Gallery Asset

Portuguese Carracks off a Rocky Coast

The oldest painting of the sea by a Flemish or Flemish-trained artist in the collection of the National Maritime Museum. It is one of the few contemporary paintings of ships of the first half of the sixteenth century and one of the best representations of the first generation of ocean-going merchantmen. The subject is generally thought to be the carrack ‘Santa Catarina de Monte Sinai’ bringing the Infanta Beatriz, second daughter of King Manuel of Portugal, to Villefranche for her marriage to Charles III, Duke of Savoy, in 1521.