The South
This text was originally written by the coordinator of the respective volume for the print edition as an introduction to the geographic area in question; the possibility of updating it was left to each author’s discretion. It should be interpreted together with the general introductory text from the respective volume.
THREE IMPORTANT hereditary captaincies formed the initial core of the colonisation of the south-eastern region: Espírito Santo (Vasco Fernandes Coutinho), São Tomé (Pêro de Góis) and São Vicente (Martim Afonso de Sousa). Before this, in some coastal areas, there were some factories set up, although no traces now remain of these. The town of São Vicente, believed to have been the first in Brazil, was founded by Martim Afonso de Sousa in 1532. It was originally built at the site of a settlement that had probably been created close to an earlier factory, but was later relocated. It is interesting to note that there are several instances of towns that were transferred to another more suitable location. This was the case, for example, with Espírito Santo, where the new town of Vitória led to the abandonment of the Vila Velha (old town). And, even in the town of São Vicente, the port was soon replaced by another more appropriate one, located in another urban centre founded in 1545 - Santos.
These examples highlight a significant fact, namely that clearing the land for development in the territory where these towns formed the initial population centres was a complex process. Reports made about this activity repeatedly mention a series of difficulties, ranging from skirmishes either with the natives or with foreign corsairs to the overcoming of geographical obstacles. There was a certain instability that resulted from the practical nature of the venture, and this needs to be taken into consideration if one is to make a full and correct assessment of this process of land clearage. São Paulo was the first town to be created on the plateau in 1560. Although it was situated relatively close to the coast, the difficulties involved in finding a way over the terrain of the Serra do Mar meant that the region remained relatively isolated. This can be clearly seen in the different categories of rural architecture - the sugar mills on the coast and the large farmhouses of the estates further inland - as well as in the building materials that were used (stone on the coast and the continued recourse to rammed earth on the plateau).
One of the most interesting aspects of the heritage of this area is the fact that important examples have been preserved of the old houses inhabited by the plateau's explorers, the bandeirantes. These are buildings whose beauty lies precisely in their sober appearance, revealing an awareness and sensible use of proportions. They consist of square houses, built of rammed earth and covered with hipped and tiled roofs, with overhanging eaves protecting the walls. Two separate areas were clearly defined in the floor plans of the house: the area at the front, where guests were entertained, and the private living quarters at the back. The guestroom and the chapel were located at the front of the house, on either side of a central open porch. The living- room was located at the centre of the house, usually an interior room without any direct light. The façade frequently exhibited surprisingly intricate work in the placement of its wooden supports and a beautiful harmony between the walls and their various openings: the small square windows of the guestroom and of the chapel on either side of the central porch.
Some of these rural houses, built on sesmarias (land granted by the king to colonisers) around São Paulo, have survived from the 17th century, such as the houses of Sítio de Santo António, in São Roque (sp), Sítio do Padre Inácio, in Cotia (sp), and Sítio Querubim, in Araçariguama (sp), as well as other more recent ones, from the 18th century, namely the houses of Sítio do Mandu, in Cotia (sp) or Tatuapé, in São Paulo (sp). The Sítio de Santo António is also notable for its chapel, built after the house, at the initiative of the bandeirante Fernão Pais de Barros. It has an outer porch and a belfry to one side, forming a composition that can and should be compared with the small churches of the Jesuit missions. But what is particularly interesting about this chapel is its façade, totally made of wood, with trestlework and balusters creating a type of screen that filters the light to the inside. The interior is one of the finest examples of architecture from the São Paulo region. The altarpieces, the pulpit with the two-headed eagle of the Habsburgs, and the grotesque painting of the chancel ceiling, all reveal a synthesis of the aesthetic values of Mannerism as filtered through the hands of the popular artisans that made them. The same can be said of the altarpieces of the Chapel of Our Lady of the Conception of the Voturuna Estate (sp), where carvings of tropical fruits can be seen alongside plateresque elements.
