Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre, Baron of Santo Ângelo

Brazilian poet, playwright and painter (1806–1879)
the Brazilian poet, playwright and painter

Manuel José de Araújo Porto Alegre, Baron of Santo Ângelo (29 November 1806 – 30 December 1879), was a Brazilian Romantic writer, painter, architect, diplomat and professor, considered to be one of the first Brazilian editorial cartoonists ever. He is the patron of the 32nd chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Porto Alegre was born Manuel José de Araújo in Rio Pardo, Rio Grande do Sul, to Francisco José de Araújo and Francisca Antônia Viana. He would change his name to Manuel de Araújo Pitangueira during the independence of Brazil, citing nativist reasons. Later on, he finally changed it to Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre. In 1826, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, in order to study painting with Jean Baptiste Debret at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He also studied at what is now the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras and took a medicine course and philosophy. In 1831, he left Brazil along with Debret to Europe, in order to improve his painting techniques. In 1835, he went to Italy, where he met Gonçalves de Magalhães, another Brazilian poet. Porto Alegre and Magalhães would create in France, in the year of 1837, a short lived magazine named Niterói, alongside Francisco de Sales Torres Homem. Also in 1837, he became history painting teacher at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, in a post that would last until 1848, when he became a drawing teacher at the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras, and started doing his first caricatures. In 1838, he married Ana Paulina Delamare, having two children with her: Carlota Porto Alegre (the future wife of painter Pedro Américo) and future diplomat Paulo Porto Alegre. In 1840 he was named the official painter and decorator of emperor Pedro II's palace. He decorated the imperial palace in Petrópolis, the wedding of Pedro II with Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies and the emperor's coronation. He was decorated with the Order of Christ and the Order of the Rose. Reuniting with Gonçalves de Magalhães and Torres Homem, he founded a periodic named Minerva Brasiliense, that lasted from 1843 to 1845. He would publish in this periodic his poem Brasiliana. In 1844, alongside Torres Homem, he founded the humoristic magazine Lanterna Mágica, where he published his caricatures. In 1849, Porto Alegre founded the magazine Guanabara, alongside Joaquim Manuel de Macedo and Gonçalves Dias. The magazine, considered the official journal of the Romantic movement in Brazil, lasted until 1856. In 1852, he entered the political career, assuming a position as a substitute councilman in the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro, lending service in the areas of urbanism and public health. He exercised this post until 1854, the year when he became the headmaster of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, lasting until 1857. In 1860, Porto Alegre entered the diplomatic career, where he served as the consul of the Empire of Brazil in the Kingdom of Prussia, in the Kingdom of Saxony and later in Portugal, where he died. (Porto Alegre's remains were brought to Brazil in 1922.) He was granted the title of Baron of Santo Ângelo by emperor Pedro II in 1874, and was a member of the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute.

While in Dresden in 1865, Porto Alegre wrote a letter to Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, then tutor of Princess Isabel's children, in which he reveals that he became a Spiritist and was able to psychograph messages from the Underworld, and Isabel would ask him "who was [her] guardian spirit". The letter, now being kept at the Brazilian National Archives, has 12 pages.