Atlantic Masters

Three Early Modern Afro-Brazilian Artists

Bibliographic Data

ID11760427
AuthorsMiguel A Valerio (0000-0001-7290-8825, Washington University in St. Louis, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume12
Issue3
Pages118-118
Publication date2023-06-02
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArts (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2076-0752 • E-ISSN: 2076-0752
PublisherMultidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3390/arts12030118
OpenAlexW4379472460
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

Brazil received the largest number of Africans enslaved into the Americas: nearly five million by some estimates. Thus, Brazil became the world’s largest slavocracy. But slavery was not the only experience available to Africans and Brazilians of African descent in slavery-era Brazil. Numerically, Afro-Brazilians dominated the arts in colonial Brazil. However, very few of those artists and artisans, many of whom were enslaved, are known by name today. Free Afro-Brazilian artists, such as Aleijadinho, Mestre Valentim, and Teófilo de Jesus, on the other hand, fared far better. In this article, I turn to these three mixed-race artists’ works and what little is known of their lives, not only as exemplary Afro-Brazilian artists but also as some of the most important artists of Brazil’s late colonial period, where they had the greatest impact on the artistic developments in their home regions. These artists’ careers thus illustrate how artists of African descent contributed to and defined urban and sacred spaces in the early modern Atlantic. This is therefore an invitation to look at Afrodescendants’ role in early modern art beyond the anonymity of slavery and static representation

African descent · Anonymity · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Ethnology · Geography · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Representation (politics · Sociology · The arts · Visual arts · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History · Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez

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