In addition to the foundation of the town of São Vicente, Martim Afonso de Sousa also built the first sugar mill in Brazil, the São Jorge dos Erasmos Sugar Mill, in Santos (sp), the ruins of which now belong to the University of São Paulo. Still remaining in Ilha Bela (sp), are the Santana Sugar Mill, which is probably the oldest, possibly dating from the 17th century, the São Matias Sugar Mill and the Água Sugar Mill, which is the best preserved. Although in several respects they can be associated with other rural buildings, above all in the coastal area of Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro, the sugar mills on the coast of São Paulo have the special particularity of combining the house, the chapel, the sugar mill and the storerooms into one single building. This feature differentiates them from the sugar mills in the north-eastern region, where, in most cases, the main building was used exclusively as a dwelling, while the sugar mill and chapel were separate buildings.
The rural buildings on the coast are also different from those found on the plateau. Whereas, in the former case, the area of the walls is much larger than that of the openings within them, in the latter case, it is the opposite. This is particularly true of the group of 18th-century sugar mills in the region of Guanabara Bay, where there are a number of sobrados surrounded by wide verandas, sometimes occupying three façades. The most striking example is definitely the House of the Colubandê Estate, in São Gonçalo (rj), where an elegant veranda with Tuscan columns runs around the whole house and directly supports the roof. The same kind of constructions appear in the houses of the Capão do Bispo Estate, Viegas Estate, Água Sugar Mill Estate and Taquara Estate, all in Rio de Janeiro (rj). Several authors point to the house and chapel of the São Bento Estate, a Benedictine building in Duque de Caxias (rj), as the leading example of this typology, where the veranda covered with a tiled roof resting upon Tuscan columns, but with no ceiling, was still in use in the 17th century.
It is interesting to compare this group of buildings with the two rural houses attributed to the brigadier José Fernandes Pinto Alpoim: the Bishop's House in the neighbourhood of Rio Comprido, in Rio de Janeiro (rj) and the Jurujuba Estate, in Niterói (rj). Both have arcades on the ground floor. At the Bishop's House, the building's appearance is enhanced by a central staircase. Although their functions cannot be compared, these buildings once again make use of the exterior features (arches and staircases) that are to be seen in the typical model of the town hall and prison, as well as other interior features (courtyard, vestibule) that can be found in 18th-century Brazilian residences. These features, which can be associated with certain urban categories, point to a methodology of architectural composition that continued to be used for a long time in Brazil. The fact that they were the work of a military engineer only serves to reinforce this fact.
Engineers remained a constant presence in Rio de Janeiro, right from its very foundation in 1565. Father Manuel da Nóbrega, a missionary in São Paulo in 1564, considered that Rio de Janeiro should be colonised with a "city like the one in Bahia', so that it could be used to protect the captaincies of São Vicente and Espírito Santo, which, according to the Jesuit, were "extremely weak'. In fact, the stated aim of the expedition sent from Salvador was not only to expel the French who had established their Antarctic France in the region of Guanabara Bay, but also to create a city there that would become the centre for the region's defence. In the case of Rio de Janeiro, Nóbrega's exhortation to build a city comparable to the one in Bahia was to become such an urgent reality that it ended up replacing Salvador as the capital of Brazil in 1763. Nonetheless, it is important to clarify that what turned Rio de Janeiro into the colony's undisputed capital in the 18th century was a process that was determined by two important moments, both of which occurred in the late 17th century. On the one hand, the discovery of gold in the inland regions, which greatly enhanced the role of Rio as a port used not only as an outlet for the riches coming from the mines, but also as a point of entry for slaves (and actually ending up replacing Salvador in that role). On the other hand, and just as important, the foundation of the Colónia do Sacramento in 1680, across the river from Buenos Aires, thus fulfilling the wishes of the Portuguese Crown to establish a settlement at the mouth of the River Plate.
