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The art of tile-making took root in the Iberian Peninsula under the influence of the Arabs, who brought the unknown mosaics to their conquered lands to decorate the walls of their palaces, giving them brilliance and ostentation through a complex geometric play.

The style fascinated Spaniards and Portuguese, and Iberian craftsmen got to work: they took the Moorish technique, simplified it and adapted the patterns to Western taste.

The first specimens used in Portugal – the 
Hispano Moorish 
-, came in the late 15th century from Seville and were used to cover the walls of palaces and churches.

About seventy years later, in 1560, pottery workshops began to appear in Lisbon that produced tiles using the faience technique imported from Italy.

The originality of the use of Portuguese tiles and the dialogue it establishes with other arts will make it unique in the world.

The National Tile Museum houses panels that bear witness to the evolution and monumentality of this decorative ceramic piece that adapts to the needs and styles of different eras.

Museu Nacional do Azulejos em Lisboa

The Retable of Our Lady of Life, from the late 16th century, composed of 1384 tiles that survived the great earthquake, is for art historian Alexandra Curvelo an example of the importance of tiles in Portugal.

The new tile industry flourished with orders from the nobility and clergy.

Large panels are custom-made to fill the walls of churches, convents, palaces, manors and gardens.

Inspiration comes from the decorative arts, textiles, goldsmithing, engravings and the travels of the Portuguese to the East.

Large scenographic compositions, a defining characteristic of the Baroque, appear, with geometric motifs, figurative and plant themes of exotic fauna and flora.

This is the time when the pattern tiles, with emphasis on the altar fronts, one of the original ways of using tiles, as we can see in this excerpt from the “Guided Tour” program.

It was the ruling classes who first cultivated a taste for tiles, choosing the most appropriate theme for decorating buildings; from military campaigns, historical episodes, to scenes from everyday life, religious, mythological and even some satires.

It was up to the potters to fulfill the requests, copying models, adapting fashions and styles.

At the end of the 17th century the quality of production and execution is higher, there are entire families involved in this art of making tiles and some painters begin to assert themselves as artists, starting to sign their works, thus beginning the Cycle of the Masters.

In Portuguese tilework, unusual scenes appear, which surprise both for their originality and for the audacity of the craftsman to replace human beings with monkeys, jaguars and chickens, for example, thus constructing fanciful, ironic stories that arouse laughter.

The concern to bring new themes to the decorative arts is often based on a certain improvisation associated with this unique way of wanting to do something different, which we can appreciate in the panel highlighted below, entitled “The Leopard Hunt“.

The polychromy of yellows, greens and purplish browns will give way to blue on a white background, two colors inherited through Dutch influence and oriental porcelain.

Chronology of the main moments in the history of Portuguese tiles. It includes examples of in situ application of patterned, figurative and ornamental parietal coatings, which testify to the architectural character of these applications and distinguish them from applications known in other European countries.

Also present are the multiple influences that the Portuguese tile has incorporated and reinterpreted over these more than five centuries of use.

This synthesis also highlights the continuous citations of taste, techniques and motifs from previous eras, in a continuous dialog between past and present that marks the history of Portuguese tiles.

After the earthquake of 1755, the reconstruction of Lisbon will impose another rhythm in the production of patterned tiles, today called Pombaline tiles.
Pombaline
used to decorate the new buildings.

The tiles are manufactured in series, combining industrial and artisanal techniques.

At the end of the 18th century, tiles ceased to be the exclusive preserve of the nobility and clergy, and the wealthy bourgeoisie placed the first orders for their estates and palaces.

The panels sometimes tell the story of the family and even of its social rise, as can be seen in the set entitled “História do Chapeleiro António Joaquim Carneiro”, exhibited at the National Tile Museum.

From the 19th century onwards, the tile gained more visibility, moving from palaces and churches to the facades of buildings, in a close relationship with architecture.

The urban landscape is illuminated by the light reflected from the glazed surfaces.

Tile production is intense, new factories are created in Lisbon, Porto and Aveiro. Later, in the 20th century, tiles were used in railroad and metro stations, some of which were signed by renowned artists.

The tradition has become even more popular, presenting itself as a decorative solution for kitchens and bathrooms, in a proof of resistance, innovation and renewal of this small ceramic piece.

