Portugal 2024: Lisbon - Aeeiro - Gulbenkian Art Museum

After the debacle we experienced the previous day of trying to take the bus to our destination, we were lucky that we could take the much more reliable Metro to the Areeiro district to tour some art museums.  The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum is named after a British/Armenian oil magnate and philanthropist (1869-1955) who amassed a large art collection of over 6400 pieces spanning from Antiquity to 20th Century art.  The museum is divided into two buildings situated on either ends of a landscaped garden and park.  The first building houses the “Founder’s Collection” with about 1000 rotating pieces from Gulbenkian’s original collection including Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Mesopotamian, Islamic Orient, Armenian, Far East and Western art.  A separate room highlights a set of jewels and glassware by René Lalique.  The second building contains Modern Art by internationally renowned Portuguese artists as well as a large collection of 20th Century British works.  This building reopened in September 2024 after four years of major renovation led by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma that added 900 square meters of exhibition space and added a 100-meter-long canopy with Portuguese tiles.

We started out at the Founders building where two magnificent sculptures were found in the lobby.  The first was a beautiful limestone Art Deco piece titled “The Spring or Homage to Jean Goujon (Renaissance sculptor)” created by Alfred-Auguste Janniot for the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, Ruhlmann Pavilion. Depicted is the Goddess Diana hunting with a buck at her feet, flanked on either side by nymphs.  The waves of their hair and vertical lines of their robes exemplify the Art Deco style.  Also on display is a replica of one of the figures from Auguste Rodin’s famous 1889 work “The Burghers of Calais”. Jean d’Aire, one of the leaders of the French city of Calais, holds the keys to the city in his hands in a sign of submission and sacrifice to prevent the English from destroying the city and people in 1347.

The Egyptian section of the Founder’s collection includes several decorative funerary ornaments.  A “Winged image of Goddess Isis” (664-525 BCE) is made with green faience (ceramics) and acts as an amulet in mummification rituals. The “Solar Barque of Djedhor” (380-343 BCE) is an ancient Egyptian, bronze artifact modeled after the ceremonial boats used to transport statues of gods during religious processions and temple ceremonies.  The barque sits on a crocodile, representing Sobek, the god of the Nile.  Other divinities represented include Isis and Nephthys, guardians of the temple, the falcon-headed god Horus and Amun-Ra, God of the Sun.   Moving on to the Middle East, an Assyrian low-relief carved from a large slab of Alabaster (c 884-859 B.C.) depicts a winged figure known as “apkallu” with its right hand raised ritualistically and its left hand holding a container of holy water.  The piece is likely from Nimrud, Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) during the reign of Ashurnasiirpal II.  Hung on walls of palaces and office buildings, these figures were thought to turn away harm or evil.

There were many examples of Eastern Islamic objects including ceramics, gilded teapots, rugs, and wall hangings.  A ceramic bowl (c.12-13th Century) depicts a young prince sitting on a throne surrounded by knights on horseback playing polo and images of falcons   The scene is possibly Iranian since polo was popular in the Iranian court. Persian potters developed a technique called “minai” that allowed them to use a range of colours including blue, red, green, violet, black and gold. Other bowls are decorated with exotic birds and flowers including one with a pair of peacocks (1575) from Ottoman Turkey.  A beautiful 14th Century tile from Kashan, Iran is adorned with a phoenix and is made from stone paste, moulded and painted with glaze in luster.  There was also a blue and white ceramic teapot with a gilded base, handle and lid, as well as an ornate Turkish rug (1592) from the Ottoman Empire.

Items from the Far East include various ornamental items from China.  These include male and female Chinese guardian lions made of Jade where the male holds an orb representing the world and the female holds a baby cub, a beautiful jade hanging vase supported by an intricately carved wooden frame, large porcelain urns decorated with floral patterns, and some eggshell enameled porcelain plates from the Qing Dynasty (c.1740).  From Japan is a 19th Century silk hanging depicting a pair of exotic birds.