These events, occurring at roughly the same time, are, to some extent, two different aspects of the same process, resulting from the expansion across the continent that had begun in the 16th century from the captaincy of São Vicente. It is also possible to identify a series of actions related to the same process which took place along the coast, as well as other initiatives that were introduced on the plateau, centred around the town of São Paulo. The agents of the territorial expansion along the coast were the donatories, the missionaries and the crown. On the plateau, the main agents were the bandeirantes, their initial aim being to capture Indians, which led them to make a number of raids on the missions that the Spanish Jesuits had established in the south of the continent. The spread of the bandeirantes’ sphere of action into the western and central regions resulted in the discovery of gold and established a new dynamics for the occupation of the inland regions. Meanwhile, the occupation of the coastal region continued apace, in a process that can clearly be divided into two separate phases: before and after the establishment of the Colónia do Sacramento.
In the first phase, the "Vicentines" were responsible for the foundation of a series of settlements. To the north, heading towards Rio de Janeiro, they founded Angra dos Reis (rj) and Parati (rj), both of which were raised to the status of a town, in 1608 and 1660 respectively. To the south, always searching for a link to the River Plate, the colonisers set off from São Vicente and founded São Francisco do Sul (sc), raised to the status of a town in 1660, and Laguna (sc), which was founded at the end of the 17th century and raised to the status of a town in 1714. It is interesting to consider these four towns as examples of some of the formal models for colonial urbanism in Brazil. In Angra dos Reis and São Francisco, one can note a pattern that was common to several coastal settlements, in which the town spread out along the beach or from the port itself. In both cases, the urban fabric does not seem to have developed in a very regular fashion, but there are features that show how the town's structure sprang into being from the original centre: in Angra, the Rua Direita, the axis that connected the main buildings of the city - the parish church, the Carmelites, the town hall and prison; in São Francisco, the square, where the parish church and town hall were located.
In Parati and Laguna, the development of the urban fabric was clearly a more regular affair, with main streets and side streets intersecting at right angles. Such developments did not follow any pre-established plan, but the growth of these towns was just as gradual as in the previous examples. In the case of Parati, the town played a crucial role in the region's development along the so-called "old road', which connected Minas to Rio de Janeiro. Parati did not have any large buildings linked to the religious orders, which would, to some extent, have contributed to the homogeneity of the urban fabric. But its churches, while remaining fairly simple, enj oyed a certain degree of autonomy in terms of their integration into the urban environment, and consequently either created their own perspectives, as was the case, for example, with the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary and Saint Benedict, or were harmoniously integrated into the landscape, as was the case with the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, close to the seafront. In this latter chapel, one can note a particularly interesting treatment of the side façade, which is similar to that of a residential sobrado.
Mention should similarly be made of the example of Taubaté (sp), which is also connected to the old road leading to the mines. The town was created in 1645, as part of the process of expansion towards the centre of the territory led by the sertanistas from São Paulo. Those responsible for the crossing of the Serra da Mantiqueira and the gorge known as Garganta de Embaú departed from there, reaching the backlands of Minas Gerais. Just as in Parati, its street layout is also very regular.
The activities of the missionaries, especially the Jesuits, were crucial for consolidating the territorial occupation of the south-east. The colleges of Vitória, Rio de Janeiro, São Vicente and São Paulo served as the bases for the missionaries' activities, with which various villages and sugar plantations were also associated. The college of Vitória was, for instance, linked to the villages of Reretiba, present-day Anchieta (es), Reis Magos, present-day Nova Almeida (Serra (es)) and Guarapari (es). It is important to draw attention to the particular category of churches that followed the Jesuit pattern. They all have a simple façade with one central door surmounted by one, two, or three windows, with a straight gable pediment and just one tower at the side. Next to the church was the priest's residence. The almost vernacular composition of some of these groups of Jesuit buildings has led José Pessoa to say that their style is reminiscent of the plain architectural constructions in the Alentejo and the Algarve. The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, in Anchieta, is one of the rare examples in Brazil of churches with three naves. At the Church of the Magi, the lias door displays distinctly Renaissance features. This old village offers the best view over the original site of the mission: a large rectangular square surrounded by houses, with the group of buildings forming the church and the priest's residence standing at one of its ends. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits, the village was transformed into a town with the name of Nova Almeida. The church began to function as the parish church and the residence was later adapted to form a town hall and prison.
