Arpad Szenes drew Sophia de Mello Breyner; José Blanc de Portugal was one of the founders of the Cadernos de Poesia in which Sophia’s poems were first published (1940); the poet also published in the magazine Uni/Pentacórnio (1951-56), directed by José-Augusto França; Jorge de Sena often visited her and wrote about her poetry; and Fernando Lemos, also a poet, photographed all these figures and a whole generation of poets, writers, artists and intellectuals from the 1950s.

The subtitle that Lemos later gave to this image (No Castelo Desde a Tomada aos Mouros [In the Castle since the Capture from the Moors]) is a reference to the house where Sophia de Mello Breyner lived, on Travessa das Mónicas, near São Jorge Castle, where today three benches are engraved with her poetry.

Lemos’ gaze in this image is that of the photographer thinking in terms of vanishing lines and ways of framing to better situate and relate the subject being photographed. Indeed, the centrality of the vertical wooden beam in the foreground divides the image into two parts, with the left-hand side strengthened by the vanishing lines and the other beams, which lead the observer’s eye to the image of Sophia.

With her noble outline, repeated in the shadow that the light (recurrent in her poetry) casts on the wall, Sophia was often photographed by Lemos in her home.

José Oliveira
2022