Biography of Victor Meirelles and analysis of the work "The First Mass in Brazil"

The First Mass in Brazil, held on April 26, 1500, just four days after the Portuguese landed in Porto Seguro, was painted by Victor Meirelles between 1859 and 1861, while the artist was living in Paris.

The painting was inspired by the letter written by Pero Vaz de Caminha to the King of Portugal, considered the most important historical document about the discovery of Brazil.

The work, which is part of the National Museum of Fine Arts, has become one of the most popular paintings in the country.

Primeira Missa no Brasil (Victor Meirelles) — First Mass in Brazil (Victor Meirelles)

Biography of Victor Meirelles and analysis of the work « The First Mass in Brazil

Victor Meirelles e a análise da obra "A Primeira Missa no Brasil"

Biography
The Brazilian Indian and the Romantic Movement
Analysis of the work « The First Mass in Brazil
Imperial Academy of Fine Arts
Works by Victor Meirelles

1. Biography

Birth and Education: Victor Meirelles was born in Lages, Santa Catarina, in 1832. He showed an interest in painting from an early age and, with the support of his family, entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro in 1849. There he studied with renowned artists and was taught by Jean-Baptiste Debret and Gustave Roux.
Career: Meirelles became known for his large-scale works and his ability to capture historical scenes with precision. In 1852, he won the prize for a trip to Europe, where he honed his skills in Paris and studied the old and contemporary masters. His stay in Europe had a significant influence on his artistic style.
Contributions: Upon his return to Brazil, Meirelles became one of the country’s leading artists. He was appointed professor at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts and played an important role in training new generations of artists. His work includes not only historical subjects, but also portraits and scenes from everyday life in Brazil.
Death: Victor Meirelles died in Rio de Janeiro in 1903. His legacy is widely recognized, and his works continue to be studied and admired for their historical and artistic importance.

The author and painter Victor Meirelles of the « First Mass in Brazil » was born in Desterro, now Florianópolis, capital of the state of Santa Catarina, in August 1832, in the house that is now a museum and in the street that today bears his name.

His early interest in learning the craft of painting, a skill he began to develop as a boy on his native island, is already well known.

That’s why, at the age of 14, he was taken to Rio de Janeiro to join the group of students at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, where he began a career of study that would lead him to win the Award for a Trip to Europe, to the main artistic centers of the time, in Italy and France.

The painting « First Mass in Brazil », considered a « masterpiece » in the history of Brazilian art, was created in Paris during the artist’s long study trip(1853-1861) as a scholarship student at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro.

Victor Meirelles was a humanist linked to Romanticism, a great researcher, an attentive observer, a scholar, dedicated, disciplined and unquestionably committed to his time. He was the first Brazilian to exhibit at the Official Salon in Paris in 1861, where he represented his country with the painting « First Mass in Brazil ».

It’s worth noting that even when he was in Paris, Victor Meirelles was in constant contact with the professors of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Brazil, especially Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre.

Victor thus fulfilled one of the requirements of the country that supported his stay in France.

Although he studied with masters from the First World, he remained under the tutelage and command of the Academy in Brazil and was therefore also subject to the ideas it articulated with the country’s political and cultural elite, including the Emperor Pedro Segundo and the IHGB group.

Thus, we realize that it was mainly the culture of his country of origin that determined his way of thinking and, consequently, his painting.

The First Mass in Brazil is the result of a complex network of relationships between the ideas and utopias that developed within the so-called « civilizing project » in the imagination of the cultural and political elite of 19th century Brazil.

This project became more evident, directly or indirectly, with the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 and was consolidated with the monarchies that followed(1822-1889).

With the arrival of the Court, Rio de Janeiro modernized and gradually lost its colonial aspect.

A secular, worldly, courtly and aristocratic culture developed around it.

The court entertained itself with bull fights, cavalcades, theater, soirees, and musicals.

It was against this backdrop that the country’s first art academy was founded.

Due to political changes between Portugal and France, as part of a strategy to bring the two countries closer together, the idea of bringing a French Artistic Mission to Brazil emerged in 1816, with the aim of institutionalizing art education in Brazil.