A few examples still remain of the various sugar plantations and estates that depended on the College of Rio de Janeiro, such as the House and Chapel of the College of Jesuits Sugar Mill and Plantation in Campos de Goitacazes (rj) and the Church of Saint Francis Xavier on the São Francisco do Saco Estate in Niterói (rj). Also in Niterói, the church of the former mission of Saint Lawrence of the Indians is noted for the Mannerist retable of its high altar. The Church of São Pedro da Aldeia (rj) is one of the most interesting examples, since the tower, church and residence are all joined together in one continuous façade. It also has three naves, like the church of Reretiba, from where its founders came.
The villages of Carapiciúba (sp), Embu (sp), São Miguel de Ururai and Nossa Senhora dos Pinheiros were linked to the colleges of São Paulo and São Vicente. The latter two villages were the property of the crown, but were administered by the Jesuits. In Carapiciúba, one can easily see how the village was built around its large rectangular square. In Embu, it is important to mention the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, which is considered to be one of the most important 17th-century monuments in São Paulo. The extreme simplicity of its exterior, in which the tower is suppressed and transformed into a belfry, does not in any way suggest the great wealth of its 17th and 18th-century interior. In the Church of Saint Michael Paulista, in the former Aldeia del-Rei de São Miguel do Ururai, now contained within the city of São Paulo (sp), the typical gable façade has been given a porch. The Church of Saint John the Baptist in Cananéia (sp) and the Church of Our Lady of the Ladder, in Guararema (sp), are also associated with the Jesuit style of building.
Of the other religious orders, mention should be made of the Franciscans, with the unusual Church and Convent of Our Lady of Penha, in Vila Velha (es), which was converted into a sanctuary for pilgrims, the monumental complexes, unfortunately now in ruins, of the Convent of Saint Bernardino of Siena and the Chapel of the Third Order in Angra dos Reis (rj), the Church and Convent of Saint Mary of the Angels, the Chapel and Cemetery of the Third Order and the Chapel of Our Lady of Guia, in Cabo Frio (rj), and the ruins of the Church and Convent of Saint Bonaventure of Macacu, in Itaboraí (rj), and the Church and Convent of Our Lady of the Conception, in Itanhaém (sp), designed in 1774 by the military engineer José Custódio de Sá e Faria, with its triangular pediment and its galilee of three semi-circular arches, in keeping with the style of the order. The Church and Convent of Our Lady of Light, today the Museum of Sacred Art in São Paulo (sp), used to be a convent for Franciscan nuns. After alterations made in the late 18th century, the church was given an octagonal floor plan. It is one of the few churches with a polygonal floor plan built of rammed earth in São Paulo, together with the Chapel of Our Lady of Pilar in Taubaté (sp), which has a hexagonal floor plan.
Galilees were also to be found in Benedictine churches. The best example is the Church of the Monastery of Saint Benedict in Rio de Janeiro (rj), begun in 1617 and designed by Francisco Frias de Mesquita. The façade's elegant composition is quite remarkable. The three arches of the galilee, separated by pilasters, are surmounted by windows with straight lintels, also separated by pilasters, above which is a triangular pediment. The whole is completed by two side towers with pyramid-shaped stone roofs and four spherical granite pillars. The luxurious baroque interior, which contrasts with the plain and sober façade built by the master engineer, consists of its lavish pictorial decoration and the carved and gilded woodwork that covers the entire church, from the nave to the sacristy. The convent's interior façade was designed by another engineer, Brigadier José Fernandes da Silva Alpoim, who rebuilt the cloister in 1743 with arcades in the galleries on the ground floor and pulpit windows with projecting balconies on the upper floor. In the Church and Convent of Saint Teresa, Alpoim also designed the cloister with arcades on the ground floor. The church, with a single nave and chancel, has gilded rococo wood carving that displays great stylistic unity.
