By RODRIGO BASTOS*
All deconstruction of thought requires a deep understanding of the historical process that generated its object of attention.
What happened at the Conventual Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Salvador is yet another sad chapter in a process that is afflicting Brazil's cultural heritage, which has intensified in recent years with the fires at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, and the Cinemateca and the Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo. Thus, in recent days, there has been much debate about who is "to blame" for what happened in Salvador, or who is "responsible" for preventing this disaster, which also took the life of a young tourist: the church administrators, IPHAN (the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage), local cultural and heritage agencies, etc.
This topic is difficult and important to discuss, and indeed requires careful investigations into the causes of the accident (Fig. 1).
But the debate should be broader, with the main aim of thinking about how we can prevent events like these from happening: greater investment, greater appreciation of artistic and architectural heritage, stricter and more effective safety protocols, preventive conservation, heritage education. In the days following the incident in Salvador, numerous buildings from the colonial period were closed in parts of the country, under the allegation that they could also collapse. Our heritage requires attention, in many cases urgently.
I want to raise an essential topic for the debate, because everything inevitably involves an awareness of the meanings that a monument like this can have for Brazilian culture, and there are many. This awareness is based on several types of values, used even to register such a priceless asset: historical, artistic, aesthetic, architectural, landscape, cognitive, emotional, and social values – all of them essential and diverse, and sometimes convergent, depending on the work and the moment in which it is registered as a cultural asset.
One thing is indisputable: this awareness is fundamentally based on historical knowledge of the monument, an aspect that helps us better reflect on all the values that support the identification of assets – material and immaterial – of a culture. I would like to speak, therefore, very briefly, about the historical significance that this ceiling has for our cultural heritage; and not only Brazilian, but also Portuguese, and even worldwide, since this architectural complex has received the highest and most extensive recognition, all of which are very honorable and deserved.
The last time I was inside this Church, in Salvador, I renewed the certainty that I was inside one of the most spectacular interiors in the Portuguese-Brazilian universe (Fig. 2).
We have other interiors that are just as beautiful and sublime, such as that of the Monastery of São Bento, in Rio de Janeiro; the Golden Chapel, also Franciscan, in Recife; or the Church of Our Lady of Pilar, in Ouro Preto (Fig. 3), to name just a few examples in Brazil.
As soon as I left the church, I was still led to look up, the blazing blue sky of Salvador contrasted intensely with that ornate ceiling, in the shadows, but lucidly brilliant in its artistic ingenuity. Providing very different experiences, that painted wooden ceiling and that blue sky represented, apparently, very different worlds: one ancient, interior, somber, dramatic and baroque, and the other, of the immediate present in which I lived, luminous, exterior, festive and musical, of Salvador (Fig. 4).
Only apparently, because the history of art can teach us that the São Francisco ceiling was an eloquent historical and artistic document of the way of thinking of that time – of the essentially allegorical way in which that world of the 300th and XNUMXth centuries conceived, among other things, precisely the sky. For the eyes of that time, for the masters, artisans and religious people who created that masterpiece, and also for the society that first received and admired it, XNUMX years ago, the sky was not exactly an infinite, homogeneous and isotropic space, populated by celestial bodies and stars moving according to universal gravitation.
This mechanical conception of the sky, essentially modern, would be consecrated more slowly, and even later, with the developments that Laplace gave to Newtonian natural philosophy. At that time, especially in theological and Catholic contexts, the sky was the place of perfection and the divine, composed hierarchically and traditionally of concentric circles or spheres of ether, more or less close to God (Fig. 5).
Thus, for the Catholic gaze of that time, that ceiling was a privileged mirror of the heavens interpreted Christianly, that is, not by laws of physics, but by laws and dogmas of the Church – and, opportunely, also by artistic laws, such as mimesis, or imitation, capable of allowing craftsmen to manufacture their representation.
Covered entirely by arches and coffered paintings, all ingeniously designed, carved, painted and gilded – various geometric figures, octagons, stars, diamonds and interpenetrating squares – the nave's ceiling gave marvelous shape to a great theater of the heavens for that specific religious order (Fig. 6).
In other churches of that time, this sacred theater was imitated with magnificent perspectives that deceived the imagery of a religiously triumphant heaven, that is, adorned with celestial figures, angels and saints who ascended to heaven overcoming martyrdom and death, hence the designation, at the time, “Church triumphant” – this happens, for example, in another Franciscan church, in the Chapel of the Third Order of Penance of Saint Francis of Assisi, in Ouro Preto, painted by Master Ataíde (Fig. 3), or in the Jesuit Church of Saint Ignatius, Rome, painted by Andrea Pozzo, in which the glorious apotheosis of the saint is represented (Fig. 7); or this sacred celestial theater was represented in painted coffers, in which allegories, angels and triumphant figures were also arranged in an orderly manner, all in keeping with the character of the religious Order that built the temple.
This is the case of the Franciscan church of Salvador, and a key theme of the ceiling paintings was especially Our Lady, a special devotion of the Order, painted in her life, attributes and virtues, decorously illustrated or accompanied by angels and biblical images with which convenient relationships could be woven – as is the case of Judith, an equally virtuous female character of the Old Testament, which, painted on one of the coffered ceilings, functions there as a prefigurative metaphor: an allegory of Mary. This coffered ceiling fortunately did not fall from the ceiling, because it is situated at the end