AZULEJO is the Portuguese word for a square ceramic plate with one side decorated and glazed.

Its use is common to other countries such as Spain, Italy, Holland, Turkey, Iran or Morocco, but in Portugal it assumes special importance in the universal context of artistic creation:

1. For the longevity of its use, without interruption for five centuries.
2. By the way of application, as an element that structures architectures, through large coatings inside buildings and on exterior facades.
3. Because of the way it has been understood over the centuries, not only as decorative art but also as a means of renewing taste and recording imagery.

Tiles in Portugal – support for tolerance between exoticism and sensuality

The AZULEJO is an identifying element of Portuguese culture, revealing some of its deep matrices:

1. The capacity for dialogue with other peoples, evident in the taste for exoticism, in which the themes of a European culture are mixed with those of Arab and Indian cultures, for example.
2. An expeditious practical sense, revealed in the use of a conventionally poor material, the tile, as a means of aesthetic qualification of the interior spaces of buildings and urban spaces.
3. A specific sensibility that in Portugal is oriented more towards values of Sensuality than of Concept, manifested immediately by the preference for a colored material, reflecting light, for the immediate expression of painting, and the choice of the images themselves more focused on the description of the real.

History and Chronology of Portuguese Tiles

1. Period from 1490 to 1550
2. Period from 1500 to 1560
3. Period from 1575 to 1600
4. Period from 1580 to 1630
5. Period from 1600 to 1700
6. Period from 1610 to 1680
7. Period from 1675 to 1700
8. Period from 1700 to 1725
9. Period from 1725 to 1750
10. Period from 1740 to 1790
11. Period from 1770 to 1820
12. Period from 1780 to 1830
13. Period from 1840 to 1900
14. Period from 1890 to 1920
15. Period from 1900 to 1940
16. Period from 1950 to 1970
17. Period from 1970 to 2013

1. Period from 1490 to 1550

Hispano-Moorish tile

Imports from the main tile-producing centers in the Iberian Peninsula: Seville, Manises, Valencia, Malaga and Toledo.

Patterned tiles with geometric motifs and lacework, and later also with plant motifs, applied with an architectural sense.

Dry rope techniques and, at the turn of the centuries, edging.

Islamic tradition

The first known uses of tiles in Portugal as monumental wall coverings were made with Hispano-Moorish tiles, imported from Seville around 1503.

The Arab presence in the Iberian Peninsula was felt by the permanence of a practice of ceramics, Seville being the great center producer of tiles still in the archaic techniques of rope-dry and edge, until the mid-sixteenth century.

The motifs evolved from Moorish geometric lacework and chains to European plant and animal themes, between Gothic and pure Renaissance taste.

However, more than the motifs themselves, there remains in Portugal a Moorish taste for excess in the total decorative covering of spaces, a kind of horror of emptiness.

2. Period from 1500 to 1560

Import tile [azulejo renascentista e maneirista]

Tiles were imported, already using the majolica technique, from Seville, with Francisco Niculoso (1504), and from Flanders (1558), where Italian artists had settled.

They represent classic stories, brutescos, ferroneries, among other motifs. There are specific orders with Portuguese heraldry, for example for the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa.

The influence of Italy and Flanders

The development of ceramics in Italy, with the possibility of painting directly on the tile using the majolica technique, made it possible to create compositions with various figurations, both historical and decorative.

Italian ceramists settled in the Flanders region and disseminated Mannerist decorative motifs and themes from classical antiquity.

Orders were placed in Flanders for Portugal and the settlement of Flemish potters in Lisbon led to the beginning of Portuguese production from the second half of the 16th century.

Internationally circulated models, originating from a Mannerist aesthetic in Flanders, are now used by tile painters who create monumental compositions, made with the erudite knowledge of drawing and painting masters such as Francisco and Marçal de Matos.

17th – 18th centuries – The works commissioned in Holland

From the last quarter of the 17th century, monumental sets of tiles were imported from the Netherlands for almost fifty years.

Designed by skilled painters such as Willem van der Kloet and Jan van Oort, the technical superiority of the Dutch tiles as well as their blue painting, quoting the porcelain of China, were to the liking of the Portuguese public.