The same contrast between simplicity and opulence can be seen in the Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Penitence, where once again carved and gilded woodwork and trompe-l’oeil paintings (a decorative style that was characteristic of the period of King João V) are to be found alongside one another. In the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the former Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro, the interior decoration is a splendid example of the rococo style that was developed in the Rio de Janeiro region. Among the many examples of 18th-century religious architecture in Rio de Janeiro, attention is drawn to the Church of Our Lady of Glory of Outeiro, designed by Lieutenant Colonel José Cardoso Ramalho. Its floor plan is based on a combination of two elongated octagonal prisms with a central tower at the front. This provides us with an exceptional example of the artistic involvement of military engineers in religious architecture in Brazil. For this church, and others, especially in the region of Minas, the history of art has coined the epithet “Borrominesque”, meaning that the dynamism of the floor plan is also expressed in the church's exterior and completed by its exceptional insertion within the surrounding landscape. In the Church of Our Lady Mother of Men, attributed to Brigadier Alpoim, and in the Church of Our Lady of Lapa dos Mercadores, we once again find polygonal floor plans in the interior, octagonal in one case and elliptical in the other, but, in both cases, the building's exterior has a rectangular shape, as in the already-mentioned churches on the north-eastern coast (Our Lady of the Conception of Praia, in Salvador and Saint Peter of the Clergymen, in Recife).
The engineer José Custodio de Sa e Faria designed the Church of the Holy Cross of the Military. The floor plan follows a style that is commonly found in other churches built by brotherhoods in 18th-century Rio de Janeiro, having a single large nave with altars built against the walls, flanked by aisles that run from the frontispiece to the sacristy, located beside the chancel. Its main point of interest is its façade, inspired by those churches that marked the transition from late Mannerism to Roman baroque, particularly the Church of Santa Susanna designed by Carlo Maderno. Here, the façade is adapted to match the floor plan of the church's interior, with its central body corresponding to the nave (higher and surmounted by a triangular pediment), and its lower side bodies corresponding to the side aisles, joined to the central one through volutes. The perfect composition obeys the juxtaposition of architectural styles, highlighting the great erudition of the architect, who was one of the military engineers that was most active in the southern region. The design of the Parish Church of Our Lady of the Conception in Viamâo (rs) is attributed to him.
During the tense period after the annulment of the Treaty of Madrid and the Seven Years' War, Sa e Faria was appointed governor of the captaincy of Rio Grande de Sâo Pedro in 1764. One of the main investments of his government was the implementation of the previously introduced policy for creating new settlements with colonisers from the Azores, which would be used in the region's defence. The first initiatives in this direction were taken in Santa Catarina by Brigadier José da Silva Paes, who was appointed governor of the captaincy in 1738. A royal charter dating from 9th August, 1747 outlined the procedures that were to be followed in establishing these settlements. This was a document of great importance since it established specific rules regarding the size of the squares and streets of these newly-founded urban centres, as well as the size of the urban and rural plots of land that were to be distributed among the settlers. The presence of Azoreans was particularly significant on the Island of Santa Catarina. The parish of Santo António de Lisboa and the town of Ribeirão da Ilha are examples of this settlement process. In the captaincy of Rio Grande de São Pedro, José Custodio de Sá e Faria was responsible for the planning and building of the town of Taquari (rs), which has the peculiarity of having two symmetrical squares. This layout is directly related to the one found in the town of Macapá, built in the north of the country some years earlier, also by a military engineer.
This observation leads us to the marking out of territorial boundaries, a question that occupied the whole of the second half of the 18th century. In this same context of consolidating the settlement of the region, mention should be made of the urban centres founded in the captaincy of São Paulo at the initiative of the heir to the House of Mateus. One of many such examples is São Luís do Paraitinga (sp), founded relatively close to Taubaté in order to control unlawful visitors to the mining area. A vast square forms the central structure of the urban layout, which was a feature commonly found in other towns and cities built in the Pombaline period. Another initiative of the heir to the House of Mateus, but only completed around 1790 under the governorship of Bernardo José de Lorena, was the Calçada do Lorena. This was the road built across the Serra do Mar, making the difficult connection between São Paulo and the port of Santos, some surviving sections of which can still be visited. Beatriz Bueno draws attention to the technical quality of this work, the layout of which was designed to overcome the different levels of the mountain range without having to cross a single watercourse, thereby dispensing with the need for bridges. Another important feat of18th-century military engineering in Brazil was the Carioca Aqueduct in Rio de Janeiro.
