Woman gutting fish

This tile panel shows a black woman, probably a slave, dressing various fish at a table. It was part of a building located somewhere near the present-day Martim Moniz Square, in the Santa Maria Maior parish, and was found lining the inside wall of a chimney. However, this was not its original location, as the panel was missing its bottom half. This piece ran counter to the prevailing trend seen in Baroque Lisbon tiles from the early to mid-18th century, when the colour palette was often restricted to blue and white. In this case, a darker colour was introduced to emphasise the shade of the woman’s skin, thus underlining the fact that she is of African origin.

In 1984, when a section of the ground floor of the Pimenta Palace was remodelled as a space dedicated to the Baroque period, the panel was integrated into the tiling of the renovated kitchen.