'Utterly vile as works of art': When British travellers met the 'Michelangelo of Brazil'

The name Aleijadinho is not familiar to many people outside Brazil. It's the nickname given to Antônio Francisco Lisboa (1730/38–1814), the sculptor and architect whose works are now recognised as defining examples of Brazilian baroque art and architecture. (That is, if he was even a real person – a topic of some controversy and debate. For the purposes of this post, let's assume he did exist.) Aleijadinho was a Mineiro (a person from Minas Gerais) through and through, and his works can be seen throughout Minas, including the towns of Ouro Preto,[1] São João del Rei and Congonhas do Campo. Where does the nickname come from? 'O Aleijadinho' means 'The Little Cripple', owing to an apocryphal story that the artist caught leprosy and continued to work even after his hands had deteriorated, with his tools tied to the stumps of his wrists so that he could carve his sculptures, chiselling through the pain. The honorary title of 'the Michelangelo of Brazil' has been applied over the years, although this label does feel a bit clickbaity – the two artists worked in very different times, places and visual styles.[2]

Euclásio Ventura, Antônio Francisco Lisboa (Aleijadinho), posthumous portrait, 19th century, Museu de Congonhas, Congonhas do Campo, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Source.

In my previous post I discussed the British explorer Richard Francis Burton's journey through Minas Gerais in the 1860s, accompanied by his wife Isabel – as documented in his book Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil (1869).

In December 1867 (or possibly January 1868), the couple arrived in Congonhas do Campo, then a 'hamlet of 600 souls'. Even on their approach, Richard noted the prominence of the church and convent, the Santuário do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, at the centre of the town: 'At first glance Congonhas appeared to be all one church and convent'.[3] When they arrived, they were shown around by the Reverend Padre Antonio José de Costa of the Brotherhood of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos. He took them to see the sculptures by Aleijadinho which can be found throughout the town's historic centre. This includes a series of seven sculpted tableaux depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ, created by Aleijadinho and his assistants in the 1790s. They consist of life-sized wooden figures of the biblical characters arranged like actors on a stage in dramatic poses (the figures are not fixed to the floor and can therefore be moved or rearranged). Each scene is enclosed within a small oratory, so visitors must walk from one building to the next in a zig-zag pattern, following the story as it unfolds up a gentle slope:

The series of domed oratories containing the individual scenes from Aleijadinho's Passion series in Congonhas. Source.

This is what Richard Burton thought of the first scene, the Last Supper, when he looked inside:

Wooden figures, mostly mere masques or 'dickies', without bowels or dorsal spine, dressed like the traditional Turk of the Christian Mediterranean type, are seated at a table richly spread with tea (or maté) pots, cups, liqueurs, and meats.

Aleijadinho, Last Supper tableau, Congonhas. Still from the documentary O Aleijadinho (1978), dir. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. Note the presence of food and drink (presumably also carved sculptures?) on the table in Burton's description; evidently these no longer exist.

Our Lord is saying, 'One of you shall betray me.' 

Head of Christ from the Last Supper by Aleijadinho. Still from the documentary O Aleijadinho (1978), dir. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade.

All look with quaint expressions of horror and surprise, except Judas, who sits next the door, hideous of aspect, and caring as little to disguise his villainy as Iago upon an English stage. My wife complied with the custom of the place, took the knife from Judas his platter, and dug it into his eye, or rather into a deep cut which cleaves his left molar bone, and then smote with it his shoulder. This poor Judas!

Figure of Judas clutching the bag of coins from the Last Supper by Aleijadinho. Source.

After performing this strange ritual, Richard and Isabel proceeded to the oratory that presented Christ's arrest by the Roman soldiers, Judas having betrayed him:

The first of the new stations shows the mercurial and somewhat Hibernian St. Peter striking off the ear while the Saviour is about to heal the wound.

Source.

Christ (right) and Judas from the Arrest of Christ by Aleijadinho. Source.

The inscription Tanquam ad latronem, &c., does not merit notice; the Pagan soldiers do. Surely such Roman-nosed warriors never could have existed unless they used their proboscis as the elephant uses its trunk.

On the extreme left of the scene we see Peter raising his sword above his head, having just sliced off the ear of the Roman solider, Malchus, who kneels in the foreground on the far right; Christ in the centre steps forward to heal the wound.

The wounded soldier Malchus. Source.

