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Queluz: A rose pink palace in the French eighteenth-century style continue… May 8, 2008

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The Sala dos Embaixadores is the throne room, but an intimate one, for the room is not very large and the windows on either side let in the sun, and the gardens and black and white marble floor are reflected in tall mirrors above the narrow semicircular console tables. This is the only room where the restoration after a great fire in 1934 appears obvious. The other rooms which were damaged have been admirably restored.

Beyond, at right angles, are the apartments of Dona Maria’s son, Dom Joao VI and his sinister Spanish Queen, Carlotta Joaquina, whom Beckford described with such vividness. Sitting oriental fashion on a red velvet carpet laid on the grass, she made him run races with her ladies in the gardens and dance the bolero to a ‘ low, soft-flowing choir of female voices . . . smooth, well-tuned, and perfectly ‘melodious’. The orchestra, which then existed at Queluz was, according to Beckford, the finest in Europe and at that time the wooden theatre in the park still existed, though nothing now remains of it.

These end-rooms in the garden wing include the Queen’s dressing-room with delightful panels of children dressing themselves up in tricorne hats and formal clothes by Jose Carvalho Rosa. The bedroom of the Queen, where she died in 183o, is very elegant in silver and nile green. There is an unusual, almost life- size, wax bust of the King, Dom Joao VI, in his bedroom, cruelly depicting his pendulous jowls and unattractive face.

Travel GuidebookIn the Sala das Merendas, however, we get away from the influence of that unhappy royal pair, for this is a wholly enchanting room surrounded by canvases of a fête champêtre by Joao Valentim. But this is a Portuguese picnic. The gaily clad figures sit on the ground talking and laughing, white cloths are laden with chickens, bread and fruit, while sporting dogs insert questing noses into the corners of the pictures and waiting horses are silhouetted in the background.

On the other side of the entrance hall, the rooms are lined with silk with painted ceilings. The fine furniture includes a pair of beautiful red lacquer screens and sets of Portuguese Hepplewhite and Chippendale chairs. Oriental and European porcelain stand on the tables and there is a remarkable life-size bust of Dona Maria I from the Rato factory in one of the rooms. Giovanni Ender’s portrait of the flashing-eyed Dom Miguel, the adored son of Carlotta Joaquina, indicates how inevitable it was that he should become involved in the wars of succession after the Royal Family had returned from Brazil, where they went on the arrival of the French in Lisbon during the Peninsular War. Finally there are two splendid oval rooms, the music- room with an Empire grand piano and the ball-room with mirrors set slightly out from the walls and golden caryatids supporting the ceiling, from which hang a pair of superb chandeliers. The rooms beyond the ball-room are not shown at the present time, which is to be regretted, as there is an unique gunroom frescoed with trees and foliage in the manner of Pillement, with hunting scenes adorning the ceiling.

The chapel was the first part of the palace to be finished, for it was opened for worship in 1752. It is a lovely, rather dark, rich ensemble of gold rococo wood work picked out in tango red, green, pink and blue. One of the royal galleries above contains a small organ case, notable for its fine rococo detail, and in the chapel is an extraordinary portable font with a marble basin set in a highly decorated frame with a gilt carved wood cover.

The gardens are also rustic, in that they do not attempt to emulate the formal eighteenth-century gardens in France, for they were designed by Robillon for a country palace in a country setting. The overpowering scent of box fills the upper garden from where the artful irregularity of the palace can best be seen, with its Chinese roofs and false windows. Fountains and pools with lead, marble and stone figures are set in formal box-edged beds and there are a pair of really splendid English lead figures of noble Romans outside the central doorway. At the end of these topiary gardens, an oval fountain is backed by a pair of Italian marble sphinxes with pie-crust ruffs round their necks.

In the lower part of the garden there are pools and fountains set in tall thick hedges of yew and cypress, and alleys of magnolias and mulberry trees (planted by General Junot when he lived here during the Peninsular war) leading to the great double staircase going down from the highly ornamented garden wing. In front is the Dutch canal, made of azulejos, one of the most unusual features of the place. There is a stream running through it, but the sluice gates are only shut in the month of May, so that then the water comes up to the edge of the blue and white tiled pictures of shipping scenes with which the upper part of the confining walls are lined, and Robillon’s fantasy can be seen as he envisaged it; later in the year the stream dries up and earlier there is danger of floods. On the exterior the canal walls are composed of more formal tile scenes in lilac, set in polychrome frames. Below this canal is a kind of skittle alley, now much restored, but which is contemporary with the palace and above it a further canal bordered with Chinoiserie tiles. Hidden away on the other side of these canals, past a strange shallow octagonal pool with rococo crimped edges, is a fountain which has been attributed to Bernini. The tritons and dolphins, weathered to a lovely hue, may well be by him, but the central figure is thought to be from another hand.

Queluz is a rewarding place, for it is gay and filled with light, and memories of the mad Queen Maria I and her sinister daughter-in-law, Carlotta Joaquina, no longer cast their shadows over this pale pink palace where they lived. Rather it is the great beauty of the irregular facades and the superbly unobstrusive way in which the house and gardens are maintained, that the fortunate visitor will recall.

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