The Founders’ collection had a relatively small number of paintings and wall hangings on display but some of them were quite striking.  Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret ‘s “Breton Women at a Pardon" (1887) won the grand prize at the 1889 Paris Salon.  It depicts the ceremony of Pardon which the Church grants to the faithful.  While this may not be the intent, the standing men towering over the group of women feel ominous to me.  Sir Edward Burne-Jones’ oil painting “Mirror of Venus” (1877) depicts a group of women, clad in colourful gowns, looking at their reflections in water.  Painting in the style of “aestheticism” which promotes beauty in art for its own sake without the need for moral or political statements, this painting has a dreamlike, poetic quality.  A portion of Giulio Romano’s massive tapestry titled “Children Playing” (1540) covers an entire wall of the museum.  Comprised of four large tapestries and two fragments made from wool, silk, gold and silver threads, portions of this work have been on loan from Mantua, Italy through the past few years.  The portion titled “The Dance” was on display during our visit.

There were many impressive sculptures in the Founder’s collection including Jan van logteren’s 18th Century marble bust of Bacchus, God of Wine.  In 1900, Auguste Rodin created a sculpture titled “The Blessings” to honour French workers.  The work depicts two winged angels descending from Heaven to bless the work of man.  There were at least three works by sculptor Jean-Baptise Carpeaux. Like Rodin and his Burghers of Calais sculpture, Carpeaux allowed components of a larger composite sculptural piece to exist separate from the whole.  His marble work “L’Amour a la Folie” (1872) is part of a larger sculpture called “The Dance” that was made for the façade of the Paris Opera House.  This reclined child/cupid figure holding up a jester-like puppet doll can be found at the feet of several other dancing figures in the larger piece.  He also created a bust of his painter friend Bruno Chérier, who returned the favour by painting Carpeaux’s portrait.  Carpeaux’s “Flora” (1873) is a marble sculpture of a young smiling girl crouching while adorning her hair with flowers. The face and smile of the girl is said to be modeled after Anne Foucart, the daughter of Carpeaux’s friend.

There were some interesting and elegant pieces of furniture and decorative arts in the collection.  An astronomical clock (1712) by Andre-Charles Boulle and Jacques Thuret is made of oak with ebony, brass, tortoiseshell inlays, and gilded bronze.  It was commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni whose insignia and coat of arms can be seen in the upper sculptures.  Chronos lies at the base next to a small cupid, representing the allegory of time.  A bronze Parisan clock (c. 1760-70) was shaped like a globe hoisted by a trio of muscular nudes with the time shown in Roman numerals around the centre of the globe.  A pair of silver mustard pots (1751) Antoine-Sébastien Durand depict small boys carrying bows and quivers (possibly Cupid figures) pushing wheel barrels supported at the base by eagles.  Each pot came with a silver spoon and was said to be made for Madame de Pompadour.  What looks like a porcelain teapot(?) is elaborately decorated with a gold base and gilded phoenix or dragon attached to the handle and lid.  A mechanical desk (1760) by Jean-Francois Oeben is made of oak, limewood, other exotic woods, lacquer and bronze.  Intricate mechanisms allow the piece to expand into a writing desk with book stand or contract into an ornate end table.

A special room in the Founders Building is dedicated to the gorgeous works of Art Nouveau jewelry and glass designer René Lalique including 77 wearable items (broaches, necklaces, pins) incorporating diamonds, sapphires, opals, pearls, moonstones, aquamarines, glass enamel, quartz, gold and other materials.  One highlight is his dragonfly pin which he created for the 1900 Paris Expo, consisting of gold, silver and enamel with wings made from stained glass accented by diamonds.  As with many of his jewelry pieces, the face or figure of a female emerges from the insect, transforming it into a hybrid creature.  Lalique frequently combines the female form with elements of flora and fauna.  One notable exception is his Cockerel Diadem, a free-standing rooster’s head made from gold mesh and enamel with a three-prong horn comb and an amethyst in the rooster’s mouth.

