Since time immemorial Man has felt the need to depict the reality round him through graphic representation. From the rock engraving through the magnificence of Hellenistic Art, the Renaissance to current day Post Modernist painting, Man has sought to tell the story of his place in the greater scheme of things through pictorial representation. In it man has sought to integrate his sensorial perception of that which is external to him with the complexity of his individual, subjective world within. Man's innate spirituality has lead him to sublime works of art wherein he has projected, through the millennia, his individual effort for evolution and that of the societies of which he is a part, by fusing his oneirism with the objective, sensorial world round him.

Painting, like other art forms such as writing, results, in part, from the interactive dynamics. As other art forms, it has been used to structurally transmute the fears hopes, dreams and spiritual aspirations of its authors into processed non-verbal metaphors and perceptions.

Throughout the Ages, myth, religion and aesthetics have been dominant forces in Painting, mutating stylistically as Man's creativity shifts focus as his cultural and social reality changes face.

However, when we speak of Sacred Art or Painting, especially European, and more specifically, Portuguese Sacred Painting, the main constituent elements are necessarily Celtic, Greco-Roman and Byzantine aesthetics overlapping a profoundly Judo-Christian mythological, religious and social matrix.