Saint Vincent Panels

The only reference that art historians can use to support the attribution of the creation of the panels to the painter Gonçalves was written in the 16th century by Francisco de Holanda.

There has also been speculation that the father of Hugo van der Goes collaborated in the painting of the panels, but no firm evidence to support this hypothesis exists.

Some basic questions, still unanswered, are these: The majority of experts who have studied this polyptych agree that the panels display several social groups of 15th-century Portugal.

[3] The most basic problem in identifying the man-in-the-chaperon in the Saint Vincent Panels derives from the lack of confirmed portraits of Prince Henry that date from his lifetime.

His closest female relatives were his mother Philippa and sister, Isabella, Duchess of Burgundy, both of whom would be more properly paired with their husbands.

Moreover, Isabella did not live in Portugal after 1430, thus her lack of involvement with Portuguese society at the time the panel was painted would probably disqualify her from inclusion.

If the uncle of a king were to be incorporated in the panel, it would more properly be Peter, Duke of Coimbra, who was once the regent of Afonso V and the father of his bride.

[3] It seems, in particular, that by the poses, this panel aims to humiliate Henry the Navigator, possibly for allying himself with Afonso of Braganza against his full brother Peter, Duke of Coimbra, in the Battle of Alfarrobeira in 1449.

[5] If this interpretation is valid, then the polyptych of St. Vincent may very well have been conceived by Nuno Gonçalves as a piece of anti-Braganza political propaganda, one possible reason it might have remained hidden for years.

That would tend to support the traditional belief that they date from the 1450s (when passions left over from that conflict would still have been fresh), however if the boy depicted in the Panel of the Prince can be identified as the future King John II (b.