View of the Monastery and Square of Belém

Urban views were a fairly uncommon theme in Portuguese
painting and even rarer when they did not linked to a particular
religious vow or the representation of some festivity. For this
reason, this painting is endowed with an exceptional value, all
the more so since it dates from the youth of the painter, who
is first referred to at the Brotherhood of St. Luke only in 1669.
Filipe Lobo, who is only known to have painted another version
of this work, certainly learned his artistic skills with Dirk Stoop,
a Dutch painter who was in Portugal in the 1650s. Stoop is known
to have painted a similar work (Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague),
which is larger, but has the same framing and lighting, and
which was certainly the prototype for the work of the young
Portuguese painter.