EXHIBITION Watermarks and calligraphy on music paper. Manuscripts from the Count of Redondo Fund

19 Sep ’23 – 6 Jan ’24 | Exhibition Room – Floor 3 | Free admission Opening and guided tour: 19 Sep ’23 at 17h30

The exhibition is part of the MARCMUS project – Studies of music paper and calligraphy in Portugal (18th and 19th centuries): the case study of the Conde de Redondo Fund, which aims to digitally record and systematically preserve the watermarks and paper types (the conjunction of the watermark and the number and size of the staves drawn by the rastra) of musical manuscripts. The literary and musical handwritings of the copyists and composers involved will also be recorded (the fund includes a significant number of autographs).

The exhibition, unprecedented in Portugal, features around three dozen watermarks and the handwriting of some composers (Portuguese and Italian) and copyists. The composers include Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774), João de Sousa Carvalho (1745-1798), António Leal Moreira, Giuseppe Totti (17??-1833), Marcos Portugal and Frei José Marques e Silva. Among the copyists who could be identified, works by Joaquim Casimiro da Silva (1767-1860), Manoel Marques Lagoa (c. 1780-1810) and Isidoro Simões Martins (fl. 1810-1837) are exhibited, who distinguished themselves in the context of producing manuscripts in the royal chapels and the Holy Patriarchal Church, where music was indispensable. With the support of the Terras de Santa Maria Paper Museum, the manual manufacture of paper will be exemplified through the display of some essential equipment: the vat, the moulds and the clothesline.