The advent of Reason
Professor Luiz Alberto Freire of the UFBa School of Fine Arts unveils Bahia’s collection of Neoclassical decoration and wins the second Clarival do Prado Valladares Award Over 100 entries submitted
written by ◦ Karolina Gutiez photos by ◦ Christian Cravo

The second edition of the Clarival do Prado Valladares Award, introduced by the Odebrecht Group in 2003, will sponsor a book research project titled “Neoclassical Decoration in Bahia.” The author, Luiz Alberto Freire, aims to shed light on an important chapter of Bahia’s art history: the artistic reform movement that took place throughout most of the 19th century, replacing the Baroque.

Eighteenth-century churches were elaborately and excessively adorned, supported by twisted Solomonic columns representing infinity, and were charged with symbolism, expressed in bunches of grapes, large masks, birds and grotesque figures – all designed to engage the worshippers’ feelings.

Neoclassicism was influenced by the Enlightenment and the predominance of reason over feeling, as well as by the anthropocentrism practiced in 19th-century Europe. Excess was replaced by churches built with an art and architecture that was sober, calm and rational. Neoclassical artists turned to ancient Greco-Roman traditions: columns became classical and vertically or horizontally ridged; symbolic references now referred to virtues such as faith, hope, charity and fortitude; and polychromy and the excessive use of gilding were replaced with the balance of light and white backgrounds.

“As a result, Roman Catholicism was expressing its new mentality: instead of distracting the faithful with an overwhelming symbolic onslaught, its aim was to call attention to the basic message of Christianity. Therefore, churches had to be bright and airy to put worshipers in a frame of mind that was conducive to concentration and serenity,” explains the author, Luiz Freire, a Professor at the Federal University at Bahia (UFBa) School of Fine Arts who has a doctorate in Art History from the University of Porto in Portugal.

The first known use of Neoclassical decoration in Bahia dates back to 1792, in the chapel of the Santíssimo Sacramento (Holy Sacrament) Brotherhood. In 1813, the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim (Our Lord of the Good End, or Christ Crucified), the icon of the new esthetic, carried on with the reform and unleashed a wave of church building and renovation in Bahia that ended in 1888, when the Church of the Third Order of São Domingos (St. Dominic), the last house of worship to adopt this style, reopened.

Bahia has the largest and best collection of Neoclassical churches in Brazil, each containing elements that are closely related to those produced in Italy and Portugal in terms of technique and esthetics, while retaining their own characteristics.

Until now, however, the richness of this period and the consistency and unique traits of the reform movement had never aroused the interest of scholars as a field of research. According to Luiz Freire, while he was researching the doctoral dissertation that gave rise to the book project now being sponsored by Odebrecht, he did not find a single specific publication on the subject. The only reference he could find was a book titled L'Architecture Religieuse Baroque au Bresil (Baroque Religious Architecture in Brazil) by the French museum scientist Germain Bazin. Published in 1953, it contains just five pages on the Neoclassical style. “A movement that took place over the course of 100 years deserves more attention than that. My book will discuss this subject in all the depth and breadth that its importance merits in order to fill that gap,” says Luiz Freire.

According to Professor Freire, the Brazilian arts of the 17th and 18th centuries were first studied in the 1950s, when Europe and consequently Brazil gained an appreciation of the Baroque period. “Everything pertaining to Baroque art was deemed worthy of attention, particularly here in Brazil, where it represented our colonial past.” He attributes the scarcity of studies on Neoclassical decoration to the fact that this style was considered responsible for the decline of the Baroque, and was believed to have impoverished the artistic language of its predecessor, putting an end to richness and creative diversity as a result of its simplicity. Freire disagrees: “That is not true at all. The same level of creativity was maintained in Neoclassical decoration, particularly in Bahia.”

Luiz Freire will prove his point when the book is published. “When I was writing my dissertation, I had more access to Portuguese archives. Now, thanks to Odebrecht’s sponsorship, I will be able to intensify my research of contemporary periodicals that contain information on the day-to-day workings of that movement, the identity of the artists who produced the carvings, and stylistic and symbolic issues and their relation to religious discourse.” The author, who has studied 21 churches so far, intends to include even more in his research, going outside the city of Salvador to analyze altars in other parts of Bahia.

Luiz Freire believes that his work will help to encourage Brazilian society and government agencies to pay more attention to this segment of their artistic heritage and give it the value it deserves, just in time to preserve it and put a stop to the process of deterioration that has already begun.