Garcia Fernandes

Who was Garcia Fernandes?

Garcia Fernandes was a Portuguese Renaissance painter. Like many of painters of the time, Garcia Fernandes was a pupil in the Lisbon workshop of Jorge Afonso, who was the court painter of King Manuel I.

In the 1530s he worked in Coimbra for the monasteries of Santa Clara-a-Velha and of Santa Cruz. In 1533 and 1534, together with Cristóvão de Figueiredo and Gregório Lopes, he was responsible for the three painted altarpieces of the Monastery of Ferreirim, near Lamego. Later, he painted panels for the transept of the Church of St Francis in Évora.

In Lisbon, he was responsible for the altarpiece of the Trindade Convent and the panel for the St Bartholomew Chapel of Lisbon Cathedral, as well as a large oil painting, The Marriage of Saint Alexis, now in the Museum of São Roque. Fernandes even painted altarpieces commissioned for the cathedral of Old Goa, in Portuguese India, then a part of the Portuguese Empire.

Garcia Fernandes married in 1518 and had at least nine children. His paintings can be seen in several churches and monasteries around Portugal, as well as in the National Museum of Ancient Art and the Machado de Castro Museum.