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The National Coach Museum today possesses one of the largest and most valuable collections in the world. The series of coaches on display is singular in every sense, be it as unparalleled witness of the history of the techniques and elegance of expression in the decorative arts, or as point of convergence of the wide-ranging aesthetic potential of baroque sculpture and painting. The former Riding School is the ideal setting, with its profusion of fresco decoration evoking the Portuguese world of horsemanship, while its architecture, highly original in its day, ushered in the Neoclassical style. |
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The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum was opened on October 2, 1969, fulfilling the wish of its founder to leave his precious art collection to an institution established by his will. It was Gulbenkian's expressed purpose to bring together the work of a lifetime's interest, persistence, and love, and to house it in one place. Since it was specially built for the collection, the museum is, to a certain extent, a reflection of the taste, culture, and spirit of the man who conceived it and brought it about: its intention is, above all, to display works of art for the aesthetic appreciation of the public, and to make them available for study and for the artistic and cultural enrichment of future generations.
The museum has been designed to retain the intimate quality of Gulbenkian's original private collection, while, at the same time, the arrangement of-works follows a chronological and geographical distribution, organized in routes or circuits within the museum as a whole. Thus the visitor can see, on the circuit covering Oriental and Classical art, the galleries dedicated to Egypt, Assyria, and Greece— including an important numismatic collection—Rome, the Islamic East, and the Far East; the second circuit displays European art, with collections of painting, sculpture, ivories and illuminated manuscripts, tapestries and textiles, furniture, gold- and silverware, jewelry, glass, and medallions.
Surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and its museum is a peaceful oasis amidst the noise and bustle of the city of Lisbon. The foundation, established shortly after Gulben-kian's death in 1955, is devoted to welfare, art, education, and science, and is the largest private charitable institution outside of the United States. The museum, which opened in 1969, both supplements the work and research of the foundation, and stands alone as a unique and extraordinary collection of art. Indeed, it houses one of the most ambitious art collections ever assembled by one man.
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Portugal is the home of the azulejo or decorative tile. In no other country has the tile been used to such an extent and in so original a manner and it is considered by us to be our most visible and culturally significant art form. It could, indeed, be said that the Azulejo Museum represents the entire country, given the quantity of the marvelous panels spread throughout Portugal, whether in cathedrals or chapels, in palaces or on the facades of buildings, in gardens, markets or railway stations, in squares and on roadways.
The National Museum of Azulejo shows its visitors how the azulejo is made and demonstrates its versatile use over a period of five centuries right up to the present.
The Museum is located in one of Lisbon's most beautiful monuments, the Madre de Deus Convent, itself decorated with a series of sumptuous azulejo panels.
The azulejo, together with carving, is the most widely used form of decoration in Portuguese national art. It is one of the few that can rightly take its place in a museum devoted to the greatest of all the Portuguese plastic arts.
Used continuously throughout Portugal's history over a period stretching back to the Middle Ages, the azulejo has now acquired renewed vigor, while reflecting the organic eclecticism of a culture that was both expansive and open to dialogue. It has embraced the lessons of Moorish artisans and was inspired by the ceramics of Seville and Valencia. It later adapted the ornamental formulae of the Italian Renaissance, while not ignoring the exoticism of oriental china, and, following an ephemeral period of Dutch inspiration, it created fantastic story-panels in blue and white that set the tone for a perfect assimilation of such varied elements.
Destiny was to turn the riverside convent of Madre de Deus into the National Museum of Azulejo, putting to good use a large collection of Dutch tiles that already existed in the body of the church. Since then the Museum has been a dynamic exhibition, taking full advantage not only of its collections but also of their evident quality and being transformed through concentrating on the modern plastic arts, into a landmark of Portuguese and European contemporary art.
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