page_title: Saint Vincent Panels
section_title: Panel of the Prince: alternative hypothesis
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Vincent Panels / Interpretations / Panel of the Prince: alternative hypothesis
caption_attribution_description: Português: Pintura de Nuno Gonçalves
context_page_description: The Saint Vincent Panels, or the Adoration of Saint Vincent panels, are a polyptych consisting of six panels that were perhaps painted in the 1450s. They are attributed to the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves, who was active from 1450 to 1471. Traditionally, the polyptych is dated to the 1450s due to the putative prominence of Prince Henry the Navigator among the persons represented in the panels. Controversy concerning the true nature of Henry's presence in the panels - if any - along with the inclusion of figures that can be identified as his brothers, all of whom died before 1450, renders it difficult to assign any secure date for the creation of the panels other than sometime during the floruit of the painter Gonçalves.
  The original retable, during its stay in the Cathedral of Lisbon, contained "over twelve" panels, as a source from 1767 states. They were displayed in the cathedral at least until 1690 and were set aside in the cathedral until 1742. They were then transferred to the palace of Mitra, where they escaped the devastating earthquake of Lisbon in 1755.
  The panels are now housed in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, in Lisbon, Portugal.
context_section_description: One of the more controversial issues concerning the panels is the depiction of Prince Henry the Navigator. At first glance, the appearance of the man in black in the third panel is quite compatible with traditional conceptions of Prince Henry's likeness: a man with a light moustache and distinctive black round chaperon such as can be found in numerous representations today. However, there are strong reasons to doubt that this is him.
  The most basic problem in identifying the man-in-the-chaperon in the Saint Vincent Panels derives from the lack of confirmed portraits of Prince Henry that date from his lifetime. The only other 15th-century image of the man-in-the-chaperon is found in the frontispiece of a copy (currently held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France) of Gomes Eanes de Zurara's Crónicas dos Feitos de Guiné, written in 1453. Zurara's book is an account of the early Portuguese discoveries in Africa along with a hagiography of Prince Henry, to whom the author assigned singular credit for the discoveries. As a result, it has been assumed that the frontispiece depicts Henry, especially since the motto underneath it seems to have been Henry's own.
  One alternative hypothesis postulates that the man-in-the-chaperon in Zurara's book might actually be King Edward of Portugal (r. 1431-38), Prince Henry's brother. It has been pointed out that critical phases of the discoveries were launched during his reign, and it would not be unusual for a portrait of a king to adorn a chronicle of events that occurred during his reign.
  This alternative hypothesis can be used to help clarify the identity of the figures  surrounding St. Vincent in the Panel of the Prince. Specifically, it offers an explanation for the symmetrical arrangement of men and women as pairings of kings and queens. In this interpretation, the standing pair would be King Edward (in a black chaperon), standing at the right and balanced on the left by his wife, Queen Eleanor of Aragon. Below them would be their son, King Afonso V of Portugal, kneeling on the right and facing his consort, Queen Isabella of Coimbra, who is kneeling on the left. The boy in the panel would then be Edward's heir, the future King John II of Portugal.
  This alternative hypothesis seems more logical than the original hypothesis that insists on identifying the man-in-the-chaperon as Prince Henry. Since Henry was a bachelor, it is not obvious what woman would be suitable to pair with him as the standing figure on the left. His closest female relatives were his mother Philippa and sister, Isabella, Duchess of Burgundy, both of whom would be more properly paired with their husbands. Moreover, Isabella did not live in Portugal after 1430, thus her lack of involvement with Portuguese society at the time the panel was painted would probably disqualify her from inclusion. If the uncle of a king were to be incorporated in the panel, it would more properly be Peter, Duke of Coimbra, who was once the regent of Afonso V and the father of his bride.
  Another interpretation of the figures includes Henry in the panel, but proposes Edward as the kneeling king and Afonso V as the boy. Regardless, all traditional means of explaining Henry's presence in the panel strike one as forced, formulated simply to accommodate a preconceived notion that Henry must be the man-in-the-chaperon. Since Edward was the brother of Henry, it is perfectly possible that he bore a close enough resemblance to Henry that the traditional identification in the Zurara book is perfectly correct, and that Edward's appearance in the panel is only coincidentally similar to what is depicted for Henry in the Zurara book.
  The alternative hypothesis with King Edward as the man-in-the-chaperon is more logical; pairs of kings and queens are all that are featured in the panel, with no intrusion from other family members, except for the minor son of one of the royal pairs.  Other relatives are featured in a panel of their own (see below). In consideration of this, the Panel of the Prince perhaps ought to be called the Panel of Kings instead, with
caption: The third panel - Panel of the Prince
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