Burton concludes of the Passion series:

But grotesque as they are, and utterly vile as works of art, these wooden caricatures, serve, I have no doubt, to fix their subjects firmly in the public mind, and to keep alive a certain kind of devotion.[4]

Curiously, Burton does not mention that these sculptures are by Aleijadinho. This doesn't mean that he didn't know about the artist; earlier in his book he mentions the 'handless man, whose labours we shall find scattered throughout this part of the Province':

He is generally known as the Aleijado or Aleijadinho – the Cripple or the Little Cripple; some call him O Ignacinho, little Ignatius, others Antonio Francisco. His work was done with tools adjusted by an assistant to the stumps that represented arms.[5]

Burton does acknowledge that the artist was responsible for the other sculptures in Congonhas, which are even more famous: the life-sized stone figures of the twelve Prophets, created between 1800 and 1805. The statues occupy the forecourt of the church of the Santuário do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos:

Source

Daniel by Aleijadinho. Photo: Brian J. McMorrow.

Isaiah by Aleijadinho. Photo: Brian J. McMorrow.

Baruch by Aleijadinho. Photo: Brian J. McMorrow.

Joel by Aleijadinho. Photo: Brian J. McMorrow.

Here's what Burton wrote about these 'twelve gigantic figures':

Each figure is inhabited in conventional Oriental costume, bearing a roll engraved with some remarkable passage from his book, in Latin and large old letters. The material is steatite [soapstone], found in the neighbourhood, and the workman was the ubiquitous Cripple [...] The group has a good effect at a distance, and in the Brazil the idea is original: it compares, however, poorly with the Bom Jesus de Braga, near Oporto, and the humblest of Italian holy palaces.[6]

These must be among the earliest written descriptions of the works of one of Brazil's greatest artists by a British traveller. It's just a shame that the traveller in question didn't think very highly of them! Burton's hyperbolic criticisms – 'utterly vile as works of art', 'grotesque', 'mere masques or "dickies"' – remind me of the extreme language that the art critics hurled at the early paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites in the 1850s; Charles Dickens's famous review in 1850, declaring that the new style of Pre-Raphaelite painting represented 'the lowest depths of what is mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting'.[7] The subject of British responses to Aleijadinho in the nineteenth century requires further research – did any other Brits visiting Brazil see these distinctive sculptures and churches, and write about them? I'm not sure if this has ever been considered before!

The extraordinary angel from the Agony in the Garden by Aleijadinho at Congonhas. Source.

Notes

[1] Aleijadinho was born in Ouro Preto in the 1730s, when the town was known by an older name, Villa Rica. He lived there his entire life and died there on 18 November 1814. He's buried in the Igreja [Church] Matriz de Nossa Senhora da Conceição de Antônio Dias, in Ouro Preto.

[2] Daniel Whittaker, 'On the golden trail of Brazil's Michelangelo', The Observer, 23 April 2000.

[3] Richard Francis Burton, Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil (1869), vol. 1, pp. 165-66.

[4] The description of the Aleijadinho Passion series quoted here can be found in Burton, Explorations, vol. 1, pp. 168-69.

[5] Burton, Explorations, vol. 1, pp. 122-23.

[6] Burton, Explorations, vol. 1, p. 171. Burton is referring the sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Braga near the city of Braga in Portugal.

[7] Charles Dickens, 'Old Lamps for New Ones', Household Words, 15 June 1850, pp. 12-14.

'Misery and splendour': Two Victorian travellers in Juiz de Fora

This post concerns two British Victorian explorers who visited Brazil in the 1860s and 1870s – specifically the city of Juiz de Fora in the state of Minas Gerais. Why Juiz de Fora? It's somewhere I'm familiar with; it's my boyfriend Felipe's hometown, I've stayed there three times and have visited the places discussed in this post. The city doesn't feature highly on the list of tourist destinations in Brazil; it's more of a working town, with a moderate population of around 500,000 inhabitants. It's inland, so there are none of the beaches and coastal landscapes which tourists often associate with Brazil. However, it's only around three hours by coach from Rio de Janeiro, and has beautiful surroundings and an interesting history of its own.

Juiz de Fora seen from the Morro do Imperador. Own photo, 14 May 2019.

To begin, then, with Richard Francis Burton:

Frederic Leighton, Richard Francis Burton, 1872–5, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Burton (1821–90), a British explorer, diplomat and writer (just some of his occupations; he had so many throughout his life that it's difficult to list them all), is well-known for his 'adventures' across Asia, Africa and the Americas – the sort of manly escapades you might find in a Boys' Own magazine. Burton worked in Brazil as a diplomat from 1865–8, accompanied by his wife Isabel (née Arundel; 1831–96), his 'constant companion'. After returning to England he published a lengthy account of the 'holiday excursion' which he and Isabel made 'to the Gold Mines of Minas Geraes [sic] via Petropolis, Barbaçena, and the Prairies and Highlands of the Brazil'.[1] The book records his impressions of the places he visited, and occasionally the visual culture of the Brazilian people which he encountered – not always with enthusiasm.