The effort to approximate our taste in the realization of monumental sets contributed to this success.

These imports forced the national workshops to react, calling in painters with academic training, thus responding to a now more demanding clientele, and in the face of the new Portuguese tiles there was a natural abandonment of imports, with the last major order dating from 1715.

In addition to the large figurative panels, common tiles also came from the Netherlands, called ?figura avulsa”, each representing an autonomous scene, an intimate production in keeping with Dutch taste, but applied in Portugal according to our tradition, with frames painted on the tile.

17th century  – Repeating tiles

Once the taste for monumental ceramic tiles in churches and palaces was established in Portugal, it was expensive to commission large single compositions, suitable for each space, and more often tiles were chosen for repetition.

Between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, compositions of enxaquetados, plain-colored tiles that alternately created decorative meshes on the walls, were made.

Although tiles were inexpensive, they were complex and slow to apply, making them costly and leading to their gradual abandonment.

Pattern tiles, produced in large quantities and easy to apply, were then used first in repeating modules with 232 tiles, then in larger modules reaching 12312 tiles, generating strong diagonal rhythms.

In any of these uses of patterned and coved tiles, the use of surrounds and bars was essential for effective integration into the contours of the architecture.

3. Period from 1575 to 1600

First Portuguese production

Beginning of Portuguese production, with the same characteristics as the previous cycle and according to the majolica technique, of which the chapel of São Roque, in the Jesuit church with the same invocation, is one of the best examples, signed and dated: Francisco de Matos, 1584.

4. Period from 1580 to 1630

Tiled

Coatings with geometric schemes, articulated with the spaces where they are inserted, through tiles of a single color (blue and green) combined with other whites, cut and adapted to the architecture.

Coatings with geometric schemes, articulated with the spaces where they are inserted, through tiles of a single color (blue and green) combined with other whites, cut and adapted to the architecture.

5. Period from 1600 to 1700

Pattern tile

Integral coverings with patterned, polychrome tiles depicting geometric, interlaced, plant, floral, etc. motifs, bordered by bars, borders or friezes, reminiscent of tapestries.

As such, these coverings have come to be known as ‘carpet’.

There were also altar frontals, simulating oriental-inspired fabrics, with exotic representations and brutesque compositions.

Integral coverings with patterned, polychrome tiles depicting geometric, interlaced, plant, floral, etc. motifs, bordered by bars, borders or friezes, reminiscent of tapestries.

As such, these coverings have come to be known as ‘carpet’. There were also altar frontals, simulating oriental-inspired fabrics, with exotic representations and brutesque compositions.

Integral coverings with patterned, polychrome tiles depicting geometric, interlaced, plant, floral, etc. motifs, bordered by bars, borders or friezes, reminiscent of tapestries.

As such, these coverings have come to be known as ‘carpet’. There were also altar frontals, simulating oriental-inspired fabrics, with exotic representations and brutesque compositions.

6. Period from 1610 to 1680

Intense polychromy

Figurative, polychrome and briefly drawn scenes are integrated into the large surfaces filled with patterned tiles.

These representations would eventually become autonomous and, in the second half of the century, figurative coatings or brutescos and ample foliage are identified, executed in intense polychromy.

The representations were inspired by engravings.

Figurative, polychrome and briefly drawn scenes are integrated into the large surfaces filled with patterned tiles.

These representations would eventually become autonomous and, in the second half of the century, figurative coatings or brutescos and ample foliage are identified, executed in intense polychromy.

The representations were inspired by engravings.

7. Period from 1675 to 1700

Transition period

The first specimens, still with a manganese outline, were painted in blue and white.

The coatings are applied to the interior of churches and palaces, in complex iconographic programmes and organized into reading levels.

Some names of painters are known, with Gabriel del Barco deserving special mention.

The first specimens, still with a manganese outline, were painted in blue and white.

The coatings are applied to the interior of churches and palaces, in complex iconographic programmes and organized into reading levels. Some names of painters are known, with Gabriel del Barco deserving special mention.

The first specimens, still with a manganese outline, were painted in blue and white.

The coatings are applied to the interior of churches and palaces, in complex iconographic programmes and organized into reading levels.