It was mentioned earlier that the occupation of the coast was a different process before and after the foundation of the Colónia do Sacramento in 1680. It is also important to state that there was a difference between the periods before and after the negotiation of the Colónia do Sacramento, which resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, and in the marking out of the respective boundary lines that followed this. Moreover, we must take into account the unique position that the Colónia do Sacramento occupied in the context of the military architecture built by the Portuguese in America.
The foundation of the colony was of undisputed importance from a political point of view. Its construction, in an ostentatious position across the river from Buenos Aires, was always contested by the Spanish crown, which constantly attacked the fortress and seized it through the force of arms on several occasions. Portugal almost always recovered it through diplomatic channels, and it was also through diplomacy that it was "ceded” in the negotiations of the Treaty of Madrid in exchange for the hinterland, in other words for the vast territory of the continent's inland regions. One might say that what made the Colónia do Sacramento unique was its condition of being a "living border” in an advanced territory. This meant that the city was the actual fortification itself, in contrast to the situations that have been described in the case of the fortifications on the north-eastern coast, where the fortresses defended the cities without completely circumscribing them. In fact, the colony was not a city from a legal point of view, as it did not have a municipal council and its governor was always a military man. It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss this question here, but what needs to be stressed is simply that the existence of this advanced outpost completely altered the defence system of the entire southern region.
Until the 17th century, in addition to the fortifications built around Guanabara Bay in order to protect Rio de Janeiro, the coast's defence was ensured by the building of small forts, such as the Fort of Saint John of Bertioga or Saint James in Santos (sp), or Fort of Saint Matthew in Cabo Frio (rj), attributed to Francisco Frias de Mesquita. In the first half of the 18th century, there was considerable investment made in the fortification of the Island of Santa Catarina (sc), in order to assist the Colónia do Sacramento and guarantee the possession of
the entire southern territory. The Fortresses of Santa Cruz de Anhatomirim, São José da Ponta Grossa, and Santo Antonio de Ratones, built by Brigadier José da Silva Paes, date from this period. In Rio de Janeiro, Silva Paes designed the Fortress of São José, of which the granite gateway and the chapel's lias frontispiece are all that now remains. The Fortress of Our Lady of Pleasures, or of Ilha do Mel, attributed to José Custodio de Sá e Faria and the Fort of São Filipe, in Guarujá (sp), date from the second half of the 18th century. The Fortress of Our Lady of the Conception, in Rio de Janeiro, is the best preserved example from this period.
In the second half of the 18th century, Rio was the capital of the viceroyalty of Brazil and, in the early years of the 19th century, it was the seat of the Portuguese crown. We cannot perhaps speak of monumentality to refer to the transformations that the city underwent due to the presence of the court there. But we cannot deny its growth, and particularly the investment made by King João VI in the provision of important urban equipment. The former Governors' Residence was inaugurated in 1743, designed by the engineer, José Fernandes Alpoim, and was later converted into an Imperial Palace, having undergone a series of alterations, resulting in its being provided with a turret on the façade overlooking the sea. Other buildings that served as residences for the royal family were also subjected to improvements and alterations (Boa Vista Estate, El Rey's Manor House on Paquetá Island, and the Baths of King João VI at Cajú). Among the most significant works undertaken at the initiative of João VI himself were the Botanical Garden and the Royal Museum. Mention should be made here of the first project in Brazil to be designed by Grandjean de Montigny, the French architect who formed part of the artistic mission welcomed by João VI, namely the building of the Stock Exchange of Rio de Janeiro, as well as his residence, the Grandjean de Montigny Manor House. A work which, to some extent, represents the presence of the Portuguese court in Rio and was built after his departure was the Royal Portuguese Library, whose neo-Manueline and neo-Gothic eclecticism, with Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral and Luís de Camões on the façade, evokes the bond between Portugal and Brazil.