Azulejo

Azulejos are found on the interior and exterior of churches, palaces, ordinary houses, schools, and nowadays, restaurants, bars and even railways or subway stations.

[3] The word azulejo (as well as the Ligurian laggion[4]) is derived from the Arabic الزليج (al-zillīj), zellij meaning "polished stone" because the original idea was to imitate the Byzantine and Roman mosaics.

[9] This tradition was continued for a time in Mudéjar architecture in Spain (e.g. in the 14th-century sections of the Alcázar of Seville),[10] and has been perpetuated to this day in Morocco.

[12] Towards the late 15th and early 16th centuries Seville became an important production center for a type of tile known as cuenca ("hollow") or arista ("ridge").

[7][12][14] The motifs on these tiles imitated earlier Islamic and Mudéjar designs from the zellij mosaic tradition or blended them with contemporary European influences such as Gothic or Italian Renaissance.

The Portuguese adopted the Moorish tradition of horror vacui ('fear of empty spaces') and covered the walls completely with azulejos.

Until the mid-16th century the Portuguese continued to rely on foreign imports, mostly from Spain, such as the Annunciation by Francisco Niculoso in Évora, but also on a smaller scale from Antwerp (Flanders), such as the two panels by Jan Bogaerts in the Paço Ducal of Vila Viçosa (Alentejo).

One of the early Portuguese masters of the 16th century was Marçal de Matos, to whom Susanna and the Elders (1565), in Quinta da Bacalhoa, Azeitão, is attributed, as well as the Adoration of the Shepherds (in the National Museum of Azulejos in Lisbon).

These carpet compositions (azulejo de tapete), as they were called, elaborately framed with friezes and borders, were produced in great numbers during the 17th century.

During the same period another motif in friezes was introduced: floral vases flanked by birds, dolphins or putti, the so-called albarradas.

In the second half of the 17th century, the Spanish artist Gabriel del Barco y Minusca introduced into Portugal the blue-and-white tiles from Delft in the Netherlands.

Soon large, home-made blue-and-white figurative tiles, designed by academically trained Portuguese artists, became the dominant fashion, superseding the former taste for repeated patterns and abstract decoration.

These are cut-out panels of azulejos with life-size figures (footmen, halberdiers, noblemen or elegantly dressed ladies), usually placed in entrances of palaces (see Palácio da Mitra), patios and stair landings.

With great Portuguese influence, the city of São Luís, in Maranhão, in Brazil, preserves the largest urban agglomeration of azulejos from the 18th and 19th centuries, throughout Latin America.

[32] In the first half of the 19th century, there was a stagnation in the production of decorative tiles, owing first to the incursion of the Napoleonic army and later to social and economic changes.

While these industrialized methods produced simple, stylized designs, the art of hand-painting tiles was not dead, as applied by Manuel Joaquim de Jesus and especially Luís Ferreira.

He produced panels, known as Ferreira das Tabuletas, with flower vases, trees, and allegorical figures, applying the trompe-l'œil technique.

In 1885 Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro founded a ceramics factory in Caldas da Rainha, where he created many of the pottery designs for which this city is known.

In this factory he has his own a museum São Rafael devoted to his fantastically imaginative work, especially the decorative plates and his satirical stone figures, such as the Zé Povinho (a representation of the worrying common man).

The monumental decorations, consisting of 20,000 azulejos, in the vestibule of the São Bento railway station in Porto, created by Jorge Colaço,[42] show in its historical themes the narrative style of the romantic 'picture-postcard'.

Other artists from this period include Mário Branco and Silvestre Silvestri, who decorated in 1912 the lateral façade of the Carmo Church, and Eduardo Leite for his work on the Almas Chapel (imitating the style of the 18th century), both in Porto.

A new expansion, completed in 1988, featured works by more contemporary Portuguese artists: Rolando de Sá Nogueira in Laranjeiras, Júlio Pomar in Alto dos Moinhos, Manuel Cargaleiro in Colégio Militar/Luz, and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva in Cidade Universitária.

Tiles are vulnerable to vandalism, neglect, and theft due to their prevalence and relative ease of access in historic and often decaying buildings across Portugal.

In Lisbon, tiles can sometimes be found for sale in street fairs and the black market,[46] despite efforts to raise awareness among buyers, many of whom are foreign tourists.