Panel with moral emblems

This is one of the extraordinary pieces found in the so-called "Fundo Antigo" or Old Deposit of the National Azulejo Museum. This panel, whose provenance is unknown, employs one of the more enigmatic discourses in 17th century azulejos in Portugal. In it we recognise the prints on which it was inspired, taken from the influential work by Sebastian de Orozco y Covarrubias (1539-1613), Emblemas Morales, (Moral Emblems) published in Madrid in 1610. In its composition we have identified five images that more or less faithfully follow the reference work that inspired them, with the exception of the large boat occupying the centre of the composition. In the engraving this boat has no crew, but in the azulejo panel the crew are represented by richly dressed female figures, albeit roughly sketched, who row the boat to its destination. The synthesis of the ideas expressed in the emblems included in the work by Covarrubias, transcribed in three of the cases in the phylacteries with Latin legends that are found in the panel, can be translated quite simply as follows: exhort flight, for it can be transformed into victory (the boat), for the winners shall fructify whilst the losers will wither (the crown with two palms, one of which is dry), so that you must stand firm in the face of the transformation of circumstances (the pyramid) and serene in the face of adversity (the cypress) even when the powerful take action (the big fish devouring the little fish). As we do not know where there panel was going to be applied we cannot identify the underlying discourse with any clarity. Whilst we might see it as a political manifestation against the dominance of Spain which occupied Portugal until 1640, an interpretation that would have been possible if the panel was located in a civilian space, the presence of the female figures in the boat could change that idea. Indeed, the image may act to encourage the flight from the worldly space to seek refuge in the seclusion of a convent, in this case necessarily a female space, where the panel would have been placed and its contents understood in that time.