Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Padrão de Santo Agostinho (Standard of Saint Augustine)
Not on view
During his inaugural voyage along the African coast in 1483, the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão erected a stone monument dedicated to Saint George at the mouth of the Congo River. This related padrão (pillar of stone) from the same mission constitutes the landmark he subsequently positioned on the coast of present-day Benguela, Angola, at the site of Cabo do Lobo. The Dutch destroyed the Saint George monument in 1642. Carved in Lisbon, both the Saint George and Augustine markers featured a cross, Portugal’s royal arms, and an inscription in Portuguese: “In the year 6681 of the World, and in that of 1482 since the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the most serene, most excellent and potent prince, King D. Joao II of Portugal did order this land to be discovered and those padrãos to be set up by D. Cão, an esquire of this household.”
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