expressed in the diaries of the Italian historian Marino Sanudo. In any case, Venice managed to withstand the effects of the first shipments of pepper by sea, which brought about a great reduction in its price. The Genovese merchants and bankers maintained an important presence in Spain and Portugal until around 1630, contributing to the development of the Atlantic economy, but the Venetians never stopped having agents in Lisbon. The Italian colony in Lisbon was so important in the 16th century that it built the Our Lady of Loreto church. Among the bankers of the Portuguese kings John III and Sebastian was Luca Giraldi, a Florentine businessman who rose to become a knight of the royal household, receiving the title of nobleman in 1551 and a coat of arms in 1557. He bought the captaincy of Ilhéus in Brazil in 1560, and was one of the main contractors for journeys to India in the 1570s. Portugal’s relations with Italy were also marked by the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, which was fundamental for the recognition of the kingdom of Portugal. Although during this period of the foundation of the nation the Portuguese court had established privileged relations with other courts on the Iberian Peninsula, the wife of the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, was Mafalda of Savoy. Rome generated regular diplomatic relations, visits by dignitaries from the Portuguese Church, Papal Nuncios, and a significant circulation of religious figures in both directions. Dating from this period is John XXI, the only pope of Portuguese origin, elected in 1276; he was physician to Pope Gregory X, who named him Cardinal of Frascati. Another significant figure was Friar Gomes Ferreira da Silva, a Portuguese Benedictine monk who
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studied in Padua, Italy, and was ordained there in 1413. He entered the Badia Fiorentina abbey in Florence in 1415 and was elected abbot in 1419. For 40 years he served as an agent of the Portuguese kings in representation to the papal court, promoting visits to Portugal by Italian painters and receiving Portuguese painters in Florence. The son of the Portuguese Prince Peter, Cardinal Jaime, lived his last years in Florence, where he died in 1459. His memorial chapel in the church of San Miniato al Monte, built in 1460–66, is a precious testimony to the art of the Renaissance. It was designed by Italian architects Antonio Manetti and Giovanni Rossellino and decorated by the Italian painters Alesso Baldovinetti, Antonio and Piero da Pollaiuolo, and Luca della Robbia. Miguel da Silva, Bishop of Viseu and cardinal, to whom Baldassare Castiglione dedicated Il Cortegiano (1513–24), played a fundamental role as an artistic and literary mediator until the breaking off of his relations with Portuguese King John III. This artistic exchange continued over the centuries, ranging from the presence in Tuscany of the Portuguese painter Álvaro Pires de Évora between 1310 and 1330 to the role played by the Portuguese painter, architect, and restorer Alfredo de Andrade in Genoa between 1860 and 1910. But the best-known figure in this interchange was the Portuguese humanist Francisco de Holanda, who benefited from his participation in the neo-Platonic circle led by Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo when he studied in Rome between 1538 and 1547. The impact of the Italian Renaissance in Portugal was mediated by French, Flemish, and Castilian artists, but innovations in military architecture were introduced directly by Benedetto da Ravenna, an imperial engineer and veteran of the eastern Mediterranean campaign, who designed the castles of Vila Viçosa and the Mazagão Fort according to then-new concepts of low, slanting walls, protected by bulwarks placed for cross-fire. This modernization was then immediately introduced to Portuguese fortresses in India, where the Portuguese architect Giovanni Battista Cairati worked as a chief engineer. In Portugal we may highlight the work of the Italian Filippo Terzi in the 1580s and 1590s in military architecture (São Filipe Fort in Setúbal, Pessegueiro Island Fort), religious architecture (the rebuilding of the Convent of Christ in Tomar and the Monastery of St. Vincent in Lisbon), and civic architecture (the Tower of the Terreiro do Paço in Lisbon, known as Black Horse Square in English). The Portuguese Restoration War (1640–68), which culminated in the recuperation of the country’s independence from Spain, was not favourable to artistic relations between Portugal and Italy, but these connections were renewed throughout the 18th century. An excellent example is the extraordinary baroque chapel of St. John the Baptist in the
