Set in the substantial Palacio dos Condes de Alvor on Rua das Janelas Verdes in the central Lapa district of Lisbon, the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga is the principal Portuguese national art collection covering the principal centuries of European, African and Asian art collected by the wider Portuguese royal and aristocratic communities continuously from the medieval period through to the early nineteenth century. The wider museum was originally founded in 1884 and is the largest single Portuguese national art collection. The wider museum is housed in the principal seventeenth-century Palacio dos Condes de Alvor, a substantial private aristocratic palace originally constructed during the late seventeenth century by the wider Alvor noble family. The principal palace was subsequently acquired by the Portuguese government in around 1850 for the substantial development of a new principal national art collection. The substantial principal museum opened to the public in 1884 with the principal initial collection drawn from various Portuguese royal collections, various church collections seized during the 1834 dissolution of the religious orders and various private donations. The substantial principal current collection covers approximately forty thousand individual artworks across the various principal regional and thematic sections. The principal individual collections cover Portuguese, Flemish, Italian, German, Spanish, French, English and various other European national schools alongside the substantial supplementary collections of African, Brazilian, Indian, Chinese and Japanese art. The principal individual highlights of the wider collection include the famous fifteenth-century Saint Vincent Panels by the principal Portuguese master Nuno Goncalves, the famous Temptation of Saint Anthony by the Flemish master Hieronymus Bosch and the substantial Namban Folding Screens covering the principal Portuguese trading relationship with sixteenth and seventeenth-century Japan. The famous Saint Vincent Panels are one of the most distinguished surviving works of the wider fifteenth-century Portuguese painting tradition. The substantial six-panel altarpiece was completed by the Portuguese master Nuno Goncalves between approximately 1450 and 1475 and shows around sixty individual life-size portraits arranged around the principal central figure of Saint Vincent. The substantial individual portraits include the famous representations of the principal Portuguese royal court of the mid fifteenth century including King Afonso V and various supplementary Portuguese nobles, ecclesiastical figures, sailors and various working-class subjects. The famous Temptation of Saint Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch is the most distinguished early Northern Renaissance work in the substantial Portuguese national collection. The substantial three-panel altarpiece was completed by the Flemish master between approximately 1500 and 1510 and shows the principal traditional iconographic narrative of the temptations of Saint Anthony the Great in substantial Bosch characteristic fantastical detail. The principal triptych was originally acquired by the Portuguese royal collection during the early sixteenth century and has been one of the principal individual works of the wider Portuguese national art collection continuously since the original sixteenth-century acquisition.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Rua das Janelas Verdes, Lisbon, Portugal

Opening Date: 01/01/1884