📬 La newsletter #27 Edició nadalenca — The newsletter #27 Holidays edition
Sorpresa! una nova edició única per aquest nadal a càrrec de la restauradora Sara Santana de Sá — Surprise! a new unique edition for this holidays by the portuguese conservator Sara Santana de Sá
A love letter to the conservation and study of Polychromed Wooden Sculpture and all the cool resources about it around the net. It’s a one-year, bi-monthly newsletter project done just for fun. It’s also not perfect and doesn’t intend to, but rather a space to share. Edited in Catalan and English. Read past newsletters here. The newsletter is closed, but this is a special edition, only this time in English (space issues😅), for holiday seasons ✨.
📷 From the one and only MET Christmas tree crèche. Second half of 18th centuy. Polychromed terracotta head; wooden limbs and wings; body of wire wrapped in tow; various fabrics ©Public Domain
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I closed this one-year project newsletter a while ago. But then, I decided to pass the torch by creating a special holiday edition and invite a guest colleague to share our conservation internet treasures, in that case, Germany. I loved it, and it seems that you did, too.
So here we go again, but this time, Portugal! Our guest conservator is Sara Santana de Sá. If you are an avid reader, you know I already raved about her. Sara is a researcher and paintings and polychrome sculpture conservator from Portugal. Her PhD focused on the materials and techniques of the polychromy of Portuguese medieval sculpture in wood and stone. Currently, she continues to do research on this subject at NOVA School of Science and Technology (Lisbon). I leave you with her, you can thank me later. And me? You can find me here. Happy holidays ✨
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Polychromed wooden sculpture in Portugal: a little overview and free resources
I gathered some books and other publications, as well as websites, databases, and journals where you can find useful information on this topic. For the Portuguese publications, I translated the titles to give you a better understanding of their content. Additionally, I highlight some museums and churches with polychrome wooden sculptures or altarpieces in case you get a chance to explore the Portuguese collections. I hope you enjoy it!
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🖼 Some museums
The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (Lisbon) has an important collection of polychrome sculptures, and here you can find wooden sculptures from the Middle Ages until the late Baroque period. The museum frequently posts videos about the collections on its YouTube channel. You might have heard that in November 2016, the Baroque wooden sculpture Saint Michael the Archangel of this museum was accidentally damaged by a visitor 😱. I leave you the video of the interview with the conservator, where you can get a glimpse of the impressive conservation work carried out that returned the sculpture back on display.
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Museu de Santa Maria de Lamas (Santa Maria da Feira) is a lesser-known museum with a large collection of religious polychrome sculptures. The website of the Museum has a page dedicated to conservation studies of their collection. Here you can find publications by Carolina Barata (already mentioned in a past newsletter), who focused her Master thesis on the polychromy of Portuguese Baroque sculptures from this museum and also from the Museu de Arte Sacra e Arqueologia do Seminário Maior de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in Porto (here the Thesis 🤓).
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🗽Some sculptures
In the Middle Ages, the production of polychrome stone sculpture in Portugal was very prolific. So do not find it weird if you see more polychrome stone sculptures in the medieval collections of Portuguese museums than wooden sculptures. An example is the Museu Nacional Machado de Castro (Coimbra), where the sculptures in the exhibition are mostly in stone.
But, in this museum, you can also find some polychrome wooden sculptures, including a fantastic 14th-century wooden crucifix called Cristo Negro (= Black Christ) due to the blackish colour it acquired over the centuries. In the 1970s, the dark accumulation was removed during a restoration treatment performed at the José de Figueiredo Laboratory. It is the Portuguese public institution responsible for the safeguarding, research, and conservation of cultural assets (see also their FB).
The spectacular late Gothic altarpiece of the Sé Velha de Coimbra 📸© Sara Santara de Sá
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And we cannot speak about polychrome wooden sculpture without referring to monumental altarpieces. As a country with a strong catholic presence, you still find today sculptures and polychrome wood altarpieces in almost every church around the country. I find quite magnificent the late Gothic altarpiece of the Sé Velha de Coimbra (👆). If you want to know more about this altarpiece, you can check the PhD thesis (in French) of Agnès Le Gac Arinto.
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Finally, it is also worth following the work done by Isabel Pombo Cardoso, who studied for her PhD an impressive number of polychrome sculptures and altarpieces from north to south of Portugal and continues to publish on this subject. Here is one of her publications.
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👩🏻💻Some websites
Hercules
If you are interested in virtual reconstructions, it is worthwhile to peek at this website. You will find a cool virtual reconstitution of the main altarpiece of the Espírito Santo Church (Évora) as well as 3D models of some elements of the altarpiece.
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The platforms Raiz, CCM and Museus da Madeira
Raiz is a platform dedicated to the inventory and dissemination of Portuguese collections. The platform is still under construction, but it is already possible to search for artworks from various Portuguese museums in the database. CCM and Museus da Madeira are similar platforms, but they focus on the collections of the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira.
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📚Some publications
As coleções de escultura em madeira do Museu Grão Vasco e do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga: um contributo da ciência para a Arte (= The wooden sculpture collections of the Museu Grão Vasco and of the Museu Nacional de Arte antiga: a contribution from science to Art)
This is a catalogue, written in Portuguese, about the identification of the wood used to carve a selected group of sculptures of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (Lisbon) and of the Museu Nacional Grão Vasco (Viseu). An interesting catalogue and a rare piece of systematic work, it covers the identification of wood from 182 sculptures! 😍 It is published in open access, and you can find it available online here.
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O retábulo em Portugal: das origens ao declínio (= The Altarpiece in Portugal: from origins to decline).
This book is not conservation literature, but it covers, for example, typologies of altarpieces in Portugal over time, terminology, and materials and techniques used for their creation according to historical documents.
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The website of Património Cultural (a Portuguese governmental organisation for cultural heritage)
On this website, there is a list of publications by different government entities, some of which are online and free, and you can find some publications about the conservation of polychrome sculptures and altarpieces. For example, the numbers 3, 4 and 5 of the journal “Cadernos Conhecer Conservar Valorizar” or the numbers 11 and 15 of the collection “Património a Norte”.
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The journal Conservar Património (= Heritage Conservation)
This is a journal published by the Portuguese Association of Conservators-Restorers (ARP – Associação Profissional de Conservadores-Restauradores de Portugal). Although this journal publishes on a broad range of subjects, there are a considerable number of publications concerning polychrome sculpture and altarpieces. The journal publishes both in Portuguese and English (and sometimes in Spanish, French or Italian), and all publications are open-access, so it is worth keeping an eye on it.
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Thesis repositories and databases
Finally, many academic theses focusing on polychrome sculpture are available online, and you can find them in the universities’ databases or repositories. For example, NOVA University Lisbon, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Universidade de Lisboa.
Some institutions don’t have their own repository (as the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar), so their theses, scientific papers and communications are stored on a shared repository named RCAAP.
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That is all. Many thanks to Sara for just DELIVER. Please follow her and send some kind words, too 💛
📸 Articulated Christ from the 12th-13th century, one of the oldest medieval wooden sculptures in Portugal, that I find absolutely fascinating. You can find this sculpture in the permanent exhibition of the Museu Nacional Grão Vasco (Viseu). It is totally worthwhile to visit 😊. © Sara Santara de Sá
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