This was later consolidated in 1826 with the creation of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro.

The First Mass in Brazil, before being the isolated production of one artist, is a visual synthesis of the nationalist Civilization Project of the Second Empire.

Therefore, to understand this painting, it is necessary to go back to that context.

The country was establishing itself as an independent nation. The idea was to create a national identity, and art was considered a privileged place to think about society and invent a new identity.

The Fine Arts were an instrument of civilization and glory, with the power to contribute to the education of peoples, with the ability to intervene directly in reality.

The idea of art linked to education and civilization was very much in line with the civilizing project of the young nation that had been independent since 1822.

In order to understand the context in which Victor Meirelles’ painting « First Mass in Brazil » emerges amidst the problems of the Second Empire, it is also necessary to understand the issues surrounding the legitimization of this « civilizing project » on a general international level.

The Tropical Monarchy would have found it difficult to legitimize its power in the eyes of the world, which meant, among other things, the creation, display, and wide dissemination of the icons it created.

Surrounded by republics, the Brazilian monarchical model had obstacles to its recognition, both by the other American nations and by the difficult communication with European countries.

We must consider the internal effort to dissociate the Brazilian image from the idea of anarchy associated with a persistent slave system on which Brazilian society and economy were structured.

From the first years of independence, there was a clear effort to publicize and create an image that was both common and peculiar to this distant empire.

There was no clear awareness of the difficulties of transferring models imported from countries like France to Brazil, a country in the making.

Brazil was made up of a culturally and artistically uncomplex society whose intellectual elite, seduced by European culture, could not realize how problematic it was for this culture to take root and develop freely in a society that was still growing.

The way to understand this period is certainly not through simple and quick answers.

We can look for elements of reflection in the hypothesis that the country sought to affirm itself in the models it already knew and was aware were more advanced.

On the other hand, among civilizing ideas, there was an unsettling question that has continued to motivate national cultural and artistic movements throughout history: what is Brazilian?

In the nineteenth century, there was a general desire to assert oneself in the capitalist world, to be modern, to join the path of progress, to become a great nation, to shed the image of tropical exoticism, backwardness, and inertia.

In order to understand why, in times of change, certain symbols succeed and others don’t, we need to look not only at the issue, but also at the circulation, that is, the consumption of these symbols.

D. Pedro II, the first monarch born in Brazil, was emperor from 1840 to 1889 and became the main patron of the Romantic movement.

In the iconography, the use of a symbology characteristic of this monarchy, loaded with signs of dialogue with external (European) reality, without failing to denounce singular local (national) characteristics, is most striking.

Prolific in the production of images, the Brazilian Empire excelled in its role as creator of national icons, including anthems, medals, emblems, couplets and coats of arms, including the « First Mass in Brazil » as part of the official iconography.

2. The Brazilian Indian and the Romantic Movement

It is in the Romantic literary movement that we find the figure of the Indian taking shape since 1826, when the French consular Ferdinand Diniz drew the attention of Brazilians to the need to replace classical tendencies in favor of local characteristics.

The description of nature and customs was advocated, in which the Indian should be valued as the first and most authentic inhabitant of Brazil.

The romantic literati coexisted with the historians of the IHGB and the professors and directors of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, including Manoel de Araújo Porto Alegre, who had a strong relationship with the creation of the painting « First Mass in Brazil ».

It was in the 50s and 60s of the 19th century that Brazil experienced the consecration of Romanticism, whose manifestation, considered the most national, Indianism, had the greatest prestige, reaching, in addition to poetry and romance, music and painting.

The Indianists gained popularity by romanticizing the Indian as a national symbol.

Thus, the story of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts and the work of its students cannot be separated from the larger meaning of the Empire.

This story needs to be told better, especially with regard to the existence of a civilizing project associated with the construction of the state and the nation.

3. Analysis of the work « The First Mass in Brazil

The First Mass in Brazil is one of Victor Meirelles’ most emblematic works and one of the most important representations of Brazilian colonial history.

