La memoria a colori: Tombe policrome portoghesi della prima metà del XIV secolo

The paper focuses on the analysis of four tombs carved over a decade, roughly between 1318 and 1328, to commemorate illustrious members of Portugal’s first royal dynasty: King Dinis of Portugal, his Queen consort Isabel of Aragon, and the grandchildren of the royal couple, the infante Dinis and his sister, the infanta Isabel. With respect to the theme of restoration – ideal and/or material – of the medieval polychromy, those funerary monuments present specific issues that have been approached from different methodological perspectives and pose different questions to which answers have been suggested from the available sources and information. However, the study of colour in the four case-studies under consideration helps shed light not only on artistic practice and techniques, in medieval and modern times, but also on the process of commemoration that the recipients of the tombs were subjected to and, in a broader sense, on their own memory.