The First images of the king

Abstract

This article deals with the Portuguese royal family portrait painting in the eighteenth century. The object in question is privileged material to observe certain characteristics of eighteenth-century culture, including the portrait painting dimension within the sphere of Portuguese absolutist monarchy. The cultural function of these visual representations becomes clearer when demand conditions and their execution are observed, as well as the locations for which they were intended. We try to reconstruct the circulation of works to be able to grasp the development of this portraiture. The focus of this work is to analyze some portraits, paintings and engravings, which were executed in the early eighteenth century, works that were produced in the early reign of Dom João V (1689-1750).