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MUSEUM GUIDE | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA
In this series, we travel the world's great museums through the eyes and minds of selected curators, asking just one question: if you only had an hour to spare, what would you see? This week, Sara Pierdonà speaks to the director of Lisbon's Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Xavier Salomon, who takes us through a collection spanning antiquity, Islamic art, European painting and decorative arts, revealing the passions and discerning eye of its extraordinary founder.
BY SARA PIERDONÀ | CABANA TRAVEL | 9 OCTOBER 2026
Museum Exterior © Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
There may have been a moment, sometime between 1869 (the year of his birth in Istanbul) and 1955 (the year of his death, in Portugal), when Calouste Gulbenkian was the richest man in the world.
He had a nickname, “Mr Five Per Cent”, inspired by the stakes he acquired in the oil trade – a sobriquet that perhaps rather understated his extraordinary influence over international commerce, where he was a remarkably skilled intermediary and negotiator. But what he truly wished to be remembered for was his passion for art. He began collecting towards the end of the nineteenth century and continued until his death, ranging across an extraordinarily broad spectrum of categories – paintings, carpets, decorative arts, manuscripts, sculpture – and, by his own account, pursuing “the best”.
Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), Diana. France, 1780. Marble. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, inv. 1390. Photo: © Fernando Guerra.
As the prospect of war loomed, Gulbenkian began to consider what future might await his collection. The decision to keep it together, in Lisbon, in a museum created expressly for the purpose, was written into his will and prompted fierce – if ultimately fruitless – protests from other institutions, in Paris among them, which had hoped until the very end to retain at least some of the works.
Xavier Salomon, director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, says that, despite the sheer breadth of the collection (only a third of which is on display, with textiles and drawings rotated roughly every six months), the founder’s taste is unmistakable. Calouste, he says, “loved the grand”: the sumptuous, the magnificent – the things that possess that unmistakable glow of a masterpiece.
Solar barque of Djedhor. Egypt, Late Period, 26–30th dynasties, c. 664–343 BC.
Solar barque of Djedhor. Ancient Egypt, Late Period, 26–30th dynasties, c. 664–343 BC. Bronze. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, inv. 168. Photo: Catarina Gomes Ferreira.
The museum is home to numerous objects from antiquity, but Gulbenkian was particularly fascinated by Ancient Egypt, and enlisted the help of Howard Carter (the discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb) in acquiring pieces for his collection. The object in question was used in religious ceremonies and takes the form, in bronze, of a papyrus boat – only this one is perched on a crocodile, the animal incarnation of the Nile’s divine power (and the little cabin even contains a miniature statue of the deity).
We know which priest it belonged to: his name survives in an inscription. And that, more than anything, makes it a kind of time capsule… one capable, even now, of firing the imagination.
‘Portuguese’ carpet. Iran, 17th century, safavid period
‘Portuguese’ carpet. Iran, Khorasan (?), 17th century, safavid period. Wool pile. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, inv. T99. Photo: Carlos Azevedo.
The collection arrived in Portugal very late and contains almost no objects of local provenance. It is curious: it has always made me think of a spaceship that happened to land in Lisbon – full of treasures, but with nothing that has any real connection to the history of the place. This carpet belongs to a group known as the “Portuguese carpets”, although they were actually made in Persia or perhaps India. In the corners, surrounded by sea monsters, are boats carrying strangely assorted “Europeans”: “the Portuguese”, possibly, who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries embarked on their great voyages of exploration.
It is worth noting, too, that Gulbenkian came from a Turkish family, and that collecting carpets was almost a family tradition. As a young man, he travelled through Central Asia and wrote about the oil fields he visited along the way – but his book contains lengthy, almost academic digressions on carpets. At the museum, the carpets are displayed in a way that is, at a first look, anomalous. It evokes the history of Portugal, which during the Middle Ages was an Islamic country. One legacy of that period was the wooden platforms (estrados) found in many Portuguese homes. Slightly raised above the floor, they were covered with carpets, and provided a place where women would sit cross-legged, chatting or offering tea to guests.
Tile panel with blossoming prunus trees. Iznik, Ottoman period, c. 1545.
Tile panel with blossoming prunus trees. Iznik, Ottoman period, c. 1545 Stonepaste, painted under the glaze. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, inv. 1641. Photo: Catarina Gomes Ferreira.
I like this series of Turkish tiles because the cool, rather restrained palette depicts plum trees, tulips and hyacinths (probably once covering an entire room) “at night”: a garden rendered in ceramic, illuminated by moonlight. It brings to mind the Ottoman poetry of the period, and is an idea of great delicacy and sensitivity.
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Helena Fourment. Flanders, c. 1630-32
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Helena Fourment. Flanders, c. 1630-32. Oil on wood. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, inv. 959. Photo: Catarina Gomes Ferreira.
Two-thirds of the museum is European, and this is a wonderful example. It is Rubens in full pomp, portraying a woman dressed with great formality and splendour, but it is also an intimate Rubens, because the sitter is his second wife, whom he had only recently married. He presents her in the most magnificent manner possible, and the painting was probably not made for a client at all, but for the painter himself to keep.
It was later acquired by Catherine the Great of Russia, but in 1930 the Soviet Union needed funds and decided to sell a number of works from the Hermitage. useums from across the world flocked to the sale – with Gulbenkian the remarkable exception: a private individual bidding alongside them.
He went on to acquire not only this painting, but also sculptures, important silverware and two Rembrandts. There is something wonderful about thinking of the lives of artworks: how, over the centuries, they travel the world, passing from private collections into public ones.
Martin Carlin and Charles-Nicolas Dodin, Writing table. Paris, c.1772
Martin Carlin (1730-1785) and Charles-Nicolas Dodin (1734-1803), Writing table. Paris, c. 1772. Oak carcass; veneer and marquetry in sycamore, bloodwood, ebony and boxwood; Sèvres porcelain plaques; chased gilt bronze mounts; velvet. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, inv. 2267. Photo: Carlos Azevedo.
Applied arts, now so often relegated to a secondary status, were far more costly and highly regarded at the time they were made. Tapestries and furniture were among the true expressions of luxury. Gulbenkian was especially fond of eighteenth-century French furniture, much of which was dispersed, if not destroyed, during the Revolution. This little table, made from precious woods and porcelain, belonged to Madame du Barry, Louis XV’s last mistress, and later passed into the possession of Marie Antoinette. A delightful detail is the decoration on its top: a Russian fortune-teller reading a hand, surrounded by the signs of the zodiac.
Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), Diana. France, 1780
Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), Diana. France, 1780. Marble. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, inv. 1390. Photo: Carlos Azevedo.
This sculpture is the only object in the museum to have a room entirely to itself. Made for a German prince, it depicts the goddess of the hunt at life size. It was another of the acquisitions from the Hermitage sale, and so had to be transported, with extraordinary care, from St Petersburg to Paris and then, in 1969, once again, to Lisbon for the opening of the museum.
It was the last piece to arrive, and was installed in the room specially designed for it, looking out through a vast glass wall onto the garden… as though Diana had just stepped inside, or were about to leave.
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