Rui Macedo will recreate missing paintings from Mafra Palace

The project is part of a program to renovate and enhance the museum's value of the Discoveries Room at the Mafra National Palace, the first phase of which was completed in July, with the restoration of mural paintings depicting the maritime expansion of the 15th and 16th centuries, the monument's director, Sérgio Gorjão, told Lusa.

In addition to the ceiling and wall paintings -- now restored -- by the Portuguese artist and architect Cirilo Volkmar Machado (1748-1823), this room also contains captions for paintings that the artist commissioned from five painters, and which will now be replaced by new canvases "echoing the dominant theme of the room, through a contemporary critical and creative gaze", explained the person in charge, in response to questions via email.

The Discoveries Room of the Mafra National Palace was the subject of a pictorial program that began in 1795, but was interrupted with the departure of the royal family for Brazil in 1807, in the face of the Napoleonic invasions that Portugal was subjected to.

Dating from 1798, the ceiling painting is one of the first representations of the history of Portugal inspired by the work of Luís de Camões, highlighting figures such as Vasco da Gama, conquering the Adamastor, Pedro Álvares Cabral, arriving in Brazil, Christopher Columbus and Prince Henry the Navigator.

The room was also originally decorated with paintings by various painters, namely Vieira Portuense, Domingos Sequeira, José da Cunha Taborda, Bartolomeu António Calisto and Arcângelo Fosquini, commissioned by Cirilo Wolkmar Machado, taken to Brazil and, since then, considered missing.

"On the wainscoting, below the canvases, you can find the painters' identifications, the year in which they created the work, the theme and the historical-literary source that served as inspiration," pointed out Sérgio Gorjão.

Regarding the artistic challenge of creating works in a historical context in a monument like this -- classified in 2019 as a World Cultural Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) -- Rui Macedo states that he received the invitation "with enthusiasm" and a sense of "great responsibility".

"I enjoy these challenges that seek to create direct dialogues between distant historical times and where contemporary art is rarely the means used to stimulate a relationship between historical heritage and contemporary artistic thought," he told Lusa, also in response to questions sent by email.

Rui Macedo's artistic practice focuses mainly on similar projects that exclusively use painting installed in museum spaces, seeking a dialogue with material and immaterial heritage, namely, in interventions already carried out at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, in Lisbon, the Museum of the Republic, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Madrid, Spain.

"As I have been researching what is known about the missing paintings -- just a generic program of artistic work proposed by the Portuguese painter and architect Cyrillo de Volkmar Machado to painters, in addition to himself -- it has been challenging and demanding to find pertinent pictorial solutions that, simultaneously, both integrate and desirably promote a challenging reading of the room's theme," described the artist about the process.

Macedo studied the artistic program proposed by Cyrillo de Volkmar Machado at that time for the creation of six large-scale paintings based on six texts about different moments of Vasco da Gama's inaugural expedition to India and the subsequent Portuguese presence in the East.

As it is a room that alludes to mythology, to moments in the history of Portugal during the time of maritime expansion, "it becomes pertinent to make a reinterpretation that metaphorically echoes questions that arise from these intersections of themes, such as vulnerability and power, stories and traditional knowledge, identities, miscegenation or even the (in)definition of cultural and geographic borders", pointed out Rui Macedo about the project to be carried out in the 18th century Baroque monument, ordered to be built by King João V.

Part of the research process -- in the form of an artistic residency -- has been carried out in partnership with curator Inês Valle, who has focused her research "on projects that challenge the boundaries between the northern and southern hemispheres, fostering a rethinking of the artistic object as a result of stories that impact the territory," she noted.

The result of this process will be the creation and subsequent installation of large-scale 'site-specific' paintings, which will take the place of works that disappeared in the 18th century, in a project that, according to the monument's director, "pays homage to the work of Luís de Camões in the year in which the fifth centenary of his birth is celebrated, restoring the splendor of an artistic ensemble inspired by his epic".

The total estimated investment is 100 thousand euros, of which 60 thousand euros come from patronage by the Millennium bcp Foundation, and the remaining 40 thousand supported by the Museums and Monuments of Portugal, through a protocol signed in 2024.