The Brazilianist Magazine

Chapter: Aleijadinho - page 63pp.

"Mulatto-ism" - a phenomenon of Mineiran nationalism of the 18th Century, which gained currency again in the 20th Century - has its highest expression in the myth of Aleijadinho ("little cripple"). However, the question of whether or not there existed an artist by the name of Antônio Francisco Lisboa, a mestizo who suffered from a degenerative illness and who was the author of hundreds of splendid works in Mineiran cities, especially in churches, merits dispassionate examination.

Initially, the works were "attributed to Aleijadinho" and with the passage of time they gained definite acceptance, without any new supporting data or documents. Even at the Exposition of the Fifth Centennial in the year 2000, the Fine Arts National Museum showed hundreds of images from a private collection as being the work of the artist.

The subject is generally treated with passion. In the city of Ouro Preto, for example, people defend the existence of Aleijadinho so that the city does not lose the benefits of historical and artistic tourism, as if the works have no inherent value in themselves or for those who made them.

It was Augusto de Lima Junior, a person who was passionate in everything he did and believed, who first denied the existence of Aleijadinho, attributing the myth to the imagination of Rodrigo Bretas, author of the book "Traços Biográficos de Antônio Francisco Lisboa" (Biographical Traces of Antônio Francisco Lisboa).

Indeed in the period in which the artist supposedly lived and Breta's book was written there is no other reference to anyone with these characteristics, not even one account of the "atrophied mestizo carried by slaves", creator of a body of work so vast that to achieve such productivity four hands would be required, and not just two mutilated ones.

There are many other authors who strengthen our thesis that the subject needs to be examined without passion when they challenge the existence of the artist in so many places, and in so many rich productions. The former director of the Mineiran Public Archive, Feu de Carvalho, in "O Aleijadinho", limits his work usually to only published sources.

Zoroastro Passos, another historian, in his book "Em Torno da História de Sabará", (About the History of Sabará) raises serious doubts about the presence of the artist in the Mother Church of the city of Sabará and in the Chapel of Our Lady of Ó.

It is common knowledge that churches take considerable time to build, usually with resources donated to the brotherhoods by the rich faithful. A reading of the excellent work, "As Igrejas Setecentistas de Minas Gerais" (The 17th Century Churches of Minas Gerais), by Paulo Mourão, offers a grand compendium information and explanatory notes on hundreds of Mineiran churches and chapels. However, it is too generous in attributing to Aleijadinho (of whom the author confesses himself to be an enthusiast), a vast number of works, of all kinds, sizes and schools.

On the other hand, linking the name of Aleijadinho to a work undeniably adds millions to the value the happy owners of these precious items, which came on the market over the decades due to plain robberies or questionable transactions. Very few pieces were sold directly by the parishes or mitered dioceses, though there are documented cases of registered sales.

In 1996 I published a new edition of the book by Lima Junior, "Vila Rica de Ouro Preto" (Vila Rica means “rich village” and it was the original name of the city of Ouro Preto, or "black gold"). In that edition I included an interview that came out in in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo in the same year, with the Paulista researcher Dalton Sala by the correspondent in Lisbon, Jair Rattner. In this interview the life and works of Aleijadinho are questioned because of lack of proof and by the existence of receipts from other people for the same kind of work, in the same churches. In the magazine Revista de História e Arte (Magazine of History and Art) that Augusto de Lima Junior published in Belo Horizonte in the 1960's, experts in Mineiran historiography like Salomão de Vasconcelos and Waldemar de Almeida Barbosa have also expressed their doubts, questioning the details of the biography and works of someone who didn't receive any mention from foreign visitors, artists of the epoch or prelates.

Even someone who had the mere artistic gift for producing such work would by himself be compelling enough to make it into the records, as was the case with Manoel da Costa Athayde; however, in the purported case of Aleijadinho, it would have been even more enhanced by his mixed race parentage and his degenerating condition. Hence everything in this case points to a creative imagination, which only goes in accordance with what was "conventional" in Brazil to be "politically correct". Since Aleijadinho was a mulatto and had a tropical style, it erased the memory of hundreds of Portuguese and Italian artisans, especially among us (Brazilians), in the same way that the styles of our 17th Century churches - in the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, and Maranhão - resemble those in Portugal. Everything very "fashionable"... it surely reminds us of those who present revolutionary slaves Zumbi dos Palmares to the admiration and recognition of Brazilians of African descent instead of the Imperial Family, who had already liberated all their slaves many years before Princess Isabel declared slavery officially abolished in Brazil.

Waldemar de Almeida Barbosa published in 1988 through Editora Itatiaia of the University of São Paulo his book "O Aleijadinho de Vila Rica", which is also a testimony of the contradictions that surround the artist about whom there exists no supporting evidence or documents from the period in which he exercised such a rich and dense artistic activity. The historian - author, among other notable works, of "The Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Minas Gerais" - provides a series of equivocations related to the birth certificate of Antônio Francisco Lisboa as reported by his first biographer, Rodrigo Bretas. And he still adds many others, such as the fact of [someone] having added the name Lisboa, which doesn't appear in any document of the alleged father and mother of the "recorded" person. Another Rodrigo, Andrade, the first director of the Historical Patrimony in the Vargas Era (when Vargas was the President of Brazil) considers the document dubious and suggests that it would have been based on a citizen's death certificate, something that borders on the bizarre.

