National Museum of Ancient Art
State museum housing Portuguese and European art from medieval times through the eighteenth century.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon centers on six wooden panels found by chance in a monastery storeroom in the 1880s, crowded with fifty-eight individual faces gathered around Saint Vincent, patron of the city. You'll hear how the museum's director traced the painter to Nuno Gonçalves, court painter to King Afonso V, using a manuscript and a hidden signature uncovered only after cleaning. The guide lingers longest on one face in the crowd, a man in a plain black hat that many believe is Prince Henry the Navigator, and asks you to look closely and judge for yourself.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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