Алейжадинью: Скульптор и архитектор колониальной Бразилии

Colonial Brazilian sculptor and architect (c.1738–1814)

Antônio Francisco Lisboa (c. 29 August 1730 or 1738 – 18 November 1814), better known as Aleijadinho (aleiʒaˈdʒiɲu, ), was a sculptor, carver and architect of Colonial Brazil, noted for his works on and in various churches of Brazil. With a style related to Baroque and Rococo, Aleijadinho is considered almost by consensus as the greatest exponent of colonial art in Brazil by Brazilian critics and, surpassing Brazilian borders, for some foreign scholars he is the greatest name of Baroque in the Americas. Little is known with certainty about his biography, which remains shrouded in legend and controversy to this day, making the research work on his life very arduous. The main documentary source on Aleijadinho is a biographical note written only about forty years after his death. His trajectory is reconstructed mainly through the works he left behind, although even in this context his contribution is controversial, since the attribution of authorship for most of the more than four hundred creations that exist today associated with his name was made without any documentary evidence, based only on stylistic similarity with documented pieces. All of his work, including carvings, architectural projects, reliefs and statuary, was carried out in Minas Gerais, especially in the cities of Ouro Preto, Sabará, São João del Rei and Congonhas. The main monuments that contain his works are the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Ouro Preto and the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus of Matosinhos.

Little is known about the life of Antônio Francisco Lisboa. Practically all the data available today are derived from a biography written in 1858 by Rodrigo José Ferreira Bretas, 44 years after Aleijadinho's death, allegedly based on documents and testimonies of individuals who had known the artist personally. However, recent criticism has tended to consider this biography largely fanciful, part of a process of magnification and dramatization of his personality and work, in a romanticized manipulation of his figure whose aim was to elevate him to the status of an icon of Brazilianness, a mix of hero and artist, a "singular genius, sacred and consecrated", as Roger Chartier described it. Bretas' account, however, cannot be completely discarded, since being the oldest substantial biographical note on Aleijadinho, most of the later biographies were based on it, but the information it brings needs to be seen with some skepticism, being difficult to distinguish what is fact from what has been distorted by popular tradition and by the writer's interpretations. Biographies and critical studies carried out by Brazilian modernists in the first half of the 20th century also made biased interpretations of his life and work, increasing the amount of stereotypes around him, which are still perpetuated today in the popular imagination and in part of the critics, and are explored both by official cultural instances and by tourism agencies in the cities where he left his production. The first official news about Aleijadinho appeared in 1790 in a memorandum written by captain Joaquim José da Silva, complying with the royal order of 20 July 1782, which determined that notable events, of which there was certain news, that had occurred since the foundation be recorded in an official book of the Captaincy of Minas Gerais. The memorandum, written while Aleijadinho was still alive, contained a description of the artist's most notable works and some biographical indications, and was partly based on it that Bretas wrote Traços biográficos relativos ao finado Antônio Francisco Lisboa, distinto escultor mineiro, mais conhecido pelo apelido de Aleijadinho, where he reproduced excerpts from the original document, which was later lost.