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São Roque Church in Lisbon, which was designed by the Italians Nicola Salvi and Luigi Vanvitelli (with an intervention by the German architect Johann Friedrich Ludwig) and installed in 1749. The work of the Italian Niccolò Nasoni in Oporto and northern Portugal between 1725 and 1773 is the most important architecture of the period. Of note are a vast complex of projects, the works in the cathedral, the Episcopal palace, the Church of São Pedro dos Clérigos (one of the best examples of baroque architecture in Portugal), the Palace of São João, the Palace of Freixo, and the Quinta da Prelada estate. The neoclassical style, which was introduced into Portugal during the period of the Marquis of Pombal (1750–77), was developed over the last decades of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century by the Italian architect Francesco Saverio Fabri, who left a series of works in Faro (the town arch, the Misericórdia church, the Episcopal Seminary) before becoming involved in the project for the Ajuda Palace and the building of the Foz Palace, both of which are in Lisbon. A century later, another Italian left a significant work in the neo-Manueline style: Luigi Manini, a stage designer, decorator, painter, and architect, worked in Portugal between 1879 and 1913 and was involved in the set design and set dressing of such theaters as the São Carlos and the São Luiz in Lisbon, the restoration of the Hieronymite monastery in Belém, and the decoration of the Military Museum in Lisbon. His most important works are the Bussaco Palace, the Castro Guimarães Palace in Cascais, and the Quinta da Regaleira estate in Sintra. This last is a quite extraordinary example of connections between stage design and architecture. The work is marked out by the Rosicrucian and Masonic worldviews, as seen in its landscape architecture (ordered garden versus wild nature) and symbolic architecture (well of initiation, terrace of gods, tower, and labyrinth). Literature was another favored domain in the relations between Portugal and Italy, given the exchange of diplomats and the presence of Portuguese citizens at Italian universities, particularly during the final decades of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century. The circulation of texts by the Italians Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio, as well as political and juridical texts by Egidio Romano, Bartolus de Saxoferrato, and Baldus de Ubaldis, began very early on. The book by the Venetian traveler Marco Polo was an object of great fascination in Portugal in the 15th century. It is against this backdrop that Portuguese expansion took place; the extraordinary extent of their itineraries covered almost the whole of Asia. The Italians Matteo Pisano and Giusto Baldino were invited by King Alphonse V of Portugal to write chronicles of Portuguese imperial undertakings in Latin, while the humanist Cataldo Siculo came to Portugal as the Latin teacher to Jorge, Duke of Aveiro, the illegitimate child of King John II; he published his Epistolae et orationes in Lisbon in 1500–13.
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Francisco de Sá de Miranda made a trip to Italy in 1521–26, during which he met the writers Vittoria Colonna, Pietro Bembo, Jacopo Sannazaro, and Ludovico Ariosto; the trip was decisive for the introduction of Italian metrics into Portuguese poetry. This impact was extended to the theater, given that his plays Estrangeiros (1559) and Vilhalpandos (1560) established a break with the theatre of the then-current titan of Portuguese playwriting Gil Vicente. The Portuguese philosopher Damião de Góis studied in Padua between 1534 and 1538, and this was where he met the scholars Pietro Bembo and Lazzaro Buonamico. He was a friend to Erasmus, with whom he lodged in Basel, Switzerland, for some months in 1534, and he met the religious reformers Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon on his journeys throughout central Europe. He played a fundamental role in the divulging of Portuguese discoveries, for instance knowledge about Ethiopia and the drawing up of the chronicles of Prince John and King Manuel I. Many other Portuguese figures played a significant role in literary relations between their country and Italy. Achilles Statius was a great favorite in Rome, where he left a large number of printed works in Latin. Luís Vaz de Camões not only incorporated Italian innovations in his extraordinary work, but also exerted a universal influence; his