The following two items (cat. 466-467) present a coat of arms in a heater shield
with a biconcave chief described as follows: azure, five crescents argent. Coronet Or,
decorated with precious stones and eight acanthus fleurons of which five are visible, the
lateral ones in profile. Crest: a lion passant, proper, charged on the shoulder with five
crescents of the shield. 1
Under normal circumstances, these items, which belong to Luís Pinto de Sousa
Coutinho and date to around 1800, would bear his coat of arms, but this is not the case.
his arms would be correctly described as follows: argent, five crescents gules. Crest: a
leopard argent, armed and langued gules, with a crescent of the shield on its shoulder. 2
However, on these pieces, the shield corresponds to the coat of arms described as
that of the Pinto family of the Hague 3 and the crest is that of the Pinto family of Portugal,
which is rather confusing. Why would the Chinese artist of around 1800 change so
significantly the metal of the field of the shield and the colour of the ordinaries in armorial
bearings that weren’t difficult to reproduce? Full arms without the complexity of divisions,
the relatively small number of ordinaries, all similar and easy to draw! Furthermore, the
external elements are those that figure in the coat of arms granted to the Pinto family
of Portugal.
Discrepancies found in the works of various authors, like a lion instead of a leopard, proper or
argent, or even with one or five 4 crescents of the shield on the shoulder, are not relevant. What seems
inexplicable is the combination of the shield of the Pinto family from The Hague and the crest of the
Pinto family from Portugal.
As a matter of interest, in the numerous Portuguese armorials, dictionaries and chronicles that
were consulted, namely the
Livro do Armeiro Mor
, 5 the
Livro da Nobreza e Perfeiçam das Armas,
6 the
Beneditina Lusitana
, 7 the
Espelho da Nobreza
, 8 the
Brasonário de Portugal
, 9 the
Monarchia Lusitana
10
and the
Heráldica em Portugal
, 11 no reference was made to the coat of arms of the Pintos from The
Hague. We only found it described in the
Armorial Géneral
12 and in its
Illustrations
, 13 in the
Dictionnaire
de Renesse
14 and in the
Heráldica de Apellidos Españoles,
15 although in these last two there is no
mention of the Dutch nationality of the arms bearers.
Luis Pinto de Sousa Coutinho was born in Leomil on 27 November 1735, the son of Alexandre
Pinto de Sousa Coutinho and his wife D. Josefa Mariana Madalena Pereira Coutinho de Vilhena. He died
in Lisbon on 14 April 1804.
He was granted in perpetuity the title of Viscount of Balsemão, with honours of Grandee, twice
exempt from the law of primogeniture, by the Prince Regent D. João by the decree of 14 August 1801. 16
He was a nobleman knight of the royal household, and held a number of offices, including,
successively, that of Minister and Secretary of State for the Affairs of the Kingdom, of War, and of
Foreign Affairs, he was appointed Lieutenant General of the Army in 1765, and Captain General and
Governor of the Captaincy of Mato Grosso (Brazil) in 1769. As State Counsellor he was assigned to
receive the Princess of Spain, D. Carlota Joaquina, wife of Prince D. João. He was minister plenipotentiary
in the Court in London (1774) where he was sent to discuss the peace treaty between France, Spain
and Portugal. 17 He was a knight of the Golden Fleece and of the Grand Cross of the Order of Avis, and
was the author of several works.
In 1772 he married D. Catarina Micaela de Sousa César de Lancastre, daughter of Francisco Filipe
de Sousa da Silva Alcoforado and of his wife D. Rosa Maria Viterbo de Lancastre, daughter of the 3rd
Viscounts of Asseca, and they had children.
The Viscountess, upon her return from a visit to London with her husband, where she ‘had turned
the Portuguese legation into a prominent centre for meetings for all those who cultivated the arts,
letters and sciences, developed a friendship with the Marchioness of Alorna, with whom she established
a literary circle of great renown’. 18
140 .
ARMORIAL CHINESE EXPORT PORCELAIN
1 Heraldic description by MLCB.
2 Norton, 2004, vol. II, p. 268.
3 Rietstap, 1972, vol. II, p. 442 and Rolland,
1991, vol. V, pl LX.
4 Souza, 1962, insert 46 and 47.
5 Cró, 2000, p. LIV, p. 72.
6 Godinho, 1987, p. 27, p. XVIII.
7 São Tomás, 1974, vol. II, p. 488.
8 Craesbeck, no date, p. 404.
9 Mattos, 1943, p. 77, no. 1318.
10 Brandão, 1973, part III, fo. 60v.
11 Norton, ibid.
12 Rietstap, ibid.
13 Rolland, ibid.
14 Helmont, 1992, p. 858.
15 Schnieper Campos and Rosado Martín,
2000, p. 205.
16 Zúquete, 1960, vol. II, pp. 367-68.
17 Solla, 1928 (1992 edition), vol. I,
pp. 30-32.
18 Leitão-Bandeira, 2006, p. 182.
Figure 89. Detail of cat. 466.