Pedro Alexandrino de Carvalho (1729-1810) et la peinture d'histoire a Lisbonne: cycles religieux et cycles profanes

The main object of this study is Pedro Alexandrino de Carvalho (1729-1810), the most important Portuguese painter of the second half of the 18th century. He greatly contributed to the decoration of churches reconstructed after the 1755 earthquake and can be considered as the last great baroque painter in Portugal.
This study is a monograph of Alexandrino, who has, to date, never received the critical and academic recognition requisite to an artist of his rank. In the first chapter, we will examine the literature review regarding his oeuvre. We will then focus on our methodology and discuss the difficulties encountered during our research. A brief description of the 18th century Portuguese context will also permit us to understand better Pedro Alexandrino's work.
Chapter 2 will concentrate on the man and the painter: after our literature review, we will focus on Alexandrino's biography and his artistic output. Once we have covered this ground, we will discuss his works with specific attention paid to the different genres that he practiced as well as his various patrons. This way, we will be able to cover Alexandrino's career and consider his existing works as well as those that were destroyed.
Six monuments, all located in Lisbon, and decorated with cycles and series of religious paintings will be discussed in Chapter 3. They are representative of both Alexandrino's different types of paintings and his artistic methods.
Then, we will analyze three cycles of mythological paintings located in palaces of the Portuguese capital. This chapter will allow us to have a good overview of late 18th century profane works by the most important painter of the period.
By the end of our study, we will be able to demonstrate Alexandrino's central place in the 18th century Portuguese artistic context. We will show that his artistic production is perfectly in keeping with European artistic and stylistic standards of the time.