Minas Gerais, in the time that the mysterious artist would have lived, was a world phenomenon. It's natural that curiosity would bring many people to visit and write about the region, so rich in gold and diamonds, and that in the interior of South America, 400 kilometers away from the coast, cities gifted with the most beautiful churches and palaces were built. Thus, there are many accounts of travelers published and always without reference to the mutilated genius. Auguste de Saint Hilaire, who wrote works about Minas Gerais, does not refer to the phenomenon; even less so the French doctor Sigaud, author of a book about the climate in Brazil, especially in Minas, a state which he visited.

The Irish Ricardo Gumbleton also wrote about his trip to Minas and doesn't mention the phenomenal artisan, and also the French Jean Lery and the Austrian diplomat Baron Wenzel de Marescal. Further, Cláudio Manoel da Costa, poet and historian, who left a reasonable body of work, has never referred to such a greatly gifted artist. Cláudio Manoel had a brother who was a Franciscan, an order that built the most beautiful of Ouro Preto's churches, just like others in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco - the Franciscans, too, hadn't registered him as a collaborator.

Author Feu de Carvalho went further. He was disturbed by the generosity with which José Mariana Filhoenumerated the works attributed to Aleijadinho when he found reference to the portico of the convent of Congonhas, dated 1844, 30 years after the reported death of Aleijadinho. Waldemar de Almeida Barbosa still remembered that Gastão Penalva manifested amazement at the absence of references to Aleijadinho in Tomás Gonzaga, Bárbara Eliodora, Álvares Maciel, Paula Freire, the Alvarenga - all who lived and wrote during the same period.

Salomão de Vasconcelos, in the book "Verdades Históricas" (Historical Truths) also manifests his indignation with the fact of one's attribution to Aleijadinho of all the artistic creations existing in Minas. Rugendas, who spent a long time in Brazil and left, besides etchings, accounts about our land, has never given any news about Aleijadinho. But the enthusiasm for the fantastic, imaginary figure, his ideological significance, awaking a primary nationalism well in the Third World style impressed a man like Gastão Penalva, who in his book about Aleijadinho starts by comparing him to Michelangelo, about which we have no comments.

D. João VI promoted, in 1816, the coming of the French Artistic Mission to Brazil, with great names of the arts, especially those linked to the period of Napoleon Bonaparte, already deposed by that time. Given this opportunity, personalities would come and go leaving families that still today are notable in Brazilian and Mineiran life. This mission is very well documented and accounted for in a book by Afonso Escragnolle Taunay, descendent of one of the members of the mission which brought three Taunay brothers. Besides them, among the members of the mission were Grandjean de Montigny, Nicolas Antoine and Auguste Marie de Taunay, Jean Baptiste Debret, brothers Marc and Zepherin Ferrez, Joachim Lebreton and Rugendas. All grouped around the Fine Arts Imperial Academy in Rio, but following closely what was happening in other centers of art and culture like Minas and the Northeast. Those intellectuals and artists left books, accounts and letters, without, in any of them, any kind of reference to the "mutilated genius".

Richard Burton, considered one of the foremost authors about Minas, narrates in detail his visit to Ouro Preto, with references that include revolutionary Tiradentes. Charles Ribeyrolles of France, comes to Brazil, writes books, travels to Minas, and narrates facts that he hears in hundreds of conversations. He is a detractor denouncing and criticizing the colonial situation of Brazil, exalts the Inconfidentes (those few of the abortive movement led by Tiradentes in 1789 to free Brazil from Portugal), but says nothing about the "pure Brazilian, mestizo and genial artist"; for a man of his mind, it should have fit like a glove. Incidentally, a notable book is "Tiradentes: O Corpo do Herói" (Tiradentes: The Body of the Hero) by Maria Alice Milliet, published by Martins Fontes, that may serve as a guide to those who wish to know who lived and wrote about the time when Aleijadinho would have lived. Again, there's no reference to him.

The most probable fact is that there might have existed someone with this name who, among hundreds of other artists or assistants, worked in that period. Maybe even one of them had a degenerative disease. But to attribute to only one person the creation of styles common to so many other works of that time, spreading the myth not only around Brazil but around Europe and Spanish America is something of an obstinacy and lamentable ignorance. After all, Brazil doesn't lose anything in professing the truth. Quite the contrary, it strengthens the credibility that must surround subjects of this nature. Also, the notable work was done in Brazil and in good part is still here. It is up to us to preserve it and not to feed legends that only serve to enrich the merchants of art without commitment to historical truth. And, please, do not defend the alleged Aleijadinho with the postulate that records do not exist about him because of racial discrimination. What about so many other mestizos who were referred to and praised, about whose existence and authorship of works there are no doubts?

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