Nuno Gonçalves

Nuno Gonçalves (flourished 1450–72) was a Portuguese painter recognized as one of the genuine masters of the 15th century. After the discovery in 1882 of the only extant work certain to be his—the altarpiece for the convent of São Vicente—he was, after 400 years of anonymity, finally acknowledged as the founder of the Portuguese school of painting and as an artist of universal importance.

Apparently Gonçalves was appointed court painter to the Portuguese king Afonso V in 1450. Records also indicate that he received payment for painting an altarpiece for the Palácio Real in Sintra (1470) and that he was appointed the official painter for the city of Lisbon (Pintor das Obras da Cidade) in 1471. Other than this information, very little is known about his life and the extent of his work. Francisco de Hallanda, in his Dialogues on Ancient Painting (1548), refers to him as one of the “Eagles”—one of the 15th-century masters—but his name and work were lost to history. His altarpiece for the cathedral of Lisbon was destroyed in the earthquake of 1755, and his other altarpiece on the subject of São Vicente, the patron saint of Lisbon and of the royal house of Portugal, disappeared until 1882, when it was discovered in the convent of São Vicente. It was not until 1931, when this masterpiece was displayed in Paris, that Gonçalves began to receive the international recognition that he deserves.

The polyptych for São Vicente consists of six panels, two large and four narrow ones, dominated by the figure of St. Vincent. In the large Panel of the Infante the saint is shown being venerated by a group of notables, among them Afonso V. In the other large panel, the Panel of the Archbishop, he is surrounded by clergy and knights. This remarkable portrait gallery of figures grouped in a medieval composition is a meditation on the pilgrimage of the souls of Christians on a voyage of discovery around their patron saint.

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Scholars have suggested that a panel in Évora, Port., depicting two scenes, Adoration of the Magi and Two Franciscan Saints, could be the work of Gonçalves, but there is no proof of this beyond stylistic similarities.

Gonçalves’s work is that of a master who shows some debts to Italian and Flemish art but who also reveals his own remarkable gifts—an economy of line, brilliant handling, superb characterization, and a mastery of composition, all united and all subordinated to the religious vision of the work.