Some names of painters are known, with Gabriel del Barco deserving special mention.

8. Period from 1700 to 1725

Masters Cycle

Painting of great erudition, in blue and white, executed by masters who were also oil and ceiling painters.

Author tiles, signed by the most important painters, each revealing different ways of understanding painting on tiles: António de Oliveira Bernardes, Manuel dos Santos, António Pereira, Mestre P.M.P..

18th Century – The Masters Cycle

At the beginning of the 18th century, the tile painter once again assumed the status of artist, often signing his panels.

The forerunner of this situation was the Spaniard Gabriel del Barco, active in Portugal at the end of the 17th century, introducing a taste for more exuberant decorative involvement, and a painting freed from the rigorous contour of drawing.

These innovations paved the way for other artists, ushering in a golden period of Portuguese tilemaking – the Masters Cycle – reaction to Dutch imports, the painters applied to their works an original spontaneity in the freer and more pictorial use of engravings, and in the creativity of tile compositions adjusted to architectural spaces.

António Pereira, Manuel dos Santos and the monogrammer PMP are the most important painters, but António de Oliveira Bernardes and his son Policarpo de Oliveira Bernardes should be highlighted.

An expert in composition, António de Oliveira Bernardes was the master par excellence in the modeling of figures and treatment of the surrounding spaces, and with his great technical and artistic ability, the main responsible for the most sophisticated creations of Portuguese figurative tiles of this period.

9. Period from 1725 to 1750

Great Joanine Production

Large production, due to the growing number of commissions, carried out by painters trained by the previous generation of Masters.

Increased staging, clearly visible in the increasingly complex and cut-out fittings.

This cycle includes painters such as Policarpo de Oliveira Bernardes, Teotónio dos Santos, Valentim de Almeida and Nicolau de Freitas.

18th Century – The Great Joanine Production

The second quarter of the 18th century saw an unprecedented increase in the manufacture of tiles, which was also due to large orders from Brazil.

It was the period of the Great Production, partly coinciding with the reign of King João V (1706-1750), which corresponded to the use of the largest cycles of historicized panels ever executed in Portugal.

The increase in production led to the repetition of figurations, the use of serial motifs such as albarradas and the simplification of scene painting, with frames gaining great scenographic importance.

In an extension of the Masters Cycle, some painters such as Nicolau de Freitas, Teotónio dos Santos and Valentim de Almeida are also notable for the quality of their work.

In addition to the religious themes commissioned by the Church, palaces now used more bucolic, mythological, hunting and war scenes, or those related to courtly daily life, as seen in the so-called invitation figures placed at the entrances.

10. Period from 1740 to 1790

Rococo tile

Introduction of the rococo language, especially in the shells and asymmetrical foliage of the trims, which at the same time also returned to color.

Figural areas continue to be painted in blue and, more rarely, manganese. In addition to everyday scenes, there are many examples of chinoiserie.

18th century – The Rococo

In the middle of the century there were changes in the taste of Portuguese society with the adoption of a decorative grammar influenced by the French Regency style, but above all by Rococo, through engravings from central Europe.

The preference for organic forms, a typical example of which is the irregular shell, is seen in delicate compositions where decorative effects are achieved by the use of two contrasting shades of blue, and then by the use of several colors.

The figurative panels of the period mostly show gallant and bucolic scenes, coming from Watteau’s engravings.

The earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755 forced the reconstruction of the city, and for this purpose the pattern was recovered as a means capable of animating an architecture that, due to the urgency of the rebuilding, had become very clean and functional.

This type of tile became known as Pombaline, a designation derived from the name of the minister of King José I (r. 1750-1777), responsible for the reconstruction of Lisbon, the Marquis of Pombal.

In addition to religious themes in churches, small devotional panels or registers were widely used, placed on the facades of buildings as protection against major disasters.

11. Period from 1770 to 1820

Pombaline pattern and D. Maria

A return to patterned tiles, incorporating motifs that mimic railings (and later textiles or wallpaper), with rosettes and florets, and arranged in complex simulations of light.

Records of saints, who protected buildings against natural phenomena, are also a constant in this era.

