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Fine Arts - 1 |
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From the 16th century, Roman Catholic churches and convents in Brazil were decorated in the European style, often by Brazilian craftsmen who had been trained in European methods. During the 17th and 18th centuries, baroque and rococo patterns imported from Portugal dominated Brazil's religious architecture and its interior decor. Many of these churches can be seen today.
The most impressive artist of the whole colonial period was the architect and sculptor Antônio Francisco Lisboa (1738-1814), better known as Aleijadinho (the "Little Cripple"). The self-taught son of a Portuguese settler and a slave mother, he was a master of sophisticated rococo decoration and his painted wood sculpture and stone statuary have a timeless grandeur of feeling. In mid-life Aleijadinho contracted a crippling disease, but he continued to work for another 30 years with chisel and mallet strapped to his wrists. His artistry is seen in many of the baroque churches in his home state of Minas Gerais, especially in the town of Ouro Preto and the surrounding area. In the neighbouring town of Congonhas do Campo, at the Church of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, Aleijadinho sculpted 12 life-sized soapstone statues of the Prophets and placed them on the terrace and staircase outside the entrance. In front of the church's terraced stairs, in six small devotional chapels, he created the Stations of the Cross with 66 poignant statues in cedar wood.
During the last four decades of the 18th century, new art appeared (especially in Rio de Janeiro) in which religious themes were no longer predominant. Works with temporal themes, such as portraits of exalted personages, became part of Rio's artistic production.  At the beginning of the 19th century there was a process of "Europeanization" with the coming of the Portuguese Court to Brazil as the result of the invasion of Portugal by Napoleon Bonaparte's troops. Dom João VI, the refugee Portuguese monarch, encouraged Rio de Janeiro's intellectual activity, founding cultural institutions such as the Royal Press and the National Library. In addition, he brought a group of French masters to Brazil to establish an Academy of Arts and Crafts after the style of European art academies and to implement the neoclassic style in the "modernization" plan for the royal capital of Rio de Janeiro. Artists such as the Taunay brothers, architect Auguste Grandjean de Montigny (1776-1850), and painter Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848) were part of the group. Debret, the most important of the French artists, systematically documented landscapes, people, and rural and urban customs. The tradition established by Debret and his colleagues was so strong that neoclassicism and participation in academies ruled Brazilian visual arts well into the Republican era.
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