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THE ART NEWSPAPER SPECIAL REPORT Number 260, September 2014

HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE

How the slave

trade shaped
the Baroque
As Catholicism spread across the colonies, slaves
and freedmen created a uniquely Brazilian style

Visual artist, and director and

curator of the Museu Afro Brasil

he Baroque movement
that spread across the
Portuguese and Spanish
colonies has been important to the Catholic
hegemony of the New
World since 1500. The image of the
cross was used as a powerful symbol
of evangelisation so that the work of
the Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans
and other religious brotherhoods and
third orders could add European men
and women, Indians and Africans to
the Christian faith that developed as
the glue binding a new era during the
17th and 18th centuries in Brazil.
Wild and tropical Brazil was the
ideal environment for a new aesthetic, which was made a reality through
the force of the colonisers and
through slaves from West and Central
Africa, who overflowed from the
countrys sugar mills to the gold and
diamond mines of Minas Gerais state.

Gold, frankincense and myrrh

Black and mixed-race slaves and
freedmen were fundamental in the
building of one of the richest periods
in Brazilian art. In the midst of many
disgraces, their vision shows the
impact of miscegenation in the culture of the national Baroque.

Black slaves were

fundamental in one of
the richest periods in
Brazilian art
and daub (pau-a-pique), into monumental churches, convents and cathedrals with interiors covered in pure
gold and sterling-silver devotions.
Much of this work was done by
black and mixed-race slaves and
freedmen, despite restrictions such
as a decree banning African and
African-Brazilian goldsmiths in 1621.
This culminated in goldsmiths stalls
being smashed in Rio de Janeiro and
Bahia in 1766, although there are
some examples of these decrees being dismissed.
Certain artistic figures stand out,
such as Manuel da Cunha (1737-1809),
a slave who bought his freedom,

studied in Portugal and came back to

Brazil with responsibility for public
education in drawing. He painted the
extraordinary church of St Francis of
Paola in Rio de Janeiro, along with
other artists from the Rio School of
painting, notably Manuel Dias de
Oliveira (1764-1837) and Raimundo da
Costa e Silva (dates unknown).
Major artists from Rio include Leandro Joaquim (around 1738-around
1798), Francisco Xavier das Conchas
(1739-1804) and the great Valentim da
Fonseca e Silva (around 1745-1813),
whose sculptures stood in the churches of the third order of Carmel. Valentim was a close friend of the Viceroy
Luis de Vasconcelos, who commissioned him to design works collectively known as the Love Fountains
for Rios Passeio Pblico, the oldest

public park in Brazil. These were accompanied by bronze sculpturesthe

first to be cast in the city.

The little cripple

Antnio Francisco Lisboa (1730 or
1738-1814), also known as Aleijadinho
(little cripple), was born in Vila
Rica, in Minas Gerais. The work of
this great sculptor and architect
spans many of the states cities, such
as Ouro Preto, Congonhas do Campo
and Sabar, and his carved soapstone
facades are the masterpieces of
churches including St Francis of
Assisi and Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
At the end of the 18th century, he
began the cedar sculptures Capela dos
Passos (chapels of the stations of the
cross) and Santurio do Bom Jesus de
Matosinhos in Congonhas do Campo

Francisco das Chagass 18th-century

work Senhor Morto (the dead Christ)
one of the greatest expressions of his
artistic creativity.
Equally important is the 18thcentury Bahian sculptor Francisco
das Chagas (dates unknown), nicknamed O Cabra (the goat), whose
work Senhor Morto (the dead Christ) is
studded with rubies like drops of
blood. Also from Bahia was Jos
Tophilo de Jesus (1758-1847), who
created the large wall paintings and
ceiling of the church of Pilar and San
Joaquin, while the black painter Father Jesuno de Monte Carmelo (17641819), in the city of Itu in So Paulo
state, worked on the ceiling of Our
Lady of Mount Carmel church.

CHAGAS: PHOTO: LAMBERTO SCIPIONE. ARAUJO: ADENOR GONDIM

EMANOEL ARAUJO

The Baroque ideal meant the

transformation in curves of the tenets
of Classical art. It was the great spectacle of the forms of nature mixed
with a strongly angled geometry in
gold and white marble. Dark wood
was put together with large panels of
Portuguese blue tiles; ceilings were
painted with illusionist paintings
against a sensory backdrop of frankincense, myrrh and organ music.
Brazilian gold reached Portugal in
tonnes, while the few bars remaining
adorned the carvings of the altars of
hundreds of churches, cathedrals and
monasteries across the country.
Artists, gilders, sculptors, woodcarvers, goldsmiths and silversmiths,
cabinetmakers, carpenters and masons transformed humble chapels of
rammed earth (taipa), made of wattle