‘Painting, Music and Dance in Portugal’ I Lecture by Sónia Duarte (CTC)

In recent years, as part of a PhD in Art History entitled «Images of music in painting from the Baroque period in Portugal (1600-1750)» (FCT/ARTIS, 2024), Sónia Duarte (Research Group for the Study of Music, Critical Theory and Communication) has visited hundreds of municipalities with the clear objective of inventorying all existing paintings in Portugal, with a focus on representations of music and dance.

The exhaustive fieldwork revealed musical instruments, portraits of musicians and musical environments featured in paintings from the 15th to the 20th centuries (much of it still unpublished), in public and private collections, in a wide variety of techniques. In the meantime, Sónia Duarte engaged in open and fruitful dialogues with the keepers of keys and memories, custodians of the spaces she visited and photographed. The dialogues naturally extended to musicians, luthiers and dancers.

Sónia Duarte will discuss this work – its questions, methodology, results, and the dissemination in the first database of musical iconography in painting in Portugal – in the lecture ‘Painting, Music and Dance in Portugal: notes about its inventory, iconography, sound and safeguard’, scheduled for 9:30 pm on February 24. Click here to watch the session organised by SPAE – Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia.