Portugal in the Age of Exploration

The maritime discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries placed Europe in direct contact with the remaining continents, thus opening an age of world economy. They brought together peoples and cultures, exchanged habits and beliefs, and made possible an exchange of artistic techniques and products undreamed of before.

The discoveries introduced a global dimension to the evolution of Europe’s peoples, and created a privileged position for the Iberian peninsula, and particularly Portugal, as a link between Europe and the rest of the world. Wealth and products flowed in to Portugal from the newly-discovered continents. Thanks to economic wealth and expansion, works of art - sculpture, goldsmithery, illumination, architecture and painting - from the centres of the European Renaissance (Flanders, Germany, Italy, northern Spain) flowed in too.

The illustration, from an early 16th-century tapestry in Lisbon, shows Vasco da Gama disembarking at Calcutta in India.

© 1998 Oxfordshire Museum Service, Setúbal Museums and the Benaki Museum