Indo-portuguese art

expression used to name the artistic production made, mainly between the 16th and the 18th century, as a result of the relationship established between Portugal and India. In what regards its particular characteristics, be they art works of cultural or of laic nature, they distinguish themselves by the profound mixing of Indian and Portuguese (European) cultures, which may manifest itself, cumulatively or not, in its formal, iconographic, plastic, material, technical and functional aspects.

Bernardo Ferrão points out that the expression is of British origin (Ferrão, 1990, p. 16) having been used for the first time by John Charles Robinson, in 1881, in the introductory text of the Catalogue of the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art, a work coordinated by him. In it, he briefly mentions the term Indo-Portuguese and its connotation of a mostly Goan artistic production, from the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the strong probability, according to the author, that the furniture in this style could also have been made in Lisbon, Oporto, Evora and other Portuguese cities (ROBINSON, 1881, p. 11).

However, the first Portuguese approach to the subject of the Indo-Portuguese was made by Francisco Marques Sousa Viterbo, two years later (1883), in the article he wrote, A Exposição de Arte Ornamental. Notas ao Catálogo. In this text, the author, besides distinguishing two potential origins for the quilts then exhibited, India and the (Far) East, applies the term Indo-Portuguese to objects made in India by indigenous craftsmen or in Portugal, under Indian influence.

A year later, Joaquim de Vasconcelos, talking about the Aveiro District Exhibition, expands the definition to include three categories, distinguishing between objects made in Portugal by oriental craftsmen who lived there, objects made by Portuguese craftsmen resident in the East (in cities under the control of the national crown), from Goa to Malacca and, finally, truly genuine imported objects from the Asian industries. These were rare and highly valued among us, which triggered their imitations.

From the 1930's on, authors such as João Couto, Luís Keil, Maria José de Mendonça, Reynaldo dos Santos and Madalena Cagigal e Silva started in their studies an in-depth approach to Indo-Portuguese art, giving special attention to the influences and the iconographic aspects. The reading of Luís Keil's article is of particular interest. Published for the Congress of the Portuguese World, in 1940, A Arte Portuguesa e a Arte Oriental studies the artistic influences created and promoted by the contact between the different cultures, during the Portuguese presence in the old Estado da India. Keil is more precise about this subject. He makes distinctions between the participants and specifies the relationships between Portuguese and Indians, Chinese and Japanese, defining simultaneously the "Indo-Portuguese style" as the result of an indigenous art, first adapted to the Western culture, mostly on what concerns subject-matters, which are later adjusted to the technical processes used in its production (Keil, 1940, p. 170).

Reynaldo dos Santos's approach, conveyed in some of his studies, is also important, being symptomatic of a more or less dualistic approach: it establishes a direct relationship between Indo-Portuguese art and India as a geographical space, specifically Goa, as the logical place for its creation; he also acknowledges other important production centres out of that country, specifically in Malacca and China. He even makes a distinction, on what textiles are concerned, between the Indian embroidery and the Chinese embroidery, and underlines the importance of the Chinese ones in India, mostly in religious pieces.

Still in 1955, John Irwin publishes a small text entitled Reflections on Indoportuguese Art, in which he makes a review of what had been speculated and published about the subject up to that time. In that same article he makes a new brief and systematic approach to the categories of the Indo-Portuguese production that had been taken into account until then; he keeps the three groups identified by Joaquim de Vasconcelos and redirects them to concepts that put together the intervenients in the manufacturing process and the influences to which they are connected. He therefore distinguishes between objects independently produced by the local craftsmen, in which a Portuguese secondary influence on subject-matters can be seen; objects made in the territories under Portuguese domination, by native craftsmen estranged from their own cultural inheritance (a production destined to export) and, according to Irwin, almost certainly converted to Christianity. The third category includes objects made by Portuguese craftsmen, based on oriental prototypes. To the English author it is in the first category that the more extraordinary examples are produced. In the second category he acknowledges the existence of a great variety of liturgical objects, adaptations of European prototypes for the most part, Irwin's opinion being that this group raises more questions, for instance, the difficulty in determining the places they were manufactured in.

In the 1960s, Maria Madalena Cagigal e Silva publishes an important study on the subject, A Arte Indo-Portuguesa, of which a short version was turned into a chapter with the same title in Arte Portuguesa, organized by João Barreira. In it she states that the Indo-Portuguese style relies on a special combination of Indian and Portuguese or Western elements received through Portugal, resulting from the fusion of the different ways of using the decoration, choosing the motif and the techniques which are, according to the author, organized and treated in a distinctive way. She also mentions that the expression was used in Portugal mostly when referring to decoration, an opinion contrary to that of John Irwin, who perceives it more as a technique.

Also in the 1960s it was Bernardo Ferrão Tavares e Távora's studies on luso-oriental images and furniture, in his books A Imaginária Luso-oriental and Mobiliário Português, published in 1983 and 1990 respectively, which were responsible for a stimulus to the studies on this subject. The author took the term Indo-Portuguese, used up until then to refer to all the production which showed an intermingling between Portuguese (Western) culture and others which geographically coincided with what was once the Portuguese Empire in the East, and he suggested a new approach to it, based on a comparative and systemic analysis of ivory statues. He divides the concept into more specific definitions, limiting them to the cultures intervening in the production: as with the term Sino-Português*, referring to the relationship between Portugal and China; Nipo-Português*, which is directly associated to the ties between Portugal and Japan; Cingalo-Português*, used for goods from Ceylon; and, also very important, Indo-Português, restricted to the production (supposedly) resulting from the combination of Portuguese and Indian culture.

