One Way Ticket

This blog post is about the national Museum de Machado de Castro, which is built on top of the Roman city of Aeminium, which is now in the center of the university of Coimbra.

What now appears to be tunnels and chambers originally supported the forum in the city of Aeminium which was authorized to be built by Rome in about 30 A.D. This area appears to be about 1/2 of a football field long and about as wide.

It’s a labyrinth of arches, walkways and chambers.

Some of the first art we saw in the museum was a room full of life-size terra-cotta figures – 12 men and a Christ figure depicting the scene of the last supper. These terra-cotta figures were pieced together from fragments. The title under the figure above was “an effeminate John“. 

The Jesus.

Some of the religious art in the museum did not seem to reflect the normal presentations of the Jesus story. Above is a very pregnant Mary. 

This crucifixion was called the black Christ or the black Jesus. It portrayed the crucifixion in a very graphic human way. Carved in the wood were globes of drying blood on the backside of the arms. It also focused on the mouth and face of a choking dying person. 

This painting was entitled “the assumption of Mary Magdalene into heaven.“

We spent at least three hours, maybe more, with the art in this museum. What is presented in this museum is Portuguese art as it developed for about the past 1200 years. What is there, what we saw, we are not able to really express or describe. Much of it was simply jaw dropping, and we would say “oh my God.“