The Drawings in the Treatise of António de São Thiago (Goa 1659) :

Abstract

Sometime after 1659, in Goa, the Capuchin friar António de São Thiago completed a treatise centered on the Vision of Ourique by the first Portuguese king, Afonso Henriques. The manuscript is preserved in two versions, containing twenty-two and twelve hand drawings, respectively. This chapter provides close readings of all the drawings and provides new models for some of them. Not only does the treatise develop transculturally intertwined coats of arms, explainable only against the simultaneous knowledge of European heraldry and Hindu pictorial practice, but the iconographies of specific coats of arms are used as arguments for Portugal’s independence. Detailed comparisons of the drawings enable us to relate the two manuscripts to each other in a way that departs from the proposal of previous research.