Asian Textiles in Portuguese Churches during the First Half of the Sixteenth Century

Luís Urbano Afonso

Senior Associate Professor of Art History, Lisbon University – School of Arts and Humanities

During the first half of the sixteenth century the influx of Asian textiles deeply transformed the interior of Portuguese churches. This paper attempts to give an abbreviated description of that transformation by analyzing overlooked primary sources from that period, namely the so-called visitations (“inspections”) of churches belonging to the military orders which were conducted with a certain regularity. By the late fifteen century most of these churches’ references to imported textiles refer to production centers located in northwest Europe, namely in France, Flanders and Holland, complemented by some references to textiles produced in Italy and, most interestingly, in West Africa. However, during the sixteenth century, in particular from the 1520s onwards, Asian textiles became a dominant presence in these sources replacing almost all textiles produced in European and African centers, which were mainly made of wool, velvet, linen, damask and cotton. From c.1520 onwards, Asian cotton cloth and silks became the new norm of religious textiles in Portugal, being used for producing all types of religious garments used by the Portuguese clergy (chasubles, dalmatics, mantles, copes, albs, etc.), as well as dresses and cloaks for religious images and for decorating churches and chapels, from altar frontals and covers to curtains, shrine pavilions, shelve cloths, and other minor implements.