Court of Auditors

Almada’s works for the Court of Auditors, at the time located in the eastern tower of Terreiro do Paço in Lisbon, were commissioned following a renovation in a project by Porfírio Pardal Monteiro. The Court of Auditors has since moved to a new headquarters on Avenida da República, and two of the four pieces made by Almada for that renovation can now be seen at this address.

These are two large tapestries executed at the Portalegre Tapestry Manufacture. One of them, The Accountant, measures 3,63 by 3,33 meters and is dated 1957. It illustrates the oldest function of the Court of Auditors, formerly called “Casa dos Contos”. The scales at the top, crossed over by a sword, present a strange perspective, as if the two plates were violently thrown in opposite directions. In 1947, Almada had already designed an ex-libris for the Court of Auditors representing an accountant, in a style reminiscent of late-medieval or Renaissance engravings, which is also on Avenida da República.

The other tapestry, measuring 2,54 by 7 meters, is dated 1956 and shows a history of the Number, or of geometry as a universal language. At the centre of The Number, we can see the “Vitruvian Man” — not Leonardo da Vinci’s, but the one sketched by Cesare Cesariano, which is slightly different. Two characters are represented on each side of this figure — one of them, from Ancient Greece, is using an abacus, while the other, from the Renaissance, draws a pentagon. Almada considered Ancient Greece and the Renaissance as the two key moments in the European history of geometry.

On the left side there are also important references to this history: a vase from Susa, a tile from the Palace of Knossos, Pythagoras’ triangle and Tetractys (the triangular construction with small rods), the medieval Bahütte Point, and Leonardo da Vinci’s Figura Superflua Ex-errore — a redundant “erroneous” figure to which Almada paid great attention and which he would also include in his last work, the panel To Begin. References to Aeschylus’ Prometheus, Piero della Francesca, Luca Pacioli, Ramon Llull and Campanus of Novara are included in this tapestry bordered by a numerical ruler that marks numbers at intervals of 3.

At the top, Ramon Llull’s quotation, “Ah Numerant who establishes the Number! Ah Holy Spirit who perfects the Number!”, and below, that of Aeschylus, “Prometheus: I gave them the beautiful discovery of the number”, underline the idea that geometry is the basis of human knowledge.

Almada also made two oil paintings for the Sessions Room in the Court’s building at Terreiro do Paço — they remain there, in what is now the Ministry of Finance. These are two clearly commissioned works, with a pre-determined subject, and therefore little freedom was given to the artist in their execution.

One of the large paintings shows the foundation of the Court of Auditors by an 1849 decree, which can be seen in the hands of the duke of Ávila, who is about to hand it over to Queen Maria II. The painting is dated 1958. The other, dated the same year and a little smaller, evokes the Government Gazette of October 25, 1930, which established the new Court of Auditors already under the dictatorship.