The procedures of emblematics in Portugal: the path to Heaven through the glazed tiles of the Church of the Holy Saviour in Coimbra

Abstract

The naves and choir of the Church of the Holy Saviour in Coimbra were decorated in the second third of the XVIII century with an astonishing iconographic programme painted on azulejos and attributed to Salvador de Sousa Carvalho. The cycle is based on the prints executed by Gottfried Bernhard Göz and Joseph Sebastian Klauber to illustrate the book Vita, Doctrina, Passio Domini nostri Iesu Christi, written by the Benedictine monk Coelestin Leuthner and published in Augsburg in 1733. It thus bears witness to the close relation that exists between Baroque Portuguese art and the emblematics. In this article we delve into the adaptation made by this pictorial ensemble, evincing how selection, redistribution and recombination of printed models are the key procedures to offer an original discourse, that, in this case, aims at showing the devout which is the path leading to heaven.