Saint Torcato
Author: Unknown
Date: 16th century, end
Material: Oil on chestnut
Dimensions (cm): H 106,6 x W 49,5
Provenance: Unknown
Inventory No.: MAS P 4
Saint Torcato is depicted as a bishop, wearing a quite ornamented cloak and a mitre on the head. He holds a crosier with his right hand, and a palm and an open book, to which he directs his look, with his left one.
According to tradition, Saint Torcato was bishop of Braga and of Oporto, having been martyred in the 7th century.
This painting and another one depicting Saint Damasus (MAS P 5), also on display in the Painting and Sculpture Room, represent two of the most well-known saints of the Guimarães hagiology and they might belong to one of the altarpieces of the cloister of the Colegiada de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira.
Works by the same painter, according to Vítor Serrão, they may result from the hand of an anonymous Guimarães master stylistically influenced by the Guimarães painter, Pedro de França, who was active in the previous generation and was a salaried painter of the Collegiate Church in the third quarter of the 16th century. In this anonymous master, the Gothicizing archaisms disappear and the hand develops with another kind of plastic reinvigoration and seduction, following a visible influence of the Dutch Mannerist canons.