Jupiter with the Nymphs of Dodona

The collection includes a painting by the artist Vieira Portuense, which is exceptionally sophisticated both in the singularity of its theme – Jupiter with the Nymphs of Dodona – and in the way it materialises the bodies of the figures through the vibration of the light, then causes them to dissolve into the depths of the landscape, using a remarkably well constructed patch of paint to progressively join heaven and earth together in a cloud of luminous dust.
"This scene drawn from Roman mythology recounts an episode from Jupiter's childhood. A mysterious and sophisticated painting that evokes one of the many versions of Jupiter's birth and childhood. This one tells us that an oracle had warned Saturn that one of his sons would dethrone him. In order to avoid this, Saturn devoured his first five descendants at birth. Immediately after giving birth to Jupiter in secret, his mother Rhea gave her son to the Nymphs of Dodona to be raised to adulthood, and then, the morning after, took a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to Saturn. Saturn devoured what his wife brought him without realising that this was not the child. Jupiter was saved and the prediction of the oracle would later be fulfilled.
The painting offers a synthesis of this narrative at two levels: Jupiter is safe and surrounded by the nymphs, the gentle nurses that fed him, placed amid bare breasts and cooking utensils, while the one that is standing with her back to the observer, points to Rhea’s hoax represented in the sky. Saturn, sitting on clouds, is preparing to receive what he thinks is a new-born baby. (...)
In pictorial terms, the work is also quite sophisticated. The painted patch and the sense of a vibrating light cause the depths of the landscape to merge into the sky, spreading back over the topography of the foreground and merging the outlines of the forms into one another in order to create a lyrical and very diffuse picturality that instinctively leads us to think of the British painting from that time and of a distant Correggio-like softness. The clothes and carnations of the nymphs similarly display this pictorial openness and subtlety, their cloaks and profiles being shaded diaphanously and highlighted with fine, angular brushstrokes of light that impose themselves visually as small fragments or sequences of "pure" painting. This seductive scene is painted in a "mannerist" style, evoking and justifying certain anatomical impossibilities, such as the elongated legs of the seated nymphs and the strangely and ingeniously contorted pose and proportions of the one that is holding Jupiter. It is, in short, a mysterious and attractive painting by the versatile Francisco Vieira."                                                                                                                        José Alberto Seabra de Carvalho