Baroque
The mid 17th century saw the emergence of the first national school of sculpture with the works of Domingos da Conceição, Agostinho da Piedade and Agostinho de Jesus, now seen as the founders of Brazilian sculpture. Through the 17th and 18th centuries, there were major centers of sculpture production in Salvador and Olinda and in some cities in Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Although Portuguese pieces continued to be imported in great numbers, native masters proliferated. They took refined European models as a source for their inspiration, adapting their general lines toward a folk interpretation of the Baroque style. Decorative woodcarving would also be largely dependent on Portuguese influence, but it flourished with great splendor, as can be seen inside the many churches erected during this period.
Most surviving pieces from the Baroque era do not record authorship, and only a few names are known: Francisco das Chagas, Manuel Inácio da Costa, Francisco Xavier de Brito and Francisco Vieira Servas. Above them all stands Aleijadinho. He was active in Minas Gerais where he left his greatest works, considered the glory of Brazilian Baroque sculpture: six groups of wooden carved statues known as the Via Sacra cycle and the 12 Prophets carved in soapstone, all at Bom Jesus de Matosinhos Sanctuary in Congonhas do Campo, now a World Heritage Site. The Baroque tradition survived until the beginning of the 20th century, albeit more and more sparsely and mainly in Bahia, despite the introduction of Neoclassicism in the 1820s.
Two special genres of sculpture deserve mention in the Baroque period: the missionary sculpture and the so-called de roca statues. The first flourished in the Reductions and was produced by Indians, often helped by Jesuit missionaries, as part of the Jesuits' method of teaching religion to the Indians, who were deeply impressed with and moved by European art. Its style is a highly original synthesis of European influences with the native vision. These creations are of great interest because of their plastic quality and their unique flavor. Although most of them have disappeared, either sold abroad, reshaped, or destroyed, many pieces do remain, preserved mainly by the Missions Museum in Rio Grande do Sul, and they are Brazilian National Heritage. The second special genre, the de roca statues, were also sacred in nature and shared a common purpose with the missionary art, as both were didactic. Manipulated by puppeteers in plays of a sacred character, they were instrumental in exciting piety in the people, enhancing the dramatic effect of the play. They were also commonly carried by chariots or other movable devices as part of a procession.
Read more about this topic: Brazilian Sculpture
Famous quotes containing the word baroque:
“The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, denies all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature. These high-pitched gables, these Baroque cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, neither are, nor desire to be, related with anything in Nature. And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the city-as-world, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about annihilating the country picture.”
—Oswald Spengler (1880–1936)