Brazilian architecture in the 19th century: Historiography and teaching in the light of the intellectual transit between Brazil and France.

• Grant number: 22/12364-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2023
• End date: October 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning
• Principal Investigator: Maria Lucia Bressan Pinheiro
• Grantee: João Paulo Campos Peixoto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/09063-7 - French-Brazilian nexus and the teaching of architecture in Brazil (1816-1889): intellectual exchanges between the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (Rio de Janeiro) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Paris), BE.EP.DR

Abstract

Important names linked to the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes of Rio de Janeiro, such as Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848) and Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre (1806-1879), articulating in their work a reading about architecture in Brazil, inaugurate a historiographical approach that until then was unprecedented in this country. These and many other writings about Brazilian architecture, sparsely produced throughout the 19th century, once gathered together, would form a group of documents that can be interpreted, in the light of contemporaneity, as the beginning of a historiography of Brazilian architecture. In light of the ostensible erasure of 19th-century architecture in the hegemonic narrative of the history of architecture in this country, this project aims to recover, map and analyze the documents produced in this context and the intellectuals who produced it. The hypothesis that guides the work is the idea that these first texts to inaugurate a field of historiographic discussion in the country, often produced by foreign intellectuals, were based largely on analytical parameters and mechanisms derived from the historiography of European art and architecture, especially French.With this, the project aims to deepen the knowledge about the history of Brazilian architecture in the nineteenth century, in the light of the intellectual transits between Brazil and France. These documents, lacking systemic mapping and analytical deepening, are still poorly addressed and recognized. Bringing them to the light of research will certainly contribute not only to studies related to the history and teaching of Brazilian architecture, but to Brazil in the context of the nineteenth century and its cultural relations with France.