São Paulo – The Baroque style and its development will be in the spotlight beginning on the 17th this month, with the lecture Baroque Sacred Art in Brazil and Portugal, hosted by the Brazil-Lebanon Cultural Center. Opening on the same date and venue will be an exhibit of photos of the city of Ouro Preto, in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
The lecturer will be Mia Vieira-Azar, who chairs Associação dos Amigos de Portugal-Líbano (the Association of Friends of Portugal-Lebanon). She explains that Baroque art emerged as a reaction from the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation underway in Europe in the 16th century.
“Baroque was a movement from the Catholic Church, as it sensed that it was losing space and power. It was meant to bring the followers back to church and to carry out a counter-reformation,” she says. The strategy of relying on art to help the church retain its following worked in countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal, which remained catholic, while in nations such as England, for instance, Protestantism took hold.
From the Portuguese churches, Baroque was brought to Brazil by the Jesuit missions, Azar explains. The state of Minas Gerais was where the new style of sacred art thrived the most. “Minas Gerais developed its own genuine brand of Baroque art, especially in the 18th century. It was a prolific, unique output, including Aleijadinho and the painter Manuel da Costa Ataíde,” she points out.
Ouro Preto, the city of birth of Brazil’s foremost Baroque artist, sculptor Aleijadinho, is still home to much of his work. The exhibition in Lebanon will feature approximately 20 pictures taken in the city that were loaned by the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan). The showing will continue until April 5.
Quick facts
Lecture: Baroque Sacred Art in Brazil and Portugal
March 17 from 6pm to 8pm
Brazil-Lebanon Cultural Center
Mar Mitr street, Trad Building, Achrafieh, Beirut
Phone: 00 xx 961 1 322 905
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Brasiliban
Admission to the lecture and the exhibit is free
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum