The Presentation in the Temple

Álvaro Pirez d'Évora was a Portuguese painter who absorbed Italian influence, most likely in central Italy around Volterra and Pisa, before returning to a documented career in the Iberian peninsula. His Presentation in the Temple — Simeon receiving the infant Jesus in Jerusalem forty days after the birth — belongs to the Marian Purification cycle and was a popular subject for altarpiece programmes connected to candlemas devotion. Álvaro's work is rare evidence of the movement of Portuguese painters to Italy and back in the early fifteenth century.

Álvaro Pirez works in the gold-ground tempera tradition but with an Italianate figure treatment — the figures are taller and more spatially aware than contemporary Portuguese work would suggest. The marble altar receiving the infant Christ is rendered with geometrical precision reflecting Italian Quattrocento influence.