Buda

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Private collection.

Luís Vas de Camões

One of Portugal's greatest  icon of the literary world  but also a very mysterious one (!!)  now available at Museu Berardo gift shop, Belem, Lisbon.

D.Catarina of Braganza, queen dowager of England

It was on the 18 of this month that the greatest adventure would start for a little princess whose life had been raised on a conventual education

Infanta Catarina de Bragança, borned in 25th november 1638 daughter of the dukes of Bragança future king and queen of Portugal, would see her marriage arrangements with King Charles II of England settled on this date 350 years ago.

The figure I'm presenting now is my atempt to portray the queen already at her later days...
From her widowhood in 1685 until her death in 1705 already back to Portugal where she acted twice as regent , there is no known portrait of her, so I've colected all her previous, specially by Jacob Huysmans, and tried to show her on a full regalia english dress with a french fontange's hairstyle with a lot of mourning feeling going on seated on a french seventeenth century armchair.

                                                                                                                   

Remember us!

The holy family ?

On election's period I decided to create figures from the good portuguese people!

Bare in mind that the velvet couch where the old man is seated is crumbling into pieces and the son being the younger  seems hopelessly lost and doesn't even have shoes anymore! The mother, of course, reflects the well spirited portuguese women, always ready to go to battle with a smile on her face!

All the winter clothing represent all the apparent drama that we are about to dive in...

Thus I also pay homage to my antcestor Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro from which I took the idea of caricature my kinsmen!

All these 3 figures are on sale at Galeria de Arte Popular @ Calçada da Graça 10 A / B Lisbon, Portugal, Europe, Planet Earth, Milky W|ay (www.artefactogaleria.com)

Doll

I started this doll with the idea of making a series on cinema movie stars but dressed in epoch dresses from famous films.
As time went by, started to give up the idea and having already the Audrey Hepburn's face made started the dress in view of reproducing hers on "My Fair Lady" but yet again I'm no photocopy machine and the final dress  is something between  1890's and 1910.

D. Afonso V and the 31 May 1469

On this day, at an uncertain hour, on a unpredictable place, an infant was borned!
He was a son of a prince and one day he'd become king of one of the greatest empires of the Renascence period!!
By that time the kingdom of Portugal was submerged into the discouveries ond conquers in Africa led by king D.Afonso V who would nicknamed "The African".

In the 1450's with the fall of Constantinopla, Afonso was the first to respond Pope Calisto III's request to fight back on a cruzade that never happened, so the portuguese king took advantage and set sail not to Constantinopla but to Africa where he between 1458 and 1471 conquered Alcacer Ceguer, Anafé e Arzila.
To celebrate such triumphs, King D.Afonso V, as a prince of his time, ordered he's legend on a series of tapestries in Tournai (now Belgium).

Its true that the great king didn't saw their arrival but in fact nobody did!
In 1530's they appeared but in Spain where they stayed untill today...

Salazar, the portuguese dictator, tried to get them back in 1930 but he could only be given copies of it which are today in Guimarães at the Palacio Ducal dos Duques de Bragança.

Last year, thanks to a partnership between Portugal and Spain the real ones came to Lisboa where they stayed exhibited at Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (where I visited them 3 times!)
Since an early age I've been fascinated by the imagery of these tapestries and last year I started working on what I'm showing you now, for my great honnour and King D.Afonso V's too!

It was in this very same Portugal that in 31st May 1469 the future kind D.Manuel I was borned and if it wasn't for this uncle - King D.Afonso V - surely he wouldn't have been as fortunate as his epitaph would remember him!

Human evolution?

In March, April or May, Easter should be usefull to remind us, just like during Xtmas, that we are not alone and that there are people suffering!
Plus, for me, Christ might not just be the son of a god but a simbol of all who suffer from stupidity and the small minded world that we are all living in that nail us into crosses made out of stereotyped behaviours, manners and ideas that we are all absolutly and revoltingly tired of!
Christ - the man - apart from religious believes, suffered and died because others couldn't stand his difference and his spirit's greatness! 
Shall we continue to allow such purblinding way of... lets say... evolution...?!