Sintra Portuguese Sketches

PALACE OF PENA, SINTRA

            

Clinging to the northern slopes of the Serra, some forty-five minutes by train from Lisbon sits Sintra.  This former summer capital of the Portuguese Kings, offers the early morning  raiser a sight not to be missed.  Covered in early morning  mountain mist, castle turrets, conical chimneys, and segments of peaks piece the clouds offering the most jaded traveller a fairy tale vista. It is little wonder that the town has attracted writers, musicians, and artists over the centuries. Hans Christen Andersen spent a year here writing fairy tales, while Richard Strauss on visiting Palacio da Pena, believed he had found the home of the Holy Grail. Strauss recorded in his diary, “This is the happiest day of my life, I have travelled in Italy, Sicily, Greece and Egypt, but have never seen anything to equal Pena. It is the most beautiful sight I have ever witnessed. This is the true Klingsor garden and up there above  in the Towers  the Castle the Holy Grail.”

                                                               

Rua Marechal, Sintra. 

A typcial Sintra street, old walls, cobble stoned road.

There is more to Sintra than the Castle of Pena, the town is rich in Royal Palaces, Castles, Museums and parks, not to mention the numerous mansions built by the mega rich from South America and the Royal families of Europe. I had decided to spend the next month here gathering material for a painting exhibition. The difficult part was going to be what to ignore, every where I looked picturesque scenes presented themselves. After spending the first week walking along cobblestone lanes, visiting churches, and viewing Moorish fountains, I decided to attempt to covey the many layers of Portuguese history through the tile decoration, so much loved in this country. Nearly every building in Portugal appears to be covered in ceramic tiles; the use of this form of decorative motif often is included in the original architectural design. Many architects design the tiles themselves, while the many ceramic tile workshops employ several artists to create and carry out the design and painting. No building is considered complete without some form of artwork, Portugal must be an artists’ paradise. I visited several of these workshop during my stay.

One of my paintings based on the walls and old Moorish tiles.

     100x70 cm. on board textured, acrylic paint. $1500.

                               

 I carried out many on the spot sketches and reworked them into abstract designs. Fragmented tile patterns surrounded by textured walls, I broke the complete tiles up to create a sense of history as they are in their own way fragments of past memory. I was quite pleased with the way the watercolour washes on the walls took on a cork like appearance, this allowed me to develop three very important elements of Portugal, the legacy of Moorish tiles, textured stonewalls, and the cork trees.

Watercolour sketch

                                                      Further development of tile sketchs

Sintra is full of surprise, it houses one of the best private modern art collections of the 20^th cent. The Berardo Collection, includes many major artists of this century, Magritte, Pollock, Bacon and Warhol to name just a few. Joe Berardo’s collection is so large, that it seemed as though half the works in the Museum of Modern Art in Lisbon are on loan from his museum. Then there is the eccentric Brazilian millionaire’s contribution, Antonio Monteriro’s Quinta da Regaleira built in 1890. This feast of the absurd is filled with every kind of folly imaginable, secret grottoes, forts, castles, underground lakes, this would have to be one of the great examples of exoteric. There is even an underground staircase taking you down some 27m into the earth to what is called the Guardians Gate. This several acres of park of follies have been built around classical mythology, were Monteriro has tried to recreate the worlds Virgil, Dante, and Milton , with a touch of the Knights Templars thrown in, a world to delight any child.

One of the follys at Antonio Monteriro's Quinta da Regalira

The Palace of Pena set on a mountain top creates a presence all of its own. Set within a large park like woodland, the visitor wanders along numerous paths and tracks, until you suddenly come across the palace. Built at a time of great Portuguese wealth were no cost has been spared. The range of architectural detail and décor is hard to describe, but the range  runs from The Arab Room, to an over the top 16^th cent alabaster Chapel filled with every kinf of oddities from every corner of the globe. Then there is the King’s oval shaped bedchamber,  a ballroom lit by German stained glass windows complete with four life-sized turbaned torchbearers holding a giant candelabra. I need say no more,

 One afternoon Heather and I were taken by our host to a little summer house rebuilt by a Professor of Architecture at Lisbon University. This little building consisted of two floors, one room to each floor with a narrow staircase joining them, with a tiny bathroom halfway down the stairs. The great delight in this building was theunusal use of eye patterns and reliefs on the walls and around windows, even the patio chairs had eyes cut into their backs. The whole house was a delight and very imaginative, although I don’t know how two people could live there at the same time!

Walking the track to the National Park I came across this scene near the church of Santa Maria. Every day I would climb the mountain roads, forever going up and down, so we discovered many little treasures tucked away in the hilly landscape such as the church below Santa Maria.

Santa Maria.

The church of Santa Maria first conceived in the 12th centit took many centries to complete. The church is one of the few remaing examples of medieval architecture. The building has a Gothic Romantic feel, in this sense it encompass the spirit of Sintra. The church face the little square above.