Abstract

The painting of the Rua Nova portrays a view of a long-lost commercial street in early
modern Lisbon. The painting showcases the variety of peoples that captured the
imagination of those writers and travellers who described the cosmopolitan atmosphere of
the city. In this canvas, the building fabric acts as a backdrop to the scene; the painting
renders the main themes in the foreground. Even though the urban fabric is relegated to a
secondary plane on the canvas, its representation provides unprecedented information on
the architecture of early modern Lisbon. This essay examines the research, methods and
processes followed to create a scaled 3D digital model of the urban environment shown on
the Rua Nova painting. The aim of the digital project was to re-create visually the
architecture of the street depicted in the canvas and to investigate scale (measurements),
materials and textures. In other words, the objective of this project was to build digitally a
scaled three-dimensional model of a two-dimensional object (i.e., the painting). This essay
also examines early modern domestic architecture in the city that survived the 1755 natural disaster and its relationship with the streetscape.