Elementos de uma cultura dinástica e visual: os sinais heráldicos e emblemáticos do rei D. Duarte is the title of the lecture presented by João Bernardo Galvão Teles, partner at LMT Abreu Loureiro, Correia de Matos & Galvão Teles, and Miguel Metelo de Seixas at the congress D. Duarte and his time: Art, Culture and Spirituality, which took place on the 26th and 27th of January of this year in Lisbon.

Contextualizing the fifteenth century as a revolutionary period for Portuguese heraldry, during which it acquired a social function and a semiotic charge far from those played before, the intervention of the Royal House was made evident through the manipulation of heraldry at the service of the centralization of royal power and the construction of a new nobiliary culture.

Using heraldry as a way of displaying and as visual propaganda of the foundations of the legitimacy of power, the reign of King Dom Duarte was characterized by the creation of the first means of royal interference in the heraldry of the nobility and the construction of its own symbolic discourse

During the lecture, the function of heraldry and of king Dom Duarte’s emblematic signs, as dynastic propaganda instruments and court culture, within the wider context of the visual signs of the entire house of Avis, was emphasized in the conclusion.

The congress D. Duarte and his time: Art, Culture and Spirituality was an initiative of the Institute for Medieval Studies of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, with the support of the Direcção-Geral de Arquivos.

At the monthly meeting of the Instituto Português de Heráldica, held yesterday, Lourenço Correia de Matos, a partner at LMT Abreu Loureiro, Correia de Matos & Galvão Teles, presented a lecture with the title The Order of Our Lady of Conception of Vila Viçosa in heraldry. This Order was founded by King Dom João VI in Brazil in 1818 and largely provided until the establishment of the Republic, its insignia thus appearing in numerous coats of arms of those rewarded. Some examples were presented, including letters of coats of arms of the period in question.

The Earl of Estarreja, Chancellor of the Order of Our Lady of Conception of Vila Viçosa, Dynastic Order of the Portuguese Royal House, attended the session..