Antônio Francisco Lisboa was the son of a respected Portuguese master builder and architect, , and his African slave, Isabel. In the baptismal certificate, cited by Bretas, it appears that Antônio, born a slave, was baptized on 29 August 1730, in what was then the town of Vila Rica (currently Ouro Preto) in the parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição de Antônio Dias, with Antônio dos Reis as his godparent and being manumitted on the occasion by his father. The birth certificate does not contain the child's date of birth, which may have occurred a few days earlier. However, there are strong arguments that currently lead to considering it more likely that he was born in 1738, as his death certificate states the date of his death as 18 November 1814, adding that the artist was then 76 years old. The 1738 date is accepted by the Aleijadinho Museum, located in Ouro Preto, and according to biographer Silvio de Vasconcelos, the original manuscript by Bretas, found in the archives of the Archdiocese of Mariana, refers the birth to 1738, warning that the date corresponds to that recorded on Aleijadinho's death certificate; the reason for the discrepancy between the dates in the manuscript and the booklet that was printed is unclear. In 1738 Aleijadinho's father married Maria Antônia de São Pedro, an Azorean, and with her he gave Aleijadinho four half siblings, and it was in this family that the artist grew up. According to Bretas, Aleijadinho's knowledge of drawing, architecture and sculpture was obtained from his father and perhaps from draftsman and painter João Gomes Batista. From 1750 to 1759, he would have attended the boarding school at the Seminary of the Franciscans Donatos of the Hospício da Terra Santa, in Ouro Preto, where he would have learned grammar, latin, mathematics and religion. Meanwhile, he assisted his father in the work he carried out at the Church of Antônio Dias and the , also working with his uncle Antônio Francisco Pombal, a carver, and He collaborated with José Coelho Noronha in the work of carving the altars of the Mother Church of Caeté, his father's project. His first individual project dates back to 1752, a design for the fountain in the courtyard of the in Ouro Preto. rheumatoid arthritis, poliomyelitis and porphyria (a disease that produces photosensitivity — which would explain the fact that the artist worked at night or protected by an awning). The construction of the myth around Aleijadinho already began in the pioneering biography of Bretas, who, despite warning to the fact that "when an individual becomes famous and admirable in any genre, there are those who, lovers of the marvelous, exaggerate indefinitely what is extraordinary in him, and from the exaggerations that succeed and accumulate, a truly ideal entity finally composes", nevertheless, Bretas praised Aleijadinho's achievements against a hostile environment and an overwhelming illness. However, according to Bury, from that date his handwriting visibly deteriorated. Chartier, Hansen, Grammont and others have echoed the same arguments as Gomes Júnior; Barretto added that the figure of Aleijadinho is currently a decoy for tourism in Ouro Preto to such an extent that his illness, represented in the books, is "commercialized" in some tourist spots in the city. In the midst of this web of dubious biographical constructions largely consecrated by tradition, several scholars have tried to separate fact from legend, in an effort that began almost at the same time as the mythical image around it was created, with the pioneering writings of José Mariano Filho and Roger Bastide on this topic, later supported by several others such as those of the aforementioned authors.

There is no news that Aleijadinho was portrayed in life. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, a small portrait of a well dressed mulatto, with his hands hidden, was found in the ex voto house of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, in Congonhas. The work was then sold in 1916 to the Rio de Janeiro merchant Baerlein as a portrait of Aleijadinho, and after ending up in an antique shop, it was bought by Guilherme Guinle, at which point the authorship of the portrait was attributed to Manoel da Costa Ataíde. In 1941 Guinle donated the portrait to the Public Archives of Minas Gerais, where in 1956 it was rediscovered by historian Miguel Chiquiloff, who began a research of almost twenty years to prove its authenticity. Chiquiloff's conclusion was that the image does indeed represent Aleijadinho, but its authorship was attributed to an obscure painter, Euclásio Penna Ventura. After that, a great debate was ignited in the press, and public opinion in Minas Gerais was induced to be favorable to the official recognition of the work as an authentic portrait of Aleijadinho; the proposal was even the subject of a bill that was submitted to the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais, but in accordance with an opinion of the State Council of Culture of Minas Gerais, which stated that "due to the absence of supporting elements, it is not possible to make any official pronouncement on the authenticity of the painting referred to in the process", the project was vetoed by the governor. However, the Assembly overturned the government veto and approved Law No. 5,984, of 12 September 1972, recognizing the portrait as the official and unique effigy of Antônio Francisco Lisboa. It is the image that illustrates the opening of this article. Some Brazilian artists have also offered conjectural versions of his appearance, among them Belmonte and Henrique Bernardelli.

Minas Gerais had the peculiarity of being a more recent settlement area in relation to the Brazilian coast, and there it was possible to build with more freedom, in more updated aesthetics, in this case, the Rococo, a profusion of new churches, without having to adapt or renovate older buildings already established and still in use, as was the case on the coast, which makes them exemplary with regard to stylistic unity. The Rococo ensemble of churches in Minas Gerais is of special importance both for its richness and variety and for being a witness to a very specific phase of Brazilian history, when the region concentrated the attention of the Portuguese metropole for its large deposits of gold and diamonds and constituted the first nucleus of an eminently urban society in Brazil. The formulation of a differentiated artistic language in Minas Gerais was also due to two other important factors: its relative isolation from the rest of the colony and the sudden enrichment of the region with the discovery of the gold deposits. The style typically practiced in Minas Gerais had its main center in the old Vila Rica, today Ouro Preto, founded in 1711, but it also flourished vigorously in Diamantina, Mariana, Tiradentes, Sabará, Cachoeira do Campo, São João del Rei, Congonhas and a number of other mining towns and villages. When gold began to run out, around 1760, the cultural cycle of the region also began to decline, but that was when its characteristic style, at this point already transitioning to Rococo, reached its culmination with the mature work of Aleijadinho and Master Ataíde. The wealth of the region in the 18th century also favored the emergence of an urban elite interested in art, sponsoring artists and appreciating secular works. According to Afonso Ávila,

