A Exposição 'Os Primitivos Portugueses' de 1940

The realization of an exhibition about the paintings of the Portuguese Primitives had been desired since the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when several critics and scholars aroused interest in this issue, promoting its study and understanding. This development in studies of primitives was mainly reflected in the safeguarding and restoration of their works. For that reason, a series of restoration campaigns began, as well as the foundation of the Comissão da Beneficiação de Pintura dos séculos XV e XVI, which, together with the new decoding of the Portuguese primitives, would result in the presentation and grouping of paintings from all over the country. A historical contextualization of this issue shows that everything culminated in 1940 when the exhibition was inaugurated, which exhibited more than 300 sixteenth-century tablets at the National Museum of Ancient Art, on the Double Centenary Celebrations. Of all the art exhibitions held that year, this one became the most notable and prestigious, resulting in a series of publications, articles and monographs on the subject of the Portuguese primitives, resurrecting the interest in this issue and the need for decoding and understanding of this glorious era in Portuguese history. This dissertation intends to study and understand in more detail the entire exhibition planning process, from the initial idea to its inauguration, including the various entities and institutions that supported and collaborated for its conception. In addition to this analysis, a photographic appendix was also produced, based on the Exhibition Guide-Catalogue, in order to improve the understanding of the pieces that were exhibited, comparing the photographs taken for the 1940 Guide-Catalogue with the most recent photographs of the pieces and supplemented with pertinent information about the restoration of some of the painting