Historical Context: The painting depicts the historic moment of the First Mass in Brazil celebrated by Portuguese priests in 1500, when Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived in what is now Brazil. The event is often associated with the symbolic founding of the Christian and Portuguese presence in the New World.

Description of the work

Composition: The work is a large oil painting. It depicts a religious ceremony with great detail and drama. At the center of the scene is Father Henrique de Coimbra presiding over the mass, surrounded by other priests and members of the Portuguese expedition.
Colors and Style: Meirelles uses a vibrant palette rich in detail to capture the exuberance of the tropical environment and religious ritual. The neoclassical style characteristic of his training is evident in the precision and dignity of the figures.
Cultural and Historical Elements: The painting includes indigenous elements and an exotic landscape, depicting the cultural clash and initial interaction between the Europeans and the indigenous people. The use of details such as clothing and religious objects emphasizes the significance of the event.

Impact and Significance

Historical: The work not only celebrates a crucial moment in Brazilian history, but also reflects nationalism and the search for a national identity in the 19th century. Meirelles’ choice of subject demonstrates his commitment to Brazilian history and cultural identity.
Artistically: « The First Mass in Brazil » is considered one of Meirelles’ greatest achievements, exemplifying his ability to create dramatic and detailed historical scenes. The work is a milestone in Brazilian academic painting and remains an important reference for the study of Brazilian art and history.

A symbolic image of Brazilian culture, the « First Mass in Brazil » and its numerous preparatory studies are now part of the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, under the accession number 901.

The painting of the « First Mass in Brazil » was created during the reign of D. Pedro II, in France between 1859 and 1860, arriving in Brazil in 1861.

It is this environment that I want to begin to reconstruct, aware that understanding the spirit of Brazil in the Second Empire is not easy.

Where can we look for the presence of common elements that justify the birth of a repertoire of images and icons such as the « First Mass in Brazil » in this context?

Among other things, there was a need to create and publicize icons.

The « First Mass in Brazil », one of these icons, is undoubtedly one of the most important masterpieces of Brazilian painting of all time!

Masterpieces condense the sensibility of an era and fully express its tendencies and ideals.

At the same time, they embody the values of a community and are inconceivable without that community.

In it, the artist did more than any single person could: he used the intuitions and realizations of others, combining them in a new way that allowed him to speak on behalf of an entire generation.

This image, along with other national emblems and symbols, has contributed to the formation of the idea we have of ourselves as Brazilians, which belongs to the mythical, silent and invisible field of the founding myth of Brazil.

Created by the European conquerors and appropriated by Brazilian Romanticism, the old myth continues to be reinvented among us.

It is also important to highlight the role of the « First Mass in Brazil » in the construction of a representation of the « Discovery » and the Brazilian identity linked to Catholicism and the sense of conversion that the Portuguese navigation brought, which reinforces the importance of this painting in the construction of our cultural imaginary.

4. Imperial Academy of Fine Arts

The French Artistic Mission arrived in Brazil in March 1816, at the invitation of and by agreement with the Portuguese Court in Brazil.

It was composed of a group of artists and artisans, almost all former Bonapartists, who came to introduce the academic teaching of arts and crafts in the Brazil of D. João VI. João VI’s Brazil.

Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre from Rio Grande do Sul, Pedro Américo Figueiredo and Melo from Paraíba, José Ferraz Almeida Júnior from São Paulo and others were sent to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts; Victor Meirelles de Lima, from Santa Catarina; Pedro Américo de Figueiredo e Melo, from Paraíba; José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, from São Paulo, among others.

The works of these artists reflect the academic spirit of the time, oriented towards classical idealism and the masters consecrated by the academies of Rome and Paris.

Emperor Pedro II maintained contact with the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts throughout his long reign.

Dom Pedro II - Victor Meirelles — Dom Pedro II – Victor Meirelles

Following a policy similar to that of the IHGB, the emperor began to award prizes, medals, scholarships abroad, and grants, He also participated assiduously in the annual General Exhibitions of Fine Arts and awarded Insignia of the Orders of Christ and the Rose to the most outstanding artists.

In 1845, Pedro began to fund the annual Traveling Prize, which paid for the Academy students to study abroad.

