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Curated category

Portuguese Renaissance writers

  • António GalvãoAntónio Galvão died in a hospital in Lisbon in 1557, buried without ceremony, having spent his final years in poverty and anonymity waiting for a pension…
  • Fernão Lopes de CastanhedaFernão Lopes de Castanheda was born around 1500 in Santarém, Portugal, and spent a decade on the far side of the world gathering the raw material for one of…
  • Gaspar CorreiaGaspar Correia arrived in Portuguese India around 1512-14 as a soldier, carrying little more than ambition and a sharp eye for the world around him.
  • Duarte BarbosaDuarte Barbosa sat at a banquet table on the shore near Cebu in the Philippines on the 1st of May 1521, waiting to receive a gift for the king of Spain.
  • Bernardim RibeiroBernardim Ribeiro was born in 1482 in Torrão, a small town in the Alentejo region of Portugal, and his life was shadowed by exile and heartbreak from almost…
  • André de ResendeAndré de Resende, born around 1498 in Évora, Portugal, would spend his life chasing two contradictory ambitions: building a glorious past for his country and…
  • Tomé PiresTomé Pires was born around 1468 in the Portuguese town of Leiria. His father served as apothecary to King João II of Portugal.
  • Garcia de OrtaGarcia de Orta sailed out of the Tagus river in March 1534 carrying a set of questions that European medicine had never properly answered.
  • Gil VicenteThe year 1465 stands as the commonly accepted date for Gil Vicente's birth, though scholars have argued fiercely over this number for centuries.
  • Luís de CamõesLuís de Camões set sail from Lisbon on Palm Sunday, the 24th of March 1553, carrying nothing but his soldier's pay and the beginnings of a poem.
  • Fernão Mendes PintoFernão Mendes Pinto left Lisbon on the 11th of March 1537 on a journey that would take him to the bottom of a slave market in Mocha, onto the Great Wall of…
  • Francisco de HolandaFrancisco de Holanda was born in Lisbon around 1517, the son of a royal illuminator, and he would grow up to write the first treatise on painting ever…
  • João de CastroJoão de Castro died on the 6th of June 1548 in the arms of his friend, Saint Francis Xavier, thousands of miles from the Sintra Mountains he had asked to…