In addition to jewelry, the Lalique collection also includes teapots, vases, sculptures, mirrors and other engraved or decorative glassworks.  In all, over 200 pieces are part of the collection that was amassed between 1899 to 1927.  A “Snake Sugar Bowl” (1897-1900) was made by blowing amber-coloured glass into hollowed-out structure of patinated cast silver made to resemble an entangled group of snakes.  The handle of the bowl is a coiled snake, while a snake with a raised body acts as the handle for the lid. A mould-blown “Gorgon Vase” (c.1913) is patinated in amber and decorated with the heads of gorgons, creatures of Greek myth with hair in the form of snakes.  A green, smoked “Cluny Vase” (1925) is decorated with press-moulded black glass masks from Greek Theatre on either side with handles shaped like a group of serpents whose heads face towards the opening of the vase.

Completing our tour of the Founders Building which we thoroughly enjoyed, we moved on to the new Modern building.  In general, we were less impressed with the Calouste Gulbenkain Modern collection, perhaps because the building had just reopened and not all of the collection was on display yet.  There were several temporary exhibitions but in most cases, we did not quite understand what the theme or purpose was for an exhibition, despite reading the lengthy descriptions which came across as “art-speak” that did not translate to what we were seeing.  So rather than try to understand the overarching message being conveyed from each show, we merely looked for individual works that appealed to us.

The exhibition called “Tide Line" was described as “…using art to reflect on political, ecological and existential revolutions” spanning from the Carnation Revolution of 1974 to present day.  We did not find many explicit references to the Carnation Revolution, which we saw a much more comprehensive exhibit about in the Serralves Museum Porto.  In this exhibit, I was fascinated by the sculpture of a humanoid figure lying on the ground with arms and legs spread to form an “X”.  Titled Close II (1993) by Antony Gormley, the piece is made from lead, fibreglass and plaster and is said to “explore the human figure and its relationship to space”.  I took photos of it from various angles and wondered what Close I looked like.  A hyper-realistic painting of a piece of raw meat called “Chop” (2013) by Rosa Carvalho comments on environmental effects of our dietary choices.  Portuguese Expressionist painter Mário Eloy’s The Flight (1938) reflects his own flights to escape WWII and the loss of his German wife who would not return with him to his native Portugal. Antonio Dacosta’s surrealistic painting Serenata Açoreana (1940) has been described as a “reinterpretation of Adam and Eve and the original sin”.  Jorge Pinheiro’s “Stabat mater” (Suffering Mother - 2006) shows a distressed female figure, bleeding, with broken spectacles (reflecting an iconic image from the 1925 movie Battleship Potemkin) while her arms hold up a shroud and the photo of a soldier (her son?).

“The Occidental Calligrapher – Fernando Lemos and Japan” displays examples of Lemos’ study of Japanese art and writing, and his own interpretations of what he saw.  I particularly liked his rendition of traditional Japanese women in their kimonos. There was also a example of the colour-block printing process where a wooden block is made for each single colour of diluted water-based ink and then applied in an overlapping fashion to produce the final image.

The Calouste Gulbenkain Modern Museum has an “Open Storage” section that stores art works that are not currently on view in the galleries or loaned to other institutions. Paintings are stored on moveable iron railings that can be pulled back and forth to review other works.  This reminded us of a similar architectural feature found in the former home and now museum of architect John Soane in London where his collection of Hogarth's Rake's Progress is hidden within layered sliding shelves.

Following our visit to the two Gulbenkian art museums, we decided to walk back to Chiado, passing through Parque Eduardo VII and then down Avenida da Liberdade (Liberty Avenue), which is Lisbon’s grand boulevard built between 1879-1886 and inspired by Paris’ Champs-Élysées.  This route would take us past large parks, interesting architecture, monumental sculptures, street art and luxury shops.  A portion of Avenida da Liberdade features a central tree-lined pedestrian promenade with decorative mosaic tiles, benches and sculptures, that separates the lanes for vehicular traffic heading in either direction.

As we were leaving the grounds and gardens of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, we came across the sculpture of Calouste Gulbenkian sitting in front of Horus, the Egyptian falcon god.  There were also crenulated walls and mini turrets of the former stables/carriage house of the Palace of São Sebastião which are now part of the foundation’s property. We passed by interesting architecture before reaching Jardim Amália Rodrigues, renamed in 2000 to honour a famous fado singer. Sitting just north of and considered an extension of Parque Eduardo VI, this elevated green space features a circular lake with an outdoor terrace and bar, an amphitheatre, and the bronze sculpture “Maternidade” (Maternity) by Fernando Botero.

