The ordered spectacle of war and human aggression has come to be considered over time as a popular artistic theme.Accordingly, the horrors of war were domesticated and transformed into appealing images, frequently displaying great decorative power,with drawing thus becoming an important part of the preliminary study phase. The figure of the Roman warrior, clad in armour and wearing a helmet, was rediscovered and widely portrayed in Renaissance Italy. Countless artists dealt with this theme in dynamic compositions that successfully afforded a certain sense of order to the chaotic movement of the combatants’bodies.

All the drawings exhibited here belong to the museum’s collection, which began to be put together towards the end of the first half of the nineteenth century by the Academia Real de Belas-Artes. The drawingsdisplayed in this roomare European in origin– mainly Portuguese, Italian, French, Flemish, Dutch and English – covering a time span from the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

CURATOR
Alexandra Gomes Markl


Exhibition booklet