D. Alexandre de Sousa e Holstein and the Portuguese culture in a Rome in disarray (1790-1803)

Abstract

The neoclassical conceptions, promoted by the theoretical production of Winckelmann and Mengs found a concrete application in Rome at the end of the eighteenth century in the artistic education of the young Portuguese people sent by the Casa Pia of Lisbon or provided with alternative scholarships such as Sequeira or Vieira Portuense. The foundation of an ephemeral Academy of Fine Arts found in D. Alexandre de Sousa e Holstein a refined and educated protagonist who saw his project interrupted by family issues and by the European political turbulence, which prefigured the invasion of the city of Pius VI by the army of Berthier in 1798. It will be the same diplomat who, in his second mission, will dissolve the Academy planned in collaboration with the Intendant Pina Manique and established with the precious intervention of the art critic, collector and bibliophile Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi. Returned in a devastated Rome, D. Alexandre will die soon afterwards. Coming from an exceptional family and giving birth to an illustrious progeny, in his sepulchral effigy finely carved by the ineffable Canova he ends symbolically a life that still awaits a deserved extensive study.

Keywords

• Prelúdio e epílogo da Repubblica Romana (1798-99), Aplicação das teorias neoclássicas no ensino das artes (Winckelmann e Mengs), D. Alexandre de Sousa e Holstein (1751-1803), Academia Portuguesa de Belas-Artes de Roma (1791-1803), Primeiro período romano