Mannerism in Brazil
Introduction of the Mannerist style in Brazil through Portuguese colonization / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The introduction of Mannerism in Brazil represented the beginning of the country's European-descended artistic history. Discovered by the Portuguese in 1500, Brazil was until then inhabited by indigenous peoples, whose culture had rich immemorial traditions, but was in every way different from the Portuguese culture. With the arrival of the colonizers, the first elements of a large-scale domination that continues to this day were introduced. During the founding of a new American civilization, the main cultural current in force in Europe was Mannerism, a complex and often contradictory synthesis of classical elements derived from the Italian Renaissance - now questioned and transformed by the collapse of the unified, optimistic, idealistic, anthropocentric world view crystallized in the High Renaissance - and of regional traditions cultivated in various parts of Europe, including Portugal, which still had in the earlier Gothic style a strong reference base. Over the years the current was added of new elements, coming from a context deeply disturbed by the Reformation, against which the Catholic Church organized, in the second half of the sixteenth century, an aggressive disciplinary and proselytizing program, the so-called Counter-Reformation, revolutionizing the arts and culture of the time.
Due to the fact that the establishment of Portuguese civilization in Brazil started from scratch, there were scarce conditions for a cultural flourishing for almost a whole century. Therefore, when the first important artistic testimonies began to appear in Brazil, almost exclusively in the field of sacred architecture and its internal decoration, Mannerism was already in decline in Europe, and was succeeded by the Baroque in the first half of the 17th century. However, mainly due to the activity of the Jesuits, who were the most active and enterprising missionaries, and who adopted Mannerism almost as an official style of the Order, resisting much in abandoning it, this aesthetic was able to expand abundantly in Brazil, influencing other orders. Nevertheless, the style they cultivated most in the colony was the Portuguese Plain Style architecture (Estilo Chão in Portuguese), with austere and regular features, strongly based on the classicist ideals of balance, rationality, and formal economy, contrasting with other trends in Europe, which were much more irregular, anti-classical, experimental, ornamental, and dynamic. The basic model of the facade and in particular the floor plan of the Jesuit church was the most enduring and influential pattern in the history of Brazilian sacred edification, being adopted on a vast scale and with few modifications until the 19th century. The Portuguese Plain Style architecture also had a profound impact on civil and military construction, creating an architecture of great homogeneity spread throughout the country. As for the internal decorations, including gilded wood carving, painting and sculpture, Mannerism had a much shorter lifespan, disappearing almost completely from the mid 17th century, with the same occurring in the literary and musical fields. Despite its strong presence, most of the Mannerist churches were decharacterized in later reforms, and today a relatively small number of examples survive in which the most typical traces of the Early Architecture are still visible. Their internal decorations, as well as the examples in music, suffered an even more dramatic fate, being lost almost in entirely.
Critical attention to Mannerism is a recent phenomenon; until the 1940s, the style in general was not even recognized as an autonomous entity in History of Art, considered until then a sad degeneration of Renaissance purity or a mere stage of confused transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque, But since the 1950s a great number of studies have begun to focus on it, better delimiting its specificities and recognizing its value as a style rich in proposals and innovative solutions, and interesting in its own right. About the Brazilian case, however, the difficulties are much greater, research is in its initial phase and the bibliography is poor, there are still many mistakes, anachronisms and divergences in its analysis, but some scholars have already left important contributions for its recovery.