The Grão Vasco National Museum is celebrating its centenary, and the CTT Correios de Portugal (Postal Operator of Portugal) is to mark this important anniversary for this eminent institution by issuing this philatelic issue in honour of the event. In doing so, it seeks to pay homage to this significant part of Viseu’s heritage, a museum that has provided a relevant cultural service to the city and surrounding region. This area has garnered a national and even international profile as home to a museum that is universally recognised as first class due to the artistic and historical splendour of its collection, which has made it one of Portugal’s foremost museums.
The museum was founded due to the need to preserve and showcase the valuable collection of paintings from Viseu Cathedral, made up of beautiful works by the great Portuguese painter from the Renaissance, Vasco Fernandes, known as Grão Vasco. We believe that the prominence of this artist’s work within this unique collection of early Portuguese painting was both vital and central to the initial ideas behind the establishment of the museum, which soon (in 1916) acquired the name by which it is known to this day – the Grão Vasco Museum – in honour of the artist who produced the works of art that make up its seminal collection.
It later blossomed, like all living entities that find their raison d’être and source of sustenance in culture and the community, growing to poised and perfected maturity.
The long journey from that early beginning to the present day, which finds the museum as a secular institution, has been a rewarding one, punctuated by myriad events and driven by high-reaching ambition. First came the enrichment of the collections through the outstanding work to incorporate an array of different works of art, carried out by the first director, Almeida Moreira, a Viseu native with a robust intellectual background and a deep artistic sensibility. He was truly a man of his time, embodying the political and ideological spirit of the First Portuguese Republic.
It is also worth highlighting the commitment of all of the directors who followed him in the history of the museum. While they espoused a whole range of political and ideological leanings (some against and some responsive to cultural currents and happenings), each of them in turn displayed their professional dedication to a museum that has been a secular haven for knowledge, research and understanding of the arts in all their various forms, and has developed and promoted the artistic and cultural heritage that it has so carefully preserved on behalf of us all.
Finally, this cultural institution in Viseu saw the conceptual and physical reconfiguration of its museum space in 2004, masterminded by the award-winning Portuguese architect Souto Moura, and it was granted the status of National Museum on 18 May 2015 (International Museum Day). In short, the current Grão Vasco National Museum is a rich repository of knowledge about art and the ideas that inform the genius behind artistic creations, and of museological practices that help to demonstrate what can be achieved by making the history of art and of artists an essential part of the history of our museums.
A visit to the Grão Vasco National Museum will always be, as it has been for the last hundred years of its existence, a journey of discovery rich with significance and symbolism, which we are now reaffirming with renewed force and conviction.
