Politics and the arts in Lisbon and Rome

Dealing with a complex king, this edited collection elucidates a monarch’s vision of Rome that deeply affected his political choices and cultural policy during the first half of the eighteenth-century. John V of Portugal became king in 1707 in a pivotal moment for the European balance of power. The Kingdom of Portugal was still demanding the same privileges as its powerful neighbours and the relation with Rome was considered a vehicle to obtain them. Arts and music had a special and unprecedented place in the king’s plans and this book approaches that dynamic from several interdisciplinary perspectives.The unifying thread across this book’s chapters remains the omnipresence of Rome as a paradigm on several levels: political, religious, intellectual, artistic, and musical. Rather than providing an exhaustive analysis of the period as a whole, this study offers a fresh approach for English readers to this classic, but little known, topic in Portuguese national historiography.