Portuguese Renaissance

The Portuguese Renaissance refers to the cultural and artistic movement in Portugal during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Though the movement coincided with the Spanish and Italian Renaissances, the Portuguese Renaissance was largely separate from other European Renaissances and instead was incredibly important in opening Europe to the unknown and bringing a more worldly view to those European Renaissances, as at the time the Portuguese Empire spanned the globe.

As the pioneer of the Age of Discoveries, Portugal flourished in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, with voyages to India, the Orient, the Americas, and Africa. This immense trade network would create an incredibly wealthy Portuguese nobility and monarchy, that would become patrons for an incredible flourishing of culture, arts, and technology in Portugal and all over the world.

Diplomats, merchants, students, humanists, scholars, and artists, from all over Europe, were drawn to Portugal during its Renaissance. The maritime trade of the Age of Discovery played a decisive role in the evolution of the Portuguese Renaissance. Trade intensified contacts with important centers of the Italian Renaissance and it allowed a new commercial bourgeoisie to prosper and have excess funds to become patrons of the Portuguese Renaissance, much like the other Renaissances of Europe.

The discovery of new worlds and contact with other civilizations led to a cultural mix, which was reflected in the arts and literature of the Portuguese Renaissance. The contact with the civilizations of Africa and the East led to the importation of numerous objects of ceramics, textiles and furniture, precious woods, ivory and silk, in turn, led to the emergence of new artistic forms resulting cultural exchanges between Europe, and East Africa, through the Portuguese. The new trade of items with the newly discovered lands is also what allowed the Portuguese Renaissance to be funded, by creating a wealthy Portuguese nobility and merchant class.

It was Portugal's connection, through the vast Portuguese Empire, to a full world of trade, culture, and commerce, from Japan to Brazil and from the Azores to Goa, that allowed the Portuguese Renaissance to be born. Portugal's unique ability to interact and colonize other peoples (later called Lusotropicalism), allowed it fund a flourishing Renaissance of its own, of arts, humanities, religion, and sciences alike, not just in its mainland, but throughout its empire, due to the special link that the Portuguese Empire had to Portugal.

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