Macanese Dominican convent oratory

Rare and important carved, lacquered and gilt wood, early 17th century Southern China portable oratory, enclosing an oil on copper painting depicting Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine of Sienna receiving the Rosary from The Virgin and Child.

Rectangular shaped triptych oratory, with two foldable side leaves that encase and protect the central panel – their plain outer faces contrasting with the exuberantly decorated inner surfaces of carved flowers and foliage each with two square cartouches; the upper one with carved human faced flaming suns and the lower with painted angels standing on clouds holding incense burners – and a carved, lobed cornice centred by a mystic, arrow pierced heart framed by flower scrolls, in a Chinese interpretation of the Jesuit commissioned Japanese Namban oratories, most certainly made after the final eviction from Japan in 1639 (1).

Considering the lacquer characteristics, its geographical origin and its iconography this oratory was most certainly commissioned for the Macanese Dominican Convent and its church of Our Lady of The Rosary, the only community of this Order of Preachers in the South China region.

Its founders, António de Arcediano, Alonso Delgado e Bartolomeu Lopes, three Spanish Dominican friars from Mexico, boarded the ship “São Martinho”, captained by the Portuguese D. Lopes de Palácio, in the Philippines in April 1587, arriving in the Portuguese enclave of Macao in September of that year, having started soon after the construction of the original wooden chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, known amongst the local Chinese population as the “Pan Cheong Miu” – the wooden pagoda. It is only in the 17th century that this wooden structure is replaced by a more permanent brick and stone building.

Circa 1588/1590 the Spanish founders are transferred to India on the orders of the Portuguese viceroy D. Duarte de Menezes and the Church and its Convent are handed over to Portuguese friars of the same Order. 

In May 1834, following a long period of turmoil and civil war unrest, the victorious king D. Pedro IV, signs a decree abolishing all Religious Orders in Portugal and in its colonies and any other Portuguese administered territories. Macao is no exception and the Church and Convent are confiscated by the government and closed to cult and all their estates secularized and nationalized, situation that would only be reversed by the end of the 19th century with a softening of religious policies.

The sale of many Church treasures followed this nationalization process and many objects entered private ownership where they remain until today. It is therefore most likely that our important Oratory, together with many other treasures, left the Dominican Convent in Macao in that period of instability and anti-clerical sentiment.

Beyond the well-known Japanese Namban lacquer objects, other Eastern lacquer productions, also commissioned for the Portuguese market, remain relatively unknown. These lacquered objects, elusive as to their origin, are broadly defined as Luso-Asian and, although rather heterogeneous in their defining characters, can be divided into two groups (2).

The historian Bernardo Ferrão pioneering their study in the later part of the 20th century, identified several examples mostly in public and private Portuguese collections (3). Ferrão defines various characteristics for these productions, which he classifies as Indo-Portuguese on the basis of its pretense Mughal or Persian decorative character, referring: “the style and type of decoration, the lacquer work and in some the presence of armorials, Portuguese mottoes, Christian or Classical European figures or mythological scenes, carved or painted, all following established Renaissance canons, allow for a 1500s attribution” (4). To these typologies others can also be included, such as beds, trays, low stools and some shields with identical decorative details that can be found in various international collections (5). This latter objects belonging to a second group with clearly evidenced Chinese characteristics.

The first group has been recently identified as originating from the old Kingdom of Pegu, in modern day Myanmar (Burma), on the basis of documentary as well as scientific evidence (the lacquer thitsi from the sap of the Melanorrhoea usitata, used in southeast Asia) and manufacturing techniques used in its construction (Burmese shwei-zawa) (6).

The second group, mainly composed of writing chests and writing boxes, but also carved trays and portable oratories, such as the one under study, adopts identical decorative details such as black lacquer carved low-reliefs highlighted in gold. Some surfaces, namely the inside of chests and writing-boxes, can be lacquered in red with gold decoration of plants and animals from a typically Chinese repertoire.

An important source of documentary evidence, the inventories for the estate of the third Count of Linhares, Fernando de Noronha (1540-1608) and his wife Filipa de Sá (d.1618), provide confirmation for the two major production centres - Myanmar and Southern China or the Ryukyu Islands, as they list an important group of Asian lacquered and gilded furniture pieces (7): a “long box in Chinese lacquer in two parts”; “another writing box from Pegu in gold and red with its drawers”; “another writing box from China in gold and white that has 12 drawers” and 44 cm in length; “a Chinese box in gold and black with its cubbyhole”; “a fully gilded Pegu writing box”; “two Chinese round shields to mount (missing the arm support) with armorials” and sixteen others; “four Chinese trays”, three with armorials, all in gold and black, and another three; “another table from China, very old, with Noronha armorial in the middle”; “a gilded bed from China with Noronha armorial on the headboard”; “a small Pegu box, a hand long, with a silver lock”; “a gilt and black bed from China with its bedstead”; “a gilded chair and a stretcher from Pegu” and another “gilded stretched from Pegu six foot long and headboard”.

The highest number of pieces listed in this inventory are in fact Chinese in origin, with an excess of gold decoration – excess that was in fact legally restricted in Portugal, but of difficult enforcement on account of the private and domestic nature of the ostentation – and clearly lined in red and black lacquer.

Additionally three rectangular trays with carved and gilded decoration on plain black lacquered surfaces with gold leaf and mother-of-pearl inlaid Chinese floral patterns and animal figures, with documented history and provenance credentials from historic Portuguese monasteries, presently at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon (inv. Nr. 44 Band and 2 Band) and at a private collection, have recently been analyzed for chemical composition (lacquer, oils, etc.) and lacquering techniques on the basis of stratigraphy (8).

The results confirmed the lacquer type as Toxicodendron succedaneum, known as laccol (from southern China, Vietnam and Japan). Furthermore the Chinese technical characteristics of the pieces, namely the gold leaf decoration (tie jin qi), the fewer lacquer layers applied and the lower quality lacquering materials, typically used on export pieces, suggest a most likely Southern China or Ryukyu Islands origin for these trays.

The close similarities regarding the lacquering techniques and the raised gold decoration, together with the decorative and iconographic language of the piece, strongly suggest a similarly Southern China origin for our portable Oratory.

Only a very small number of these oratories has been recorded in the literature – some larger in size and combining carved sections in temple like structures designed to house devotional figures - such as one with an oil on copper depicting the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, also by a Chinese artist, a fragment from one other of which only the side panels survive, and another large one only recently published (9).