Politics and the Arts in Lisbon and Rome: The Roman Dream of John V of Portugal ed. by Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira (review)

Reviewed by: Politics and the Arts in Lisbon and Rome: The Roman Dream of John V of Portugal ed. by Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira Patrícia Martins Marcos Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira, ed. , Politics and the Arts in Lisbon and Rome: The Roman Dream of John V of Portugal (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2019). Pp. 304; 8 b/w illus. 99. 00 cloth. For more than a century, John V of Portugal, the "Magnanimous King, " has hardly been the subject of historiographical consensus. Paradoxically, John V has been both a highly researched and a much-misunderstood monarch. Since the End Page 392 nineteenth century, multiple generations of intellectuals identified his reign as the origin point of Portugal's national and imperial crisis. From the romantic historiography of Alexandre Herculano to the realist generation of Antero de Quental—and his thesis of Portugal's unequivocal "decadence"—through to António Sérgio's famous essay "On the Cadaverous Kingdom or the Problem of Culture in Portugal, " O Reino Cadaveroso Ou o Problema Da Cultura Em Portugal, John V's reign (1706–1750) often became a battleground for proxy disputes over Portugal's place in modernity and its (unfulfilled) promises. The heart of Sérgio's "decadentist" critique of Portugal's cultural backwardness historically hinged on the case against John V's profligate administration. Indeed, like Sérgio, other cultural interpreters of Portugal's history identified John V's rule as an era of squandered opportunities. Monarch during the Brazilian gold mining boom which (re) awakened the imperial economy from a long state of lethargy, John V was accused of building lavish churches coated in gold and replete with opulent marbles instead of investing in industry. Zealotry, and a proclivity towards vacuous pomp, therefore, led the Portuguese empire to become but a colonial department of its old ally: the British empire. The crux of this thesis maintained by nineteenth and early twentieth century critics contended with Portugal's dwindling position among other European empires—something aggravated by Brazilian independence (1822), the abolition of slavery (1869), and the British ultimatum of 1890. This tradition criticized the sovereign of wastefully channeling all of Brazil's prodigious wealth towards the luxury of the Church and his own court. As such, John V earned the reputation of a baroque ruler—a sort of "wannabe" Portuguese Sun King. For this reason, Louis XIV has long been identified as the chief model of political and cultural power during John V's long reign (1707–1750). Contra this image of an ancien régime sovereign mired by Catholic obsequiousness and wasteful extravagance, a different scholarly view emphasized how adherence to French models attested to the monarch's "enlightened" sensibility. Such a tradition—aligned with a nationalistic impulse to glorify this period and preeminently articulated by historians aligned with Portugal's dictatorship (1926–1974) —stressed how imperial wealth supported an apotheosis of the arts, sciences, and culture of unprecedented proportions. The volume under review, Politics and the Arts in Lisbon and Rome, emanates from this loaded intellectual terrain to offer new insights into the Portuguese ruler's rapport with Rome and early eighteenth-century culture. Edited by the art historian Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira, the book is organized into two parts and eight chapters. With contributions from historians of music, art, political culture, and theater, the chapters gathered into this volume systematize John V's admiration for the Italian arts and document his efforts to render Lisbon into a new Rome. The book's emphasis on Italian models will not surprise scholars acquainted with the period. However, the volume succeeds in advancing knowledge of this era by, for the first time, assembling information that was otherwise dispersed. Moreover, several chapters, such as chapter 4 on the Roman Accademia del Portogallo, add depth and substance to this familiar subject, which despite being known to scholars, has either been treated superficially or mentioned only in passing. The book starts with Del Corral's introductory contextualization of John V's failed dream of a viaggio mancato to Rome. Upon his acclamation in 1707, John V directed considerable energy towards the ambition of a two-year expedition across Europe. The zenith. . .