Santos, Reynaldo dos

Historian of Portuguese art and medical doctor; successor to José de Figueiredo at the Academia de Belas Artes, Lisbon. Santos' parents were Clemente José dos Santos, a physician, and Maria Amelia dos Santos Pinheiro. His grandfather was Clement José dos Santos, Baron Santos Clemente. After secondary school, Santos entered the Medical-Surgical School of Lisbon in 1898, graduating in 1903. The Portuguese industrialist João Afonso de Carvalho gave Santos a stipend to study with French surgeons in Paris, 1904-1905, Santos subsequently tavelled to the United States to continue his study medicine. An interest in art developed during holidays in Portugal at Figueira da Foz where, with his friend, Henrique de Vilhena, where he participated in amateur archaeology. He read and was deeply influenced by the historical-positimism of Hippolyte Taine, suggested by António Santos Rocha. He completed a medical Ph.D., writing a thesis and surgical treatments of pancreatitis, Aspectos Cirúrgicos das Pancreatites Crónicas in 1906, joining the faculty of the School of medicine in Lisbon the following year. Throughout his life, his primary career would be medicine with a specialty in urology and artierography. He became disillusioned with the conditions and staff of the hospital and left under dispute, becoming Director of Municipal Hospitals. In 1915, he and the art historian José de Figueiredo discovered tapestries in Pastrana, Guadalajara, Spain derived from the Asilah region. He was critical of Portugal's neutral status in World War I, particularly by its decision not to send medical aid to the wounded. During the War he volunteered as a surgeon for British hospitals in northern France (26th General Hospital unit) and the hospital at Wimereux. He was discharged with the British rank of major. After the War, Santos studied in Tuscany, writing a book on the Portuguese Renaissance painter Álvaro Pires de Évora in 1922. The same year he published a book on the church of Manueline, identified Francisco Alvarez as the artist of the symbol of Manueline art. He and Jorge Cid published a monograph on Nuno Gonçalves in 1925, examining in particular Gonçalves' panels of the Adoration of S. Vicente. In 1930, he was appointed to a newly-created Chair of Urology. In 1932 he was one of ten who founded the Portuguese Academy of Fine Arts (Academia Nacional ed Belas Artes). His book on Nuno Gonçalves appeared in 1939. He and his wife, Irene Quilhó, printed a book privately on Portuguese goldsmith work of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in 1954. His Historia del arte portugués appeared in 1960. After his death in Lisbon, a symposium was held in his memory by the Fundução Gulbenkian. As president of the Academia Nacional ed Belas Artes, Santos had "revived a somnolent institution" by creating the Inventario artistico de Portugal (Smith). His view of Portuguese architecture was not in the European model, but as in the case of the Manueline, finding its own style.