In June 1867, Richard and Isabel passed through Juiz de Fora, which was then a small town. Felipe and I were intrigued to see what Richard thought of it. We were in for a treat. 'The city is the usual mixture of misery and splendour' (ouch!), Burton begins, before continuing:

Juiz de Fora is a single dusty or muddy street, or rather road, across which palms are planted in pairs. [...] The dwellings are low and poor, mostly 'door and window' as the phrase is. Amongst them, however, are large and roomy town houses, with gilt pineapples on the roof, glass balls on the French balconies, fantastic water-spouts, pig-tailed corners, birds of tile and mortar disposed along the ridges, and all the architectural freaks of Rio de Janeiro.[2]

Rua Halfeld in the centre of Juiz de Fora, Brazil, in the nineteenth century. Photo: Museu Mariano Procópio Archive.

I mean, it doesn't look that bad!

Burton paid a visit to one of Juiz de Fora's notable sites: the home of the engineer and politician Mariano Procópio Ferreira Lage (1821–72), which had been built in 1856–61 in the style of an Italian villa, with a surrounding park. The villa housed Ferreira Lage's ever-growing art collection. After his death, his son Alfredo built an extension so that the artworks could be displayed to the public; this opened in 1922. The collection comprises works by nineteenth-century Brazilian painters and sculptors, with some pictures from Europe, including a notable landscape painting by the Dutch Willem Roelofs (about which Felipe wrote his MA dissertation). Today, the complex is known as the Museu Mariano Procópio, and its beautiful grounds are open to the public. The museum and villa are in a less happy state: the former is able to display only a handful of works from the collection (just sculptures – no paintings), while the latter is shut up indefinitely for repairs. It's only a few minutes' walk from Felipe's family home, so I know it well enough by now!

Aerial photo of the Museu Mariano Procópio, the original villa at the top and the 1922 extension below it. Photo: Pinterest; couldn't find the original source!

The original Villa Ferreira Lage built in 1856–61, as it appears today. Source.

Richard Burton described the villa as the 'château' of Juiz de Fora, and this is what it looked like when he saw it in the 1860s:

The villa of Mariano Procópio, Juiz de Fora (probably 1860s). Photo: Museu Maranio Procópio Archive.

Today, the villa is obscured by trees, so it can no longer be seen from the road. Perhaps surprisingly, Burton was not impressed by what he saw, writing fussily:

Our fastidious English taste could find no fault in house or grounds, except that they were a little fantastic, the contrast with Nature was somewhat too violent – an Italian villa-garden in a virgin forest is startling. The château, which cost 30,000l. [pounds] or 40,000l., has too much colour and too many medallions; behind it, too, there is an ugly bridge leading to a prim summer-house, both of cast iron, and the former painfully like a viaduct.[3]

The offending bridge and summer house still stand:

An 'ugly' bridge? Source.

In some ways it's unsurprising to see a Victorian gentleman using his 'fastidious English taste' as an excuse to be condescending towards another country's culture. For me, the very incongruity and unexpectedness of the Villa Ferreira Lage are what make it so interesting: it's a nineteenth-century Brazilian interpretation of historical Italian architecture planted in the midst of a small tropical forest, which is itself a manmade construction. It looms suddenly into view as you ascend the mound on which it stands, a dream of Venice through the trees and spider webs. It reminds me of Appleyard College, the fictional girls' school in Joan Lindsay's novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), a villa of European design awkwardly placed in the hazy Australian outback, a metaphor for the story's imperialist themes.[4]

Burton was equally unimpressed by the extensive grounds of Ferreira Lage's grand home:

The little lake, with bamboo-tufted islets, dwarf Chinese bridges, and paddled boat, worked by negroes instead of steam; the 'Grotto of the Princesses', the grotesque seats and arbours, and the rustic figures of wood, are a trifle too artificial, and the Ema and stags, not pacing over the park, but caged along with monkeys and silver pheasants, suggested a menagerie. The European and tropical plants, however, were magnificent, and we measured an arum-leaf 5 feet 4 inches long. [...] We wandered about the orangery, which was innocent of glass, and found out the favourite trees; we lay for hours upon the grass eating the Tangerines, enjoying the perfumed shade of the myrtles, and admiring the young Wellingtonias and screwpines.[5]

The Parque Museu Maranio Procópio, Juiz de Fora. Source.

Photo by y.naomi, Flickr.

The bamboos have grown magnificently since Burton saw them!

