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These life portraits, essentially for study purposes, sought to rescue lesser-known figures from obscurity – as seen in catalogues and dictionaries, gathering lost or scattered elements into comprehensive corpora – but also to review earlier versions in light of new documents. This is evident in the work of the bibliophiles, from Inocêncio da Silva's monumental work, later continued by Brito Aranha and Joaquim de Vasconcelos, to the Viscount of Sanches de Baena and Rodrigues de Gusmão, who, as physicians and self-taught historians, made the collection of biographical news, some in extensive volumes, one of their main occupations.
While the work of some of these men, frequently framed by institutions and by the ACL, displays a thematic openness essentially anchored on the quasi-filigree recovery of less conspicuous trajectories than those of the prominent figures in national history (thus potentially distancing themselves from the prevailing laudatory model of those biographies), the driving force behind the biographical boom of the 19th century is primarily found on the margins of historiography or historical criticism, as it was becoming institutionalised: the disseminators – both within and outside academia – were the ones to dominate the landscape of biographical writing over these years and who definitively expanded the universe of portrait-worthy characters beyond the narrow confines of conventional biographical writing. These "improvised great ordinary men," as Garrett called them, or those who had achieved greatness by merit, were no longer just the notable figures who continued to fill the pages of biographical texts or the numerous collections of illustrious lives being published, but also the names of those distinguished in more recent times: parliamentarians of modest renown, journalists, musicians, and actors. (A. Garrett, “Memoria historica de ... Mousinho da Silveira”, [1849], p.350)
In this movement of openness, opposing formations and interests converged, among which notably those representing the specialisation movement in history. The fact that, in the middle of the century, the writing of the biography of actress Emília das Neves, who was still active at the time, was disputed by Almeida Garrett, Rebelo da Silva, Júlio Machado, Latino Coelho and António Feliciano de Castilho, is suggestive of this climate of exchange and sharing of interests and references that only the field of dissemination could provide. But also, and above all, the naturalisation of a conception of historical time of signalled by the life portrait, before other genres: a conception that could be called presentist, both in the temporal thickness already discovered in the trajectories of contemporary figures and those from the very recent past - thus elevating them to monuments - and in the updating of the work and deeds of great figures from the more remote past, active participants, through biography, in modern political debate.