The Emperor was given the title of Founder and Perpetual Protector of the Imperial Academy; protecting the Academy and its artists was also a way of guaranteeing the production of official iconography.

From the Academy and its artists came, in addition to the painting « First Mass in Brazil », the countless portraits, family scenes, and scenes of power of the Royal Family that still illustrate our history today.

Historical painting was the most valued genre at the Academy in the mid-19th century. As Jorge Coli explains (1998: 117).

Meirelles has achieved that rare convergence of forms, intentions, and meanings that makes a painting enter a culture powerfully.

This image of discovery can hardly be erased or replaced. It is the first Mass in Brazil.

These are the forces of art history.

The model of art education that Brazil imported was the only one that was current in the country of origin at the time it was imported to Brazil.

Therefore, the neoclassical style that the artists of the French Art Mission expressed when they came here to organize our first art school was the avant-garde style of the time.

The development of Brazilian painting began in 1840, when the first General Exhibition of Fine Arts was held.

It was in this context that the artist Victor Meirelles de Lima, the son of Portuguese immigrants from the city of Desterro, now Florianópolis, appeared among the students in 1847.

If, on the one hand, the academy taught them the traditional grammar of the plastic arts, on the other hand, they came from a society with no tradition of expressing itself through the learned forms of the academy, where, more by intuition than by training, they began to distrust the repetition of mythological and biblical scenes offered by the teaching models.

The teachers of the Academy of Fine Arts and the government of the country waited for talent to emerge.

Everything was closely watched by the emperor, who became the honorary president of the IHGB in honor of the occasion.

Ever since he was a boy, at the age of 14, he had followed everything closely.

Before Victor Meirelles, the Academy had sent other artists to Europe on scholarships, but they produced little and soon returned.

The first to appear in the documents and to know what was going on was the painter Victor Meirelles.

He went to Europe and met the demands of the Imperial Academy in Brazil with the obligations expected of him.

While the other artists sent one or two drawings, Victor Meirelles sent ten or twenty.

So the emperor and the intellectuals of the academy felt that they had found the artist they were looking for. And that’s why Victor Meirelles got his scholarship extended for eight years.

The normal period was only three years.

When Victor Meirelles was in France, the director of the Academy in Brazil worked closely with Emperor Pedro II.

They held weekly meetings to discuss the academic progress of their students and other matters.

When the first draft of the « Mass » was finished, Victor Meirelles sent it to the Academy in Brazil.

The cultural elite wanted to create this kind of image to remain in the cultural memory of the country.

That’s why, after the sketch of the « First Mass in Brazil » was accepted, the painter received funds for another two-year stay in France and for the costs of executing the work.

In Paris he was helped by Ferdinand Denis, a man who had lived in Brazil during the time of King João VI, loved it here, and remained a Brazilianist for the rest of his life.

He was the director of the Library of St. Genoieve, which still exists today in Paris.

It was in the Library of Saint Genoieve that Victor Meirelles analyzed the documentation on the Indians and Brazil, and where he found the letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha that they had discovered a little earlier.

Victor Meirelles painstakingly studied the letter to represent the mass described by Caminha.

Before being the product of the isolated mind of an artist, the « First Mass in Brazil » is a visual synthesis of the nationalist civilizing project of the Second Brazilian Empire, and Victor Meirelles de Lima was the man who made the ideas of this project a reality in the form of a painting.

If, on the one hand, the artist painted the ideas of the political and cultural body of mid-19th-century Brazil, concretized by the rigor of the artistic techniques he learned at the art academies he attended and by his fidelity to historical painting itself, on the other hand, he had « help » so close that we could call it « other hands ».

The most important one was Manoel de Araújo Porto Alegre. A nationalist, he was also a student of Debret at the Imperial Academy in the run-up to Brazil’s independence.

He was professor and director of the Imperial Academy when Victor Meirelles left for Europe.

He exchanged curious correspondence with the artist, giving detailed guidance on his studies. He spoke on behalf of the emperor and the academic body.

