The Colloquium “Machado de Castro: Artist – Writer (1731-1822)” took place on the 27th and 28th of November, at the National Academy of Fine Arts. The themes presented focused on the importance of the sculptor's literary work as a characterizing – and differentiating – element of his respective intellectual and artistic itinerary, and as a militant in the causes of freedom of creation and in defense of the sculptor's social status.
In the six panels, several themes were highlighted, such as, “Machado de Castro and Analytical Description: the artist and the right to editing at the end of the Old Regime”, with the intervention of Miguel Figueira de Faria, DHAH-UAL, “Close and distant reading of François Lemées Traité des Statuës (Paris 1688): on the advantages of a critical annotated hybrid text edition”, with the intervention of Hendrik Ziegler, Philipps-Universität Marburg, “Translation as an act of communicating: the translation of the Descripção Analytica ( 2023) by Machado de Castro”, with the intervention of Josiah Blackmore, Harvard University, the “Analytical Description of the Execution of the Equestrian Statue of D. José I, by Machado de Castro”, which included the illustrious intervention of Charlotte Chastel- Rousseau, the Louvre Museum and the theme that closed the two-day colloquium “Public Monuments: Present and Future”, moderated by journalist João Pacheco. The event featured a program commemorating the bicentenary of the death of the sculptor, Joaquim Machado de Castro, which was an initiative of the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa in partnership with ANBA and IHA-FCSH NOVA.