The following years and research works in this artistic field - despite the increase in studies in such different areas as ivories, architecture, sculpture or furniture - added little to the essence of the term. Most authors did nothing but reflect upon the concepts presented so far or approach them in a more systematic way (Felgueiras, 1994, p. 34; Raposo, 1994, p. 16; Dias, 2004, pp. 342-343; Ferreira, 2004). Teotónio de Souza's article, about the Christian art of Goa, is an exception. In it, the author clearly states that the pieces produced in India by artists belonging to the Society of Jesus or other Europeans must not be considered truly Indo-Portuguese (Souza, 1994, pp. 10-11). He justifies his position as a way to emphasize the dominance of the vast indigenous artistic traditions (as opposed to the Christian one) on the objects made in India by the natives, resulting from "Asia's strong capacity to better resist the forces of the colonial expansion than the peoples of the Americas and of Africa" (Souza, 1994, p. 10).

In more recent years, a close analysis of exhibition catalogues' entries or of sundry texts on Indo-Portuguese works shows that researchers (mostly in the context of international historiography) have the tendency to replace the term by another expression: Indian export production for the Portuguese market. This option, along with the international cataloguing criteria, stresses the articles' place of production, rather than all the questions concerning their underlying artistic and cultural relationships.

Bibliography:
COUTO, João, "Alguns Subsídios para o Estudo Técnico das Peças de Ourivesaria no Estilo Denominado Indo-Português", in Primeiro Congresso da História da Expansão Portuguesa no Mundo : 2ª secção : Portugueses no Oriente, Lisboa, Ministério das Colónias, 1938, pp.35-49. DIAS, Pedro, "O Contador das Cenas Familiares. O quotidiano dos portugueses de Quinhentos na Índia na decoração de um móvel indo-português", in Pedro DIAS, Arte Indo-Portuguesa. Capítulos da História, Coimbra, Almedina, 2004, pp. 339-450. FELGUEIRAS, José Jordão, "Arcas Indo-Portuguesas de Cochim", in Oceanos - Indo-Portuguesmente, Lisboa, 1994, nº19/20 - Setembro/ Dezembro, pp. 34-41. FERRÃO, Bernardo, Mobiliário Português : Índia e Japão, vol. III, Porto, Lello & Irmão Editores, 1990. FERREIRA, Maria João Pacheco, "O Conceito sinoportuguês. Problemáticas inerentes ao seu surgimento, identidade e aplicação" in Lusíada. Arqueologia, História da Arte e Património, Lisboa, Universidade Lusíada Editora, 2004, nº 2/4, pp. 139-151. IRWIN, John. "Reflections on Indo-Portuguese Art", in Burlington Magazine, 1955, nº 633, p. 386-388. KEIL, Luís, "A Arte Portuguesa e a Arte Oriental", in Terceiro Congresso do Mundo Português. 5, Lisboa, Comissão Executiva dos Centenários, 1940, pp. 161-172. MENDONÇA, Maria José de, "Alguns Tipos de Colchas Indo-Portuguesas na Colecção do Museu de Arte Antiga", in Boletim do Museu, vol. II, fasc. II, 1949, Janeiro-Dezembro, pp. 1-21. RAPOSO, Francisco Hipólito, "O Encanto dos Contadores Indo-Portugueses", in Oceanos - Indo-Portuguesmente, Lisboa, 1994, nº19/20 - Setembro/ Dezembro, pp. 16-32. ROBINSON, J. C., (coord. de), Catalogue of the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art, Londres, R. Clay, Sons and Taylor, 1881. SANTOS, Reynaldo dos, "Goa e a Arte Indo-Portuguesa", in Colóquio, 1962, nº 17, pp. 2-9. SILVA, Madalena Cagigal e, A Arte-Indo-Portuguesa, Lisboa, Edições Excelsior, 1966. SILVA, Madalena Cagigal e, "A Arte Indo-Portuguesa", in BARREIRA, João, (dir. de), A Arte Portuguesa: As Artes Decorativas, I, Lisboa, Edições Excelsior,[s.d.], pp. 245-264. SOUZA, Teotónio de, "A Arte Cristã de Goa: uma introdução histórica para a dialética da sua evolução", in Oceanos - Indo-Portuguesmente, Lisboa, 1994, nº19/20 - Setembro/ Dezembro, pp. 8-14. TÁVORA, Bernardo Ferrão Tavares e, A Imaginária Luso-oriental, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional - Casa da Moeda, 1983. VASCONCELOS, Joaquim de, Exposição Distrital de Aveiro em 1882, Aveiro, [s.n.], 1883. VITERBO, Francisco Marques de Sousa, "A Exposição de Arte Ornamental: Notas ao Catálogo", Boletim da Sociedade de Geographia de Lisboa, 1882, 3ª Série, nº 9.

Translated by: Dominique Faria