This research it isn’t confined to António Joaquim Padrão (c. 1730-71) – marginal personality in the portuguese capital artistic scene, yet with a independent workshop operating in the city during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, working has a painter and engraver – historical-biographical reconstruction, nor to his artistic corpus and simultaneously with that of his peers from an aesthetic point of view. It also concerns the understanding of the nature, evolution, use and context of distinctive types of body language in religious and portrait genres, in light of images instructive potencial within Catholicism and regime. In the first and second parts of this study we attend to the individual and family past, in private, public and profissional perspectives (origins, social status, educational degree, household, health, artistic training, friends circle, client portfolio, contacts, works, aesthetic thought). The collect data helped clarify the apparent contradiction of seeing him – follower or practitioner of the Court most cherished aesthetic, formed in the main workshop of the capital (André Gonçalves), consorted with the first regal painter (Vieira Lusitano) in engraved entreprises, friend of friar Manuel do Cenáculo (one of the most enlightened minds in the country and a prominent figure in the Court) – apart from the most import works that were starting in the rebuilted city religious temples and, at the same time, keeping his workshop active. The last part is committed to the analysis of the most esteemed elements of the roman late-Baroque in our country (with no significant difference from the international scene), basis of success and reasons for continuity (right dose of classicism, baroque and Renaissance canon of beauty; virtuous and sensitive language referentials of the human figure, like modesty, humility, pudency).