infocus #4 December 2006 18th Century church altarpieces in the Algarve, Portugal

DOI: 10.22443/rms.inf.1.17

The wooden gilded and polychrome Baroque altarpieces and ceilings of Portuguese churches offer a unique opportunity to study the relationship between historical documentary sources and physical evidence from surviving pieces.This project involved three elements. First, researching the archives surviving from the 17th and 18th Centuries - primarily ecclesiastic account books and contracts - made between the Portuguese Church and the artists they employed…