Gaspar Dias
Kingdom of Portugal · Mannerism, Portuguese Renaissance
The story
Around 1584 Gaspar Dias painted the altarpiece for the chapel of Saint Roch in the church of São Roque in Lisbon, a large panel of an angel appearing at night to the plague saint. It is the work that made his name, and it is still in that church, which today belongs to Lisbon's Santa Casa da Misericórdia, a charitable brotherhood.
Dias was one of the Portuguese painters who went to Rome to learn. He studied there on a grant and brought home the elegant, elongated manner of Parmigianino, the Parma master, which shows in the twisting poses of his saint and angel. Back in Lisbon by about 1560, he was named in 1574 painter to the royal trading houses of Mina and India. For the São Roque panel he took the classical hall behind the figures, meant as the Temple of Solomon, from a print by the Flemish designer Hans Vredeman de Vries. He died in Lisbon in 1591.
