A Casa-Museu Fernando de Castro: das coleções e das fantasmagorias

Abstract

The House Museum Fernando de Castro (Porto) is one of the most fascinating and secret Portuguese museums. It has been supervised by the Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis, since its foundation, so the place and its collections are protected, in spite of various constraints (both financial and functional) keep preventing it from being permanently open to public visit. On the one hand, this situation reinforces its particular aura. On the other hand, the fact that there are no documents on the origin of the collection’s objects and no clues to the different solutions of their reinstallation, shift the secrecy from the museum to its founder. Fernando de Castro (1889-1946) collected mostly gilded carving from convent churches and chapels. By mid-1950s, gilded carving was not at all fashionable, which made way for acquisitions at a relatively modest price. However, the most important aspect of the House Museum is the way all these objects were installed in the various spaces of the House, according to an aesthetic of excess. These are the topics of reflection that constitute this paper, which is based on the analysis of bibliographies successively published.

Keywords

• House Museum Fernando de Castro
• private collecting
• psychology of collecting
• aesthetics of excess
• house museums