Continuing south, we reached Parque Eduardo VII, the largest park in central Lisbon spanning 63 acres.  Originally named Parque da Liberdade (Liberty Park), the park was renamed in 1903 to honour British King Edward VII after his visit to Lisbon.  The central lawn features symmetrical, mosaic-patterned box hedges leading towards Praça Marquês de Pombal and two landscaped gardens on either side.  Statues and fountains are found throughout the park, including a 1958 sculpture by Euclides Vaz of a female figure standing on a horse that rises out of an ornamental water basin.  Other sculptures include a female with a dog that might be the Goddess Diana, and a seated female nude by one of the entrances.

The parks on either side of the central lawn include walking paths, landscaped greenery, floral plantings, and benches for sitting.  The eastern side is home to Pavilhão Carlos Lopes, a historic pavilion decorated with azueljo panels and sculptures. The pavilion was originally built in 1921 for the Rio de Janeiro International Exhibition before being rebuilt in the park between 1929-31.  Through the years, it was used as a sports facility, a municipal palace for festivals and exhibitions and currently it is a rental space for conferences, trade fairs, concerts and cultural events.  Featuring a large Portuguese flag flanked by two large pillars on either side, the 25th April Revolution Monument by João Cutileiro commemorates the 1974 Carnation Revolution which ended decades of dictatorship in Portugal. Inaugurated in 1997, the monument consists of a fountain shaped like a rock in a basin with a crumbling wall and broken columns.

Just south of Parques Eduardo VII and marking the start of Avenida de Liberdade is Praça Marquês de Pombal, a historic, circular plaza that acts as the gateway to central Lisbon.  At the centre is a monumental statue featuring Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis of Pombal at the top of a tall column, accompanied by a lion symbolizing power and leadership.  The Marquis was instrumental in rebuilding Lisbon after the devastating earthquake of 1755.  At the base of the column are enormous allegorical sculptures representing the Marquis’ reforms in education, agriculture and politics, as well as sculptures recalling the earthquake and accompanying tsunami.  The floor of the plaza is paved with mosaic tiles depicting a large ship adorned with Lisbon’s coat of arms.  This magnificent sculpture requires a 360-degree inspection to view all the components.

Leaving Praca Marques de Pomba, we finally reached Avenida da Liberdade and walked along the central promenade with the densely tree-lined walking path adorned with black and beige mosaic designs.  The benches on the path were decorated by the parish of Santo António for International Music Day on October 1, celebrating the diversity of music and its global significance, raising awareness of Portuguese-language music.  Each bench features a different artist or group with a QR code allowing you to hear their music on your phone.  Both modern and historic sculptures lined the avenue.  There is a sculpture dedicated to Almeida Garrett, noted poet, playwright, politician and journalist.  We had visited a square named after him when in Porto.  A large, 1931 “Monument to the Fallen of the Great War” by local sculptor Maximiano honors the Portuguese soldiers who fought in the First World War. It depicts a soldier on top of a pedestal being crowned by a robed figure carrying a flag, who is the personification of the Fatherland.  At the sides of the column are two muscular figures struggling to hold up the nation.  A bit further south on the avenue is the sculpture of Simón Bolívar, known as the “Great Liberator” of South America.

Avenida da Liberdade seems to be Lisbon’s version of a “Mink Mile” with a slew of luxury stores including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Versace, Burberry, Rolex, Mont Blanc and more.  Many of the outlets including the Prada reside in beautiful old buildings.  The façade of the interior design store Casa do Passadiço looks like a gilded panel from St. Marks Cathedral in Venice.  Rich wandered into the Vacheron Constantin boutique to try on a watch that he can’t afford, as is his habit in most new cities that have high end watch stores.  Across from Avenida da Liberdade is one of several decorative water basins found on the central promenade.  This one is headed by a bearded allegorical figure holding a spade and a water jug.  Continuing south, once we spotted one of the historical trams, we knew that we were back in familiar territory near our apartment.  This walk from Calouste Gulbenkian Museum back to Chiado proved to be both scenic and historic.