Although the entire correspondence between the two is unpublished, we can see from what is available that this exchange of information was not only academic, but was conducted in a climate of trust, understanding, and encouragement.

It was here that Victor was instructed in the composition of his first major original work.

As state pensioners, the artists who received the Traveling Fellowship were subject to strict legislation that required them to fulfill a series of tasks and obligations to ensure the success and maintenance of the fellowship.

Among these tasks was the regular submission of works created abroad.

The production of these works was determined by the Congregation of the School in Brazil. In order to guarantee the maintenance of this symbolic field, no deviation from this doctrinal line was permitted, under penalty of immediate suspension of the costs of his stay outside the country.

Following Porto Alegre’s instructions, Victor Meirelles first went to Italy, then to France, where he was taught by Leon Cogniet, a professor at the School of Fine Arts in Paris.

This school was a prestigious institution in the 19th century, considered the heir of the Imperial Academy, founded in 1684 to protect the artistic elite of France and free them from the tyrannical rules imposed by the Guilds of artisans.

Victor Meirelles also produced his First Mass under the demanding gaze of the jury at the Paris Salon Officiel in 1861, in which he participated.

In addition to studying Pero Vaz Caminha’s letter and following the meticulous instructions of Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre, there is another important fact to consider in the construction of the work in question: Victor Meirelles sought inspiration for the main scene of his work in another mass, that of the French painter Horace Vernet (1789-1863).

Première messe en Kabyli” (1853) -pintor Francês Horace Vernet (1789–1863) — Première messe en Kabyli » (1853) – French painter Horace Vernet (1789-1863)

The mass painted by Vernet, entitled « Première messe en Kabyli » (1853), reminds us that the method of quotation is perfectly legitimate within the genre of historical painting.

The lack of knowledge of the rules of historical painting by national art critics caused great controversy when the painting arrived in Brazil, and Victor Meirelles was even accused of being a plagiarist.

There is also the hypothesis that the theme of the Mass was recurrent at the time.

In the Granet Museum in Provence, France, we find another mass entitled « Une messe au Louvre pendant la Terreur », dated 1847, by Marius Granet (1775-1849).

The altar in the center, with a priest raising the host and another on his knees holding his vestments, is reminiscent of the main scene in Victor Meirelles’s Mass.

This procedure would also have been legitimate in the aesthetic-cultural context of the art academies of the 19th century.

The art academies are a model of artistic institutions that are little known and, perhaps for that reason, little appreciated.

Surrounded by prejudices since the advent of modern art, they have been reduced simply to regressive institutions that constrain artistic freedom and officially regulate taste.

However, these institutions were created to meet certain needs of the time, including those of artists, who were then subject to guilds – guilds laden with medieval connotations and representing trades characterized as mechanical.

Brazilian academic painting in the 19th century was not exclusively neoclassical, as is generally recognized, since it was influenced by French academic romanticism, better known as « Pompierism ».

Described by the historian Jorge Coli as « the right form » to achieve the work’s staying power, the appropriate formal means could only come from Historical Painting.

The origins of this genre can be traced back to the painting teaching system of the Art Academies.

Reyero (1989:16) says about these aspects:

Students had to pass competitions in which the judges determined each year the title that each participant had to fulfill. History was thus the result of a rigorous academic exercise that few could surpass.

The First Mass in Brazil also refers to the presence of the Founding Myth of Brazil, ideologically appropriated by Brazilian Romanticism, which contributes to the construction of our identity as members of a nation, creating contradictory truths about who we are and what others think of us.

Utopias that date as far back as the Renaissance, from the imagination of navigators, and that reappear ideologically in the images created by artists in the 19th century.

Abandoned and discriminated against by the republicans, Victor Meirelles died poor in 1903 in Rio de Janeiro.

If there have been men and women throughout history who have dedicated themselves to building icons for their people, Victor did so in his own time, and when he did, he was supported by a unique and specific cultural and historical context.

Victor is undoubtedly one of the greatest names in national art.

We know, however, that his merit and value have not always been recognized. « However, it is comforting to know that his hometown never forgot him, just as he never forgot his peaceful and beautiful hometown.