Gil Vicente - Lisbon, Portugal
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 38° 42.875 W 009° 08.379
29S E 487859 N 4285113
This sculpture sits atop Lisbon's D. Maria II National Theatre.
Waymark Code: WMKRFR
Location: Lisboa, Portugal
Date Posted: 05/22/2014
Views: 8
This sculpture of Gil Vicente depicts him as a young man, standing and holding a scroll in his right hand. His left hand rests casually on his hip. He wears a cape-like piece over a buttoned vest and short puffy pants. A lyre rests behind him.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Gil Vicente (... c.1465 – c. 1536), called the Trobadour, was a Portuguese playwright and poet who acted in and directed his own plays. Considered the chief dramatist of Portugal he is sometimes called the "Portuguese Plautus," often referred to as the "Father of Portuguese drama" and as one of Western literature's greatest playwrights. Vicente worked in Portuguese as much as he worked in Spanish[3] and is thus, with Juan del Encina, considered joint-father of Spanish drama.
Vicente was attached to the courts of the Portuguese kings Manuel I and John III. He rose to prominence as a playwright largely on account of the influence of Queen Dowager Leonor, who noticed him as he participated in court dramas and subsequently commissioned him to write his first theatrical work.
He may also have been identical to an accomplished goldsmith of the same name, creator of the famous monstrance of Belém, and master of rhetoric of King Manuel I.
His plays and poetry, written in both Portuguese and Spanish, were a reflection of the changing times during the transition from Middle Ages to Renaissance and created a balance between the former time of rigid mores and hierarchical social structure and the new society in which this order was undermined.
While many of Vicente's works were composed to celebrate religious and national festivals or to commemorate events in the life of the royal family, others draw upon popular culture to entertain, and often to critique, Portuguese society of his day.
Though some of his works were later suppressed by the Portuguese Inquisition, causing his fame to wane, he is now recognised as one of the principal figures of the Portuguese Renaissance."