It was a bit rich of Burton to criticise the park's 'artificial' features on account of 'English taste', given the vogue among eighteenth-century English aristocrats for ferociously reshaping the grounds of their country houses to the point where manmade lakes and fake grottoes, temples, ruins and hermitages (sometimes complete with a live-in hermit!) became a cultural norm (a trend partly influenced by the paintings of Claude Lorrain). The 'Grotto of the Princess', which is still in the park in Juiz de Fora today (see below), wouldn't look out of place in the grounds of Blenheim Palace!

Photo by Sylvio Bazote, Flickr.

After Richard Burton left the city, he was followed a few years later by Marianne North (1830–90), the famed botanist and artist. Although North didn't make any of her paintings there (that we know of!), she did write about her visit to the town in her memoirs, posthumously published in 1894.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Marianne North, 1877, albumen print, V&A, London.

North was a born traveller. She accompanied her father Frederick on excursions to Switzerland, Syria and the Nile in the 1850s and 1860s. When Frederick died in 1869, Marianne determined to continue travelling, but to go even farther abroad – and to do so alone, which, needless to say, was highly unusual for a Victorian woman (although her upper-class status undoubtedly made things easier). A keen botanist and painter, she intended to document the flora and landscapes of the countries she visited in small, detailed oil paintings, around 1,000 of which now survive in the extraordinary Marianne North Gallery at Kew Gardens.

Marianne North, Flowers of cassia corymbosa in Minas Geraes, Brazil, ca. 1873, oil on board, 45 x 35 cm, Marianne North Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK.

Marianne North, Study of traveller's tree of Madagascar in the Botanic Garden of Rio de Janeiro, ca. 1873, oil on board, 35 x 43 cm, Marianne North Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK. The prominent hill in the background is where the famous Christ the Redeemer statue (1922–31) now stands.

Brazil was one of the first countries North visited by herself. She arrived in the northeastern state of Pernambuco in August 1872, and spent about a year in the country before departing for England in September 1873. She passed through Juiz de Fora in late October or early November 1872, on her way to São João del Rei, a colonial town in Minas. Her reaction to Juiz de Fora was kinder than Burton's:

[The town] is all one monument to the great and good man who founded it, Senhor Mariano Lages [sic]; even the excellent hotel was designed and built by him, and a college for agriculture, library, museum, his own pretty villa and gardens, and the grand road itself, were all made by him for the good of his country, as well as his own. [...] The village itself looked very comfortable, every cottage having its own luxuriant little garden and shady porch, under which the fair German women and children sat knitting with their hair plaited around their heads.[6]

Ferreira Lage had died earlier that year, in February 1872. North greatly admired the aforementioned park surrounding the villa, saying that it was 'full of treasures',

not only of plants, but of birds and animals; there was a fence of fifty yards at least, entirely hung with rare orchids tied together; every available tree-branch was also decorated in the same way, and many of them were covered when we were there with lovely blossoms of white, lilac, and yellow, mostly very sweet-scented. There was also a great variety of palms. I saw one huge candelabra cactus twenty feet in height, and the air was perfumed with orange and lemon blossoms.[7]

Common to both North's and Burton's accounts is the wonder with which they viewed the trees, flowers and wildlife in Ferreira Lage's park, so different to what they knew back home. The park was a place to be quiet and restful in, to wonder at the natural world. In the Marianne North Gallery there is a large study of a Brazilian columnar cactus which could have been inspired by the 'huge candelabra cactus' which North saw in the park, although this is pure conjecture:

Marianne North, A Brazilian columnar cactus, ca. 1880, oil on canvas, 111 x 76 cm, Marianne North Gallery, UK.

In my next post, I will continue to examine the presence of these Victorian travellers in Minas Gerais.

Endnote: the present day

Me in the Parque Mariano Procópio, Juiz de Fora, 12 May 2019.

Bronze allegorical sculpture of 'The Arts' in the Parque Mariano Procópio, 17 May 2018.

Cabinet of plaster casts in the Museu Mariano Procópio, 17 May 2018.

Notes

[1] Richard Francis Burton, Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1869), vol. 1, p. 20.

[2] Burton, Explorations, vol. 1, p. 50.

[3] Burton, Explorations, vol. 1, p. 51.

[4] For his 1975 film adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir chose the real Martindale Hall in south Australia as the location for the school, which has echoes of the Villa Ferreira Lage.

[5] Burton, Explorations, vol. 1, pp. 51–52.

[6] Marianne North, Recollections of a Happy Life, edited by Mrs John Addington Symonds (London: Macmillan and Co., 1894), vol. 1, pp. 129–30.

[7] North, Recollections, vol. 1, p. 130.