DIOGO PEREIRA - ACT. C. 1630-1658 The burning of Troy oil on canvas relined, restoration, minor faults on the pictorial layer signed with monogram DP Dimensões (altura x comprimento x largura) - 104 x 136 cm Notes: The depiction of burning Troy, a quintessential classic theme inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, a seminal work of 16th and 17th-century European literature, received rare attention from the Portuguese painter Diogo Pereira, who addressed the theme of the city in flames in two dozen versions. He is an artist still unjustly forgotten, but who achieved fame in his time, justifying lavish praise from authors such as Félix da Costa Meesen and Pietro Guarienti, both well-versed in European art.
It is unknown whether the painter, born around 1600 and deceased in 1658, had the opportunity to visit the Spanish kingdom of Naples, a city where his works exist, but it is certain that he was familiar with Neapolitan painting (exhibited in peninsular palaces) as the influence he received from artists such as the mysterious Monsú Desiderio (François De Nommé, a Frenchman from Lorraine established in Naples) is very visible.

During the turbulent period at the end of Philip III's reign and, soon after, the wars of restored Portugal, Pereira worked in a context of crises and financial hardship, but this did not diminish his esteem in a market that, both inside and outside the Kingdom, disputed with him Troy, Hell, Sodom, Medes, sea storms and other "misfortunes" in which he became famous as an artist.
Diogo Pereira's versions of Troy, which include the tragic vision of the Greek city in flames, with Odysseus' horse in the square, the street battles, and Aeneas' flight carrying his father Anchises on his back, are numerous. Fourteen versions are known, all of fantastical ingenuity, with their dramatic charge, supernatural luminosity, apocalyptic atmospheres, and labyrinthine effects. The surviving Troys attest to the derivations of Neapolitan genre painting, combined with a genuine political-parenthetical dimension that justifies the esteem earned by the nobles of the party of King D. João IV. Three of these Troys, such as the one in the Franzini collection in Milan (which had been wrongly attributed to François De Nommé, but which bears the Portuguese monogram D.P.), are inspired, regarding the group of Aeneas and Anchises, by an engraving from a classical source, the Emblemata Liber of Alciato. Other versions belong to the Machado de Castro National Museum, the Ajuda National Palace, the National Library of Portugal, several private collections (one of them in Paris), and also to the Royal Palace of Naples (with the signature D.P.).

Félix da Costa Meesen's praise that he was "a rare genius, always occupied with fires, floods, storms, pastoral nights, various views of countries with livestock; in which he was as celebrated in this genre as the most expert in matters of greater commitment," is justified by the great originality of this type of allegory, in which he became a unique case in Portuguese art. That this fame was followed by a long period of oblivion (his glory would only resurface at the turn of the millennium after the Rouge et Or exhibition at the Musée Jacquemard-André in Paris in 2001) remains a mysterious problem. It is likely, however, that the same political reasons that led to the acclaiming of Pereira's Troys as a pro-Brigan parenetic painting (seeing King D. João IV as the "New Aeneas" in a theme that justified the idea of the resistance of peoples against the tyranny of Castile, as suited the inflamed anti-Philippine rhetoric of 1640) were the same that, once the Kingdom was pacified in the 18th century, led them to be seen as memories to be forgotten…

The truth is that both the Count of Tarouca, and the Marquesses of Borba, Nisa and Orisol, D. Diogo de Noronha, D. Tomás de Noronha e Nápoles, D. Manuel da Cunha (chaplain to the king), D. António Álvares da Cunha (lord of Tábua and founder of the Academy of the Generous), Dr. António Pinto Ribeiro, the members of the Mascarenhas and Sousas families, all of them soldiers of the Restoration or linked to the revolution of 1640, had paintings by Diogo Pereira depicting the scene of burning Troy.

Signed by Pereira and dating from the 1540s, the great Troy now presented offers the entire original repertoire of burning architecture evident in other versions, but what is truly surprising is the absence of any figures! The silence expressed on the canvas is total: neither the battles beside the horse of betrayal, nor Aeneas's flight with his father to the seaport, are visible.

This particularity makes this painting a very interesting case study of Pereira's modus operandi, reinforcing the hypothesis that he had collaborators and that, often, the introduction of figures could be the responsibility of others (one of the painter's obscure collaborators, named Manuel Nunes, is known). If so, the process would be identical to what Maria Rosaria Nappi observed in the Neapolitan work of Monsú Desiderio, where the excellence of the architecture sometimes clashes with figures of uneven execution, introduced by others… Finally, conclusive proof is the testimony of the great Francisco Vieira Lusitano, in 1758, when he assessed an Inferno by Diogo Pereira in the collection of the Marquises of Penalva and, bothered by the fact that this praised painting could be harmed by figures that, according to him, detracted from it, "he introduced others of his own making". The painting in question, which has survived to this day, is conclusive proof of this process.

It is therefore reasonable to believe that this excellent Troy awaited the addition of figures to complete the story, especially the group of Aeneas and Anchises. For some unknown reason, this completion of the painting never occurred. Within this subgenre of Baroque painting, tragedy and caprice, the present burning Troy offers the best repertorial and stylistic qualities of Diogo Pereira, who chose to mark it with his monogram.

This painting once again attests to his status as one of the leading figures in Portuguese painting of his century, alongside José do Avelar Rebelo, André Reinoso, Baltazar Gomes Figueira, Josefa de Óbidos, and Bento Coelho da Silveira. But even within the context of the 17th-century Iberian Peninsula, Pereira's work stands out as a true surprise: it bears witness to a rare taste, a taste for whimsical depictions of fires, ruins, and chaos—a kind of fiery taste so desired by the public during the Restoration period, as evidenced in two dozen excellent quality paintings that delighted a market captivated by such classical whims.


Vitor Serrão
Art Historian
Emeritus Professor at the University of Lisbon