19 Facts About Nicolau Nasoni

Nicolau Nasoni was an Italian artist and architect mostly active in Portugal.

Nicolau Nasoni became one of the most influential figures in Portuguese Baroque architecture with his original and vigorous and theatrical style of Baroque and Rococo architecture.

Nicolau Nasoni was then employed, first as a painter in Rome and, between 1723 and 1725, in Malta.

Niccolo Nicolau Nasoni then received a commission to paint the ceilings and corridors of the Magisterial Palace.

Nicolau Nasoni's work was much appreciated and he soon became famous as a decorative painter.

Nicolau Nasoni painted frescoes in other buildings in Malta, such as Palazzo Spinola.

At the invitation of Jeronimo de Tavora e Noronha, the Dean of Porto, Portugal, whose brother Roque de Tavora, he had met in Malta, Nicolau Nasoni moved to Porto in 1723, where he would remain till his death in 1773.

Nicolau Nasoni's first recorded works in Porto were frescoes on the walls of the cathedral in 1725, which are now fading.

Nicolau Nasoni was given the assignment to redecorate and modernise this cathedral, still Romanesque at that time.

Nicolau Nasoni added the granite porch of the north facade and the loggia with the azulejos.

Nicolau Nasoni's silver altarpiece with flying angels, garlands, acanthus and twisted columns in Manueline style, is an elaborate work.

Nicolau Nasoni decorated the doorcases in the apse of the cathedral and in the cloister with a rich variety of ornament, whose designs go back to the Florentine Bernardo Buontalenti.

Nicolau Nasoni designed it in 1734 but the construction only started in 1741.

Nicolau Nasoni died the next year through complications of childbirth.

Nicolau Nasoni's specialty was the talha dourada, a technique to decorate woodwork with gold leaves.

Nicolau Nasoni introduced in Portugal the concave form of the retable and the undulant arch at the top.

Nicolau Nasoni exercised a great influence on his contemporaries with his wood sculpture.

Nicolau Nasoni was buried, at his request, in an unmarked tomb in the crypt of the Clerigos Church.

Nicolau Nasoni had, as an architect and painter, an enormous influence in the northern part of Portugal even if he didn't found a school or train new followers.