Neptun and Choronis

Image based on the engraving Neptune chasing Coronis becoming a crow, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Hendrik Goltzius, 1590. Panel of Coimbra production, from the first quarter of the eighteenth century. This is the beginning of a period in which Lisbon ceases to be the almost exclusive center of tile manufacture, with Coimbra arising with production destined for consumption in the Center and North of the Country. In addition to differences in the palette employed, here tones are denser and earthy than those used in the capital, the tiles of Coimbra are distinguished by the density of their frames and by the naive character of their representations. Nevertheless, in the second half of the century, with the affirmation of the Rococo, it is precisely in this production that we can find some of the most genuine aspects of this style, namely the tension and asymmetry, which in Lisbon did not have a great echo.