National Academy of Fine Arts

The National Academy of Fine Arts (Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes) is the oldest Portuguese academic institution dedicated to the arts and continues, to this day, to act as an advisory body to the State on matters of inventorying, classification and safeguarding of artistic and monumental heritage. Based in the Chiado district of Lisbon, it occupies part of the former Convento de São Francisco da Cidade, a building it shares with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado.

Foundation and institutional history

The institution was created by decree of 25 October 1836, signed in the name of Queen Maria II, as part of the cultural reforms promoted by Passos Manuel. From the outset it was housed in the building of the former Convento de São Francisco da Cidade, where a fine-arts library was also established that would come to hold tens of thousands of volumes. During the reign of King Luís it came to be known as the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1881, a reform separated the teaching mission — the school that would give rise to the present-day Faculty of Fine Arts — from the cultural and honorific functions of the Academy, a division that still persists today. With the proclamation of the Republic, the Academy was abolished in 1911. It would be re-established in 1932, by Decree no. 20 977, under the name it has retained ever since: Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes.

Advisory functions and heritage safeguarding

The Academy’s statutes assign it a clearly heritage-related role. In addition to promoting the study and dissemination of the arts, it is responsible for issuing opinions whenever officially consulted on matters within its statutory remit, and for cooperating with the competent bodies in compiling the descriptive and critical inventory of monuments and works of art, both national and foreign. It also has the task of cooperating in the classification, conservation and restoration of the country’s archaeological, monumental and artistic heritage.

This advisory role forms part of the long chain of heritage-oversight bodies in Portugal, today headed by the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage — a trajectory described on the page about the history of heritage institutions. Throughout the twentieth century, the opinions of the academies and councils of fine arts were central elements in the processes of heritage designation that led to the classification of many of the national monuments.

Headquarters and collection

The Franciscan conventual complex, of rectangular plan organised around cloisters, has housed since 1836 a remarkable group of cultural institutions. The Academy preserves within it a valuable specialised library, with works ranging from the late fifteenth century to the present day, and a collection of painting, sculpture and drawing associated with the history of Portuguese artistic education. The presence of Saint Francis in national cultural and heritage life is also reflected in other complexes, such as the Church of São Francisco in Évora, a testament to the spread of the Franciscan order in Portugal.

Today, the National Academy of Fine Arts is a scientific institution of public utility, endowed with legal personality and administrative autonomy, under the supervision of the government’s cultural portfolio. It maintains a regular programme of publications, academic sessions and advisory opinions, asserting itself as one of the historic voices in the defence of Portuguese artistic heritage.