The programme studies, in global terms, the remarkable historical-artistic heritage of the spaces of Portuguese influence in the world, between the 16th century and our time. Such testimonies, as a profound identity mark, involve all fields of production, from architecture to urbanism, from sculpture to imaginary, from furniture to carving, from painting to drawing, from pottery to tile, from gilding to polychrome, from textiles to silverware, from sgraffito to stucco, from ivory to nam-ban, and other forms of decorative arts. Significant examples of the construction and the arts subsidiary to architecture (religious, military and civil) are chosen, in their dialectal components and their distinctive morphologies, produced in the late Gothic, "Manueline", Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, Neoclassical, Romanticism, going through the revivalist cycles of the 1800's and even some contemporary artistic trends. We value both the goods coming from these spaces, which include the territories that were once part of the former Empire (Brazil, Africa, Morocco, the State of India, Macao, Timor), and other geographical latitudes where the Lusophone mark was felt (Ceylon, Indonesia, Japan) and left testimonies during the colonial era and after decolonization. Also, we analyse the European artistic manifestations (including works remitted from Portugal to the overseas territories), local artistic currents (the art of the "reigns" and workshops that take on syncretism and symbiosis processes) and the phenomena of miscegenation and formal hybridity, with its perpetuation tonics, mergers of styles and communion of models, which characterize and differentiate these Lusophone trunk patrimonies and attest to their weight and importance in the set of World Heritage.

 

The lack of knowledge about this colonial heritage linked to the territories under Portuguese influence - despite the flow of research already carried out, and the increasing revaluation of such collections in the arts market, especially at international level - derives, on the one hand, from the preponderance of a some reductive dimension on the part of the scholars, who exalted a certain exoticism with which the heritage was observed, blurring it from its real artistic-symbolic potentialities and, on the other hand, from the arrogant self-diminution so often voted for the productions of the spaces of ancient domination, in the World, seen only as the repercussion of European scholarly models and within a mere dimension of picturesque. It also survived, with its nostalgic contours, an undisguised historical perspective and a bad conscience about the colonial past, which leads to the blurred appreciation of such heritage. It is a reflection of concepts that also fits within this discipline.