Relicários das Virgens Mártires do Mosteiro da Madre de Deus de Xabregas : do risco à forma : contributos para a representação escultórica

Abstract

The busts reliquary of the Madre de Deus Monastery in Lisbon, which referred to models of a Christian catholic visual culture and deeply mediated sociocultural canons, now allow for new interpretations given their museological context. Belonging to the collection of the National Tile Museum, these sculptures, whose artistic, cultural, and documentary values have a symbolic function in the context of a Coletin Clares nuns community, are a rare national example given that they still prevail in situ and for which no affiliation/authorship is known. This study is part of other ongoing interdisciplinary investigations aimed at understanding, preserving and disseminating the knowledge of a vast set of reliquaries exposed in the rich carved gilded wood high choir. It proposes a sculptural rereading, based on morphological, material and technical knowledge, of six busts in polychrome wood, representing virgin martyrs of the early years of Christianity, probably produced by of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th century. This chronology based on empirical observation and combined with analytical data of scientific and bibliographic content must be understood as research to serve museological purposes. The ultimate aim of the research is to further enhance the understanding of the ensemble by those who see it today (the actual “community “that substitute now the former nuns). These anthropomorphic objects that contain the “precious relics” of Saints, are part of the set of specimens kept in the high choir, identified at the time as symbolically the “Treasure Room”. In a profoundly intimate space, marked by the visual presence of a choir, the ancient practice of contemplation and constant spiritual exercise, now prevail over the emptiness of the human presence. Due to the ignorance that goes from the Idea to the symbolic codification of sculpted forms, the objects under study prove to be an inexhaustible testimony of intentions and memories, which led us to formulate hypotheses that intend to identify hitherto unknown facts. From the beginning to the end, a central question predominates: From rough sketch to form, what are the paths traced in the sculptural representation that shape the reliquaries under study?