Oath of Viriathus

Francisco Vieira Portuense (1765-1799)

Oil on canvas, c. 1798-1799

Inv. 1357

In 1799, Vieira Portuense exhibited his painting Oath of Viriathus at the Royal Academy in London. It was offered to the Prince Regent and future King João VI, and placed in the palace of Ajuda until it was transferred along with the court to Brazil and subsequently lost. The present work is a preparatory study for that painting.

The notion of the Oath was a theme which originated around the time of the French Revolution and soon became widely appreciated (we refer, by way of example, to Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David, a work from 1784 held in the Louvre Museum). It has been suggested that Vieira used the Oath of Viriathus as a quasi-allegory for the state of international conflict in Europe at the time, with the activities of Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies forcing the artist to move to London where a strong anti-French sentiment prevailed. There thus seems to be a certain nationalist element in the representation of this popular hero challenging a powerful empire, though the empire in Vieira Portuense’s time was another, albeit a common enemy of the people.