About
The Meridian is a small museum of painted skies in Chiado, Lisbon. It opened in 2019 in a former printing house on Rua da Misericórdia.
The museum
The collection began with forty oil sketches of clouds, bought at auction by a printer who had spent his working life looking down at paper. He left them to the city on one condition: that they hang where people could see the sky through the windows.
Today the museum shows two or three exhibitions a year, pairing historical sky studies with painters working now. The rooms are small, the walls are dark and the benches face the pictures.
Simon Denis
Cloud study (distant storm), ca. 1786–1806, oil on paper, 19.1 × 25.1 cm
The first painting
Simon Denis painted this storm outdoors, on paper. It was the first work to enter the collection and it still hangs in Room 1. It is also the sky at the top of our home page.
People
We hang skies at eye level so that you look out, not up.
Inês Carvalho, director