epic and his lyrical works were translated into many different languages. The 15th and 16th centuries were decisive in this field, given the reach of the Italian Renaissance. In the 17th century Father António Vieira was a key figure. He went to Rome in order to be sheltered from the Portuguese Inquisition and enjoyed great success at the papal court and the court of Christina of Sweden. The study of political relations between Italy and Portugal usually focuses on papal connections. Thus, little is known regarding links with Turin, Naples, and Venice. It is relatively well known that Portugal received, between 1815 and 1861, some exiled Italian liberals after the fall of Napoleon; also common knowledge is the decisive role played by the Italian expeditionary force commanded by Borso de Carminati at the 1832 Battle of Oporto against the faction of Prince Michael after the arrival of the troops headed by the future King Peter at Mindelo. The close relationship between the Portuguese state under the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar and that of Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy is well known, but relations with the Italian Carbonari secret society, which was very important before and during the Portuguese First Republic in the beginnings of the 20th century, still need to be studied. Venice played an important role in all of these relationships, as it is the gateway between Latin Europe and Orthodox Europe, Christian Europe, and the Ottoman Empire; indeed, it was a maritime empire in the Eastern Mediterranean until the 17th century. It is
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through Venice that the Portuguese went to the Holy Land. It was there that they stopped off on their way to Asia by land. It was at the University of Padua that many Portuguese people studied. It was in Murano that they learned the art of glassware, of which the Venetians were the world’s specialists, exporting to the whole of Europe and Asia, and even supplying the chandeliers for the Ottoman mosques. It was in Venice that the Portuguese learned the art of trade, because Venice had the highest concentration of markets with the best furs, silks, spices, and precious stones. The Portuguese also learned the art of printing in Venice, which was the greatest European center of that art at the end of the 15th century and into the 16th century. And, finally, it was in Venice that the new Christians found the conditions to become Jews again, restoring their faith and contributing to the creation of a vibrant community with connections to the whole world. Venice is the right place for Joana Vasconcelos to show her art. It is a city of crystal chandeliers, mirrors, glass, beads, high-heeled shoes, furs, leather, feathers, fashion, courtesan exhibitionism, and female assertiveness before emancipation. These elements and styles are at the center of Vasconcelos’s art, which functions on the dual levels of provocation and memory, the recuperation of consecrated images and iconoclasm, the reuse of materials and the transformation of functions. Her intense creativity, made of shifted and outof-scale forms, is based on the best that history can provide as subject matter, at the same time that it frees itself from that very history. Bibliography Sylvie Deswarte, Ideias e Imagens em Portugal na Época dos Descobrimentos: Francisco de Holanda e a Teoria da Arte (Lisbon: Difel, 1982). Sylvie Deswarte, Il Perfetto Cortegiano: D. Miguel da Sil va (Rome: Bulzoni, 1989). Luigi Federzoni, ed., Relazioni Storiche Fra l’Italia e il Por togallo: Memorie e Documenti (Rome: Reale Accademia d’Italia, 1940). José V. de Pina Martins, Humanisme et Renaissance de l’Italie au Portugal: Les Deux Regards de Janus (Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 1989). Eugénia Mata and Nuno Valério, The Concise Economic History of Portugal: A Comprehensive Guide (Coimbra, Portugal: Almedina, 2010). Rafael Moreira, ed., A Arquitectura Militar na Expansão Portuguesa (Oporto: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1994).
Julieta Teixeira Marques de Oliveira, ed., Fontes Docu mentais de Veneza Referentes a Portugal (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1997). Julieta Teixeira Marques de Oliveira, Veneza e Portugal no Século XVI: Subsídios Para a Sua História (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses and Imprensa Nacional da Casa da Moeda, 2000). Paulo Pereira, ed., História da Arte Portuguesa (Lisbon: Temas e Debates, 1995). Conde de Tovar, Portugal e Veneza na Idade Média: Até 1495 (Coimbra, Portugal: Imprensa da Universidade, 1933).