Baltazar Álvares was one of the most important Portuguese architects ever and one of the greatest in Europe at his time. Among us, in terms of the impact produced, probably only the figure of a João de Castilho reached a comparable scale. Its legacy remained a valuable source of inspiration until the 18th century, adding to the history of our monumental heritage buildings of the greatest significance. Focused on the history of Portuguese convent architecture between about 1550 and 1640, but with a focus on the activity of Baltazar Álvares, this monograph is based, therefore, on a methodology that has always privileged the confrontation of the various documentary sources collated with the morphological analysis of the built estate , allowing to add to the most recent historiographical contributions new data, as well as biographical aspects of the life of this remarkable architect, which are still unpublished.
The investigation carried out by Ricardo Lucas Branco constitutes the first retrospective of the architect’s work, without a doubt a key figure in the Portuguese artistic panorama from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th century. A careful reading of Baltazar Álvares’ biography will lead the reader to discover the environment in which he moved, taking us through the treatises and the state of the art that he and his peers had in their hands when applying a project of symbolic power to architecture , dictated by classical rules and canons. In the study of the height of imperial modernity that the Catholic Monarchy marked with its monumentality, Baltazar Álvares reappears in the light of a careful research that links the sources to what remains of his projects. The author offers us an innovative look at four central examples in the architect’s work: Santo Antão-o-Novo, São Vicente de Fora, São Bento da Saúde and Nossa Senhora do Desterro; resorting not only to comparisons with architectural ensembles of the time, but also to proposals for the reconstitution of elements lost in time and new concepts to apply in the interpretation of architecture in its historical context.
The lines with which Baltazar Álvares drew, designed and built have not been erased. Its grandiosity, of an artistic language strongly based on its classical training and on the aesthetics of a true Portuguese Italianism, tinged with the ideology of the Counter-Reformation, testifies to the expression of a time that, however overshadowed it may have been, remains unforgettable in the image of the city.