English
Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Olinda, Pernambuco, Brazil
Religious Architecture
Carmelite friars arrived in Olinda in 1580 and promptly received as a donation a chapel dedicated to Saint Antony. They soon began building a convent and church, which were unfinished when the Dutch invaded Pernambuco in 1630. The complex as it then stood is depicted in the mid-17th-century panorama of Olinda painted by Frans Post in the collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro. This is a single-naved church with intercommunicating chapels, four on each side and two larger ones marking the transept. The building is designed according to Portuguese Mannerist tastes and follows the Treatise by Giacomo Vignola. Skilfully worked local limestone was used to build the chapels and other parts of the church. Its façade was done in two phases: a first design in line with the taste for reredos-like façades of Spanish 16th-century churches; and another governed by Portuguese baroque forms. Work on the towers began before the Dutch presence. A stone altar has a beautiful Mannerist altarpiece and is located under the chapel of the tower on the coastal side. A rococo altarpiece adorns the chancel; behind its carving work is a previous painted one. In the transept another rocaille altarpiece hides one painted in the second half of the 17th century. The huge convent was demolished in the early 20th century.