text="The unique experience of the Captaincy of Minas Gerais constituted, due to the peculiarities of the economic conditioning and the civilizing process, a unique moment in Brazilian cultural history. If gold and diamonds — or rather, if the mining industry was, in the field of economy, the material factor in the crystallization and autonomy of mountain culture, baroque atavism prepared its spiritual support, imprinting its ethical religious standards on the life of the mining society and imposing its aesthetic values and tastes on creative manifestations. Without this unit of philosophical conformation, the sedimentation of a culture so authentic in its individuality would never be possible, a phenomenon not of a historical regional contingency, but of a polarization of ethnic virtualities of the colonizing people who would find here exceptional conditions of expansion and affirmation". The role of the brotherhoods in the social life of Minas Gerais, to which Aleijadinho connected through the Brotherhood of São José, which served mainly mulattos and attracted many carpenters, was important. They were organizations that sponsored the arts, fostered the spirit of Christian living, created a network of mutual assistance for their members, and dedicated themselves to caring for the poor. Many became very wealthy, and competed in building temples decorated with luxury and refinement, boasting paintings, carvings and statuary. It is also considered that the brotherhoods had a political side, acting in the construction of a social consciousness in an environment dominated by the Portuguese elite. At the time when Aleijadinho worked, Minas Gerais was in a state of political and social agitation, strongly pressured by the Portuguese Crown, which wanted the gold from the mines at any cost, and due to this intolerable pressure it became the headquarters of the Minas Gerais Conspiracy. It is documented that Aleijadinho had contact with one of the conspirators, Cláudio Manuel da Costa, but his political views are unknown. Rococo can be succinctly described as a softening and lightening of the Baroque. In the opinion of lt=Myriam Oliveira, the form of its introduction in Minas Gerais is obscure and controversial, and the only thing known for sure is that in the 1760s works along this line already appeared in various parts of the region, without any apparent connection between them. Other researchers attribute the emergence of the style in Minas Gerais to the spread of German and French engravings, statuary and Portuguese tiles, created in this aesthetic that was already consolidated in Europe at this point. Throughout colonial Brazil, art developed under a very precarious teaching structure, essentially artisanal and corporate, and the practice of learning through the study of reproductions of great examples of European art was a commonplace process among local artists, who looked to them for inspiration for their own work. It is also certain that Portuguese artists circulated in the region; they knew the art of the Metropolis well and naturally left their mark on the people of Minas Gerais. In any case, Rococo was characterized by the abandonment of the heavy and compact decoration of the oldest and typically Baroque coastal temples, full of dense carvings, often completely covered in gold, framing compartmentalized panels painted in somber colors, the so called "coffers", and instead adopting decorations that are more open, flowing, luminous and light. The softening was also imprinted on the architecture, with more elegant facades and more decorative porticos, larger windows for more effective internal lighting, busier plants, more docile materials such as soapstone, and interiors with a predominance of white, interspersed with more delicate and graceful carving, more expansive and also more sparse, often resorting to patterns derived from the shape of the shell with clear polychromies. The general approach to sacred iconography, however, was not greatly affected by Rococo in countries with a strong counter reformist tradition such as Portugal and Brazil, continuing what was described about the theme in the Baroque, including the case of the sculptural works of Aleijadinho, whose drama and eloquence are remarkable. Aleijadinho's affiliation with the aforementioned aesthetic schools is a matter of dispute; some authors even detected traces of archaic styles such as Gothic in his production, which he would have known through Florentine engravings. Mário de Andrade, in the enthusiasm that characterized the rediscovery of Aleijadinho by the modernists, went so far as to express himself about his style on an epic scale, saying that:

text="The artist wandered around the world. Reinvented the world. Aleijadinho remembers everything! It evokes the Italian primitives, it outlines the Renaissance, it touches the Gothic, it is sometimes almost French, almost always very Germanic, it is Spanish in its mystical realism. An enormous cosmopolitan irregularity, which would have led him to something hopelessly dilettante if not for the strength of his conviction imprinted in his immortal works". Sometimes Aleijadinho is analyzed as a transitional element between Baroque and Rococo, as is the case of Bazin, Brandão, Mills, Taylor and Graham. Others regard him as a typical Rococo master, such as James Hogan, for whom he was the greatest exponent of Brazilian Rococo, or Myriam Oliveira, a scholar of colonial art, who denounced the recurring tendency to assimilate the "Minas Gerais phenomenon" into the orbit of the Baroque, a basic flaw that she pointed out to exist in most modern studies on the art of the region and on Aleijadinho, and which originated the concept, so widespread, and for her false, of "Baroque from Minas Gerais". Others see it as a perfect example of Baroque, such as Clemente, Ferrer, Fuentes and Lezama Lima. John Bury considers that:

text="Aleijadinho's style belongs to Baroque, in the broadest sense of the term. The spirit of Baroque was that of Catholic and imperial universality and, in that respect, Aleijadinho was a true master of that style. He instinctively grasped the basic notions of Baroque in terms of movement, limitlessness and theatrical spirit, as well as the idea that all arts, architecture, sculpture, carving, gilding, painting and even ephemeral spectacles should be used as elements that harmoniously contribute to a grandiose illusory effect". The influence of popular art on his work is also noted, as Junqueira Filho refers to when he states that Aleijadinho's uniqueness resides in the fact that he overcomes the talent of a simple copyist and the idiosyncrasies of a popular language that, however, remains visible as "a grace craft" in its process of appropriating cultured models, surpassing its models and acquiring a status of new and original work, an achievement that would be responsible for the universality of his contribution without implying the loss of its popular roots, also being a justification for its relevance in the panorama of Brazilian art.

Aleijadinho worked as an architect, but the extent and nature of this activity are quite controversial. Only documentation survives on the design of two church facades, Our Lady of Carmel in Ouro Preto and Saint Francis of Assisi in São João del Rei, both started in 1776, but whose outlines were changed in the 1770s. Oral tradition holds that Aleijadinho was also the author of the design for the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Ouro Preto, but in relation to it, only his participation as a decorator is documented, creating and executing altarpieces, pulpits, a doorway and a washbasin. He also created, as already mentioned, projects for altarpieces and chapels, which fit more in the function of the decorator carver, even though they have architectural proportions. Oliveira states that the comparison between the documented facade designs and what is traditionally attributed shows that they are dealing with very different stylistic universes, suggesting that the attribution of the Franciscan church of Ouro Preto to Aleijadinho is questionable to say the least. This presents a more compact model, with more dynamic volumes and poor ornamentation in the openings, except for the doorway, whose authorship is defined by Aleijadinho. Its aesthetics are more reminiscent of old Baroque models. The other two have decorated windows and less protruding volumes, and are conceived in the Rococo style. The problems become more complex in the analysis of his contribution to the religious architecture of Minas Gerais when one notices the discrepancy between the design of the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in São João del Rei, which was recovered, with the result that is visible today, having undergone several modifications by pt, to the point of being fair to call him co author of the work. According to Oliveira:

text="The project drawn up by Aleijadinho in 1774 for the facade of the church of Saint Francis of São João del Rei, which is located on the same evolutionary line of Ouro Preto's Carmel, would have come to characterize, if executed, the most genuinely Rococo of the Minas Gerais religious facades the project, fortunately preserved, a beautiful and meticulous pen and ink drawing with the volumes marked in shading, gives a very precise idea of the author's original thought. The elegant chamfered and slightly rounded towers frame a slightly sinuous frontispiece like that of the Carmel church, with a similar design to that church, with the same bell shaped crowning, in a more evolved treatment. Other similarities can be detected in the ornamental design of the doorway and window frames, differing, however, the model of the oculus and the pediment, flanked by vigorous flaming rocailles, which visually propel the central sculptural relief upwards with the scene of the vision of Saint Francis on Mount Alverne".

Aleijadinho's greatest achievement in full figure sculpture are the sets at the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, in Congonhas — the 66 statues of the Via Sacra, Via Crucis or Passos da Paixão, distributed in six independent chapels, and the Twelve Prophets in the churchyard. All the scenes on the Via Sacra, carved between 1796 and 1799, are intensely dramatic, and this effect is heightened by the bright colors of the life size statues, painted, as indicated in a contract signed in 1798 by Master Ataíde and Francisco Xavier Carneiro. However, it is not certain that Carneiro worked on the pieces, as there are no payments made to him in Book 1 of Expenses until 1837, when it ends. The typology of the Via Sacra is old, dating back to the Sacro Monte tradition, born in Italy centuries before being re enacted in Congonhas. The type consists of a set of scenes from the Passion of Jesus, of a theatrical and pathetic nature, explicitly intended to invoke pity and compassion, briefly reconstructing the journey of Jesus from the Last Supper to his crucifixion. The scenes are usually arranged in a series of chapels that precede a temple placed on top of a hill or mountain — hence the name Sacro Monte — exactly as is the case with the Sanctuary of Congonhas, erected by Feliciano Mendes in payment of a promise and imitating the model of the homonymous shrine in Braga, Portugal. Julian Bell found in the Brazilian ensemble an intensity not surpassed even by the Italian models, and Mário de Andrade read it as an example of a sometimes ferocious expressionism. Gilberto Freyre and others saw in some of these plays, especially in the grotesque Roman soldiers who torment Christ, a poignant and sarcastic, albeit veiled, cry of protest against the oppression of the colony by the Portuguese government and of blacks by whites. Freyre, at the same time, identified typically folkloric roots for the constitution of his extravagant personal style, such as the satirical iconography of popular culture, marveling at the skilful way in which Aleijadinho introduced elements of the voice of the people into the universe of international Baroque high culture. By comparing the quality of the various individual figures, researchers came to the conclusion that Aleijadinho did not execute all of the Via Sacra images. His work would only be on those of the first chapel, where the Holy Supper is represented, and on those of the second chapel, featuring the Agony in the Mount of Olives. Of the other chapels, he would have personally carved only some of the figures. In the third, from the Prison, Christ and possibly Saint Peter, and in the one that contains two scenes, the Flagellation and the Crowning with Thorns, also the figures of Christ, and one of the Roman soldiers, who would have served as a model for all the others, carved by his assistants. In the chapel of Carrying of the Cross, the figure of Christ and possibly the two weeping women, together with the boy carrying a nail from the cross. In the chapel of the Crucifixion, his work would be the images of the nailed Christ and the two thieves who flanked him on Calvary, in addition, possibly, also that of Mary Magdalene. The other part of the Matosinhos set are the twelve sculptures of the prophets, made between 1800 and 1805, whose style has been a source of controversy since the manifest misunderstanding of Bernardo Guimarães in the 19th century, who, disconcerted by the apparent errors in carving and design, still recognized moments of remarkable beauty and solemnity in the statues, truly worthy of the prophets. The set is one of the most complete series representing prophets in Western Christian art. The four main prophets of the Old Testament are present — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, in a prominent position in the central wing of the staircase — and eight minor prophets, chosen according to the importance established in the order of the biblical canon, namely Baruch, Hosea, Jonah, Joel, Obadiah, Amos, Nahum and Habakkuk. The proportions of the figures are extremely distorted. Part of the critic attributes this to the incompetence of his group of assistants or the difficulties in handling the chisel generated by his illness, but others are inclined to see an expressive intentionality in them; others understand the distortions as an eminently technical resource destined to compensate for the deformation arising from the low point of view from which the statues are seen, demonstrating that the creator was aware of the problems and demands of the figural representation in perspective. In fact, the drama of the set seems to be intensified by these aberrant forms, which are presented in a varied and theatrical gesture, imbued with symbolic meanings referring to the character of the prophet in question and the content of his message. The artist's prestige with specialized critics accompanies his popularity among Brazilian laypeople. In 2007, the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center (CCBB) in Rio de Janeiro held the exhibition Aleijadinho e seu Tempo — Fé, Engenho e Arte, which had a record public of 968,577 visitors, the largest public, in absolute numbers, received at an exhibition held in the CCBB Rio since its seventeen years active, surpassing figures for the São Paulo International Biennial (535,000), and for the Picasso Na Oca (905,000) and Guerreiros de Xi'an (817,782) exhibitions. Grammont, Gomes Júnior, Chartier, Barretto and others warn against the perennialization of mystifying, romanticized and fanciful views about the Aleijadinho, which tend to obscure his correct contextualization and the clear understanding of his artistic stature and the extent of his originality, from the copious folklore that, since the Vargas Era, both the officials and the people have been creating around his little known and mysterious figure, elevating him to the level of a national hero. Hansen even pointed out as regrettable evidence of this situation the occurrence of political manipulation of Aleijadinho's image abroad, citing government censorship of the publication of more critical studies in the catalog of a major exhibition that included the artist mounted in France, sponsored by the federal government of Brazil.

Aleijadinho has already been portrayed as a character in cinema and television: in 1915 Guelfo Andaló directed the first biopic about the artist, in 1968 he was portrayed by Geraldo Del Rey in the film Cristo de Lama, Maurício Gonçalves in the film Aleijadinho Paixão, Glória e Suplício (2003) and Stênio Garcia in a Special Case on TV Globo. In 1978 Aleijadinho was the subject of a documentary directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade and narrated by Ferreira Gullar.