Portuguese Renaissance
[citation needed] The discovery of new worlds and contact with other civilisations led to a cultural mix, which was reflected in the arts and literature of the Portuguese Renaissance.
The contact with the civilisations of Africa and the East led to the importation of numerous objects of ceramics, textiles and furniture, precious woods, ivory and silk, in turn, led to the emergence of new artistic forms resulting cultural exchanges between Europe, and East Africa, through the Portuguese.
[5] The Manueline was largely an intricate and complex style, with heavy gothic and light neo-classical influence, that was unique to Portugal.
Francisco de Arruda's Belém Tower and chapter window of the Convent of the Order of Christ, in Tomar, are some of the most famous examples of the Manueline style, and Portuguese Renaissance architecture as a whole.
The Quinta da Bacalhoa and the Casa dos Bicos are good examples of strong classical Renaissance style palaces, which still hold Manueline tendencies.
[6] Links between the two movements reached a new level, in 1430, with the marriage of Isabel of Aviz, Infanta of Portugal, to Philip III, Duke of Burgundy.
While the marriage was in negotiations, the Burgundian court sent the famed Jan van Eyck to paint the Portrait of Isabel of Aviz.
Van Eyck remained in Portugal for over a year, where he established a school of art, alongside Olivier de Gand and Jean d'Ypres.
Nuno Gonçalves, author of the Saint Vincent Panels[8] and designer of the Pastrana Tapestries, is considered one of the precursors of Portuguese Renaissance painting.
In Northern Portugal, a similar group existed, centered on Vasco Fernandes, alongside Gaspar Vaz and Fernão de Anes.
During the Portuguese Renaissance, there was a plethora of technical works being created, such as mappa mundi, globes, treatises on the art of sailing, scripts, reports of shipwrecks, itineraries, and studies on tropical medicine.
With Vasco da Gama's arrival in India and the Portuguese Empire's expansion into that land, many scientists were sent eastward to study and compile new drugs from medicinal plants.
The botanist Tomé Pires and physicians Garcia de Orta and Cristóvão da Costa collected and published works on new plants and local medicines.
One such example is the Cantino planisphere, which was stolen from the Casa da Índia, the Portuguese royal ministry for all things maritime, for the Duke of Ferrara in 1502,[15] or the Dieppe maps, commissioned by Henry II of France and Henry VIII of England, which were copies of stolen Portuguese maps of the period.
Portuguese exploration and studies soon revealed the gaps of ancient knowledge, such as how in 1488, passing the Cape of Good Hope, Bartolomeu Dias proved Ptolemy was erroneous in that there was no passage to the Indian Ocean.
João de Barros's Grammatica was the second piece that sought to standardize the Portuguese language, and is considered the world's first illustrated text book.
In 1516, Garcia de Resende published the Cancioneiro General, which contained more than two hundred separate literary works, of various authors, from the reigns of D. Afonso V and D. John II.
After returning from his studies abroad, in 1526, Sá de Miranda introduced new forms of literary expression to Portugal, like the sonnet and the sestina.
Bernardim Ribeiro introduced the Pastoral novel to the Iberian Peninsula with his 1554 Menina e Moça, alongside the eclogues of Cristóvão Falcão.
These novels based themselves on the idealization of mediaeval chivalric codes, and were filled with princes and princesses, knights and damsels, and almost always had a Christian moral.