 

A return to patterned tiles, incorporating motifs that mimic railings (and later textiles or wallpaper), with rosettes and florets, and arranged in complex simulations of light.

Records of saints, who protected buildings against natural phenomena, are also a constant in this era.

12. Period from 1780 to 1830

Neoclassical tile

Chain with decorative expression.

The coverings were reduced in scale and used in ashlars articulated with the wall paintings, whose theme reflected the function of the space they were part of.

Beginning of factory production, with special emphasis on the Real Fábrica de Louça, in Rato (Lisbon).

Chain with decorative expression.

The coverings were reduced in scale and used in ashlars articulated with the wall paintings, whose theme reflected the function of the space they were part of. Beginning of factory production, with special emphasis on the Real Fábrica de Louça, in Rato (Lisbon).

18th – 19th Century – The Neoclassical

At the end of the 18th century, and largely originating in the Real Fábrica de Louça do Rato, in Lisbon, tiles assimilated neoclassicism, an international style disseminated through the engravings of Robert and James Adam, and associated in Portuguese tiles with landscapes executed by Jean Pillement.

The ceramic panels are now low ashlars and articulate with the fresco painting, of which they mention the white, desaturated backgrounds, endowing themselves with a lightness and a profuse variety of themes and compositions that make this production one of the most surprising.

The panels are filled with light ornaments, of exquisite polychromy and without expression of volume, the centers being marked with monochrome medallions of calligraphic execution, corresponding to the taste of the new bourgeoisie that also appears as an important tile commissioner.

These tell stories of social ascension, represent elegant figures of the time, while the Church does not abandon the traditional religious cycles and the nobility the previously preferred themes.

13. Period from 1840 to 1900

Facade tiles

Total coating of facades, giving buildings color and brightness, and thus changing the urban image. Use of standard tiles manufactured in various industrial units. There were also figurative façades, intended for specific spaces, such as those of Luís Ferreira, known as Ferreira das Tabuletas (1807-?).

19th century – The tiled façades

With the definitive affirmation of a bourgeoisie linked to commerce and industry, (re)born from the economic chaos in which Portugal was plunged after the French invasions (1807-1811) and the civil war between absolutists and liberals (1832-1834), there is a new use of the tile.

In the second half of the 19th century, the less expensive patterned tile covered thousands of façades, produced by factories in Lisbon – Viúva Lamego, Sacavém, Constância, Roseira – Porto and Gaia – Massarelos, Devezas.

Using semi-industrial or industrial techniques, allowing for greater speed and accuracy of production, the facades with patterned tiles and surrounds delimiting the doors and windows, are fundamental elements, through color and variations of light, of urban identity in Portugal.

With manufacturing units concentrated mainly in Porto and Lisbon, two sensitivities have been defined.

In the north, the use of pronounced reliefs is characteristic, in a taste for volume and the contrast of light and shadow; in the south, the smooth patterns of ancient memory are maintained, transposing them from interior spaces to an almost ostentatious exterior application on the facades.

14. Period from 1890 to 1920

Art Nouveau

The beginning of the 20th century is characterized by the persistence of 19th century tiled façades, but also by the appearance of partial or, more rarely, integral Art Nouveau coverings, designed specifically for a given façade.

15. Period from 1900 to 1940

Historicist tiles

Historicist values conveyed by revivalist tiles, with authors such as Jorge Colaço (1868-1842) or Leopoldo Battistini (1865-1936) standing out.

Citation of Baroque blue and white painting, in depictions of scenes from national and regional history, as well as popular customs. Sometimes incorporates Art Deco elements, especially in the framing.

16. Period from 1950 to 1970

Modern Tile

Greater articulation between artists and architects, influenced by the International Modern Movement, received in Portugal via Brazil. Tile applied in new buildings and urban equipment, such as the Lisbon Metro (inaugurated in 1959), which had the collaboration of Maria Keil, or in the housing complex of Av. Infante Santo (1955-1960).

17. Period from 1970 to 2013

The contemporary

Great diversity of form, application solutions and media. The role of major cultural events, which have enabled the urban regeneration of cities, is highlighted. New ways of articulating the tile and its supports. Cladding of pre-existing structures or the tiles used as public artworks with autonomy.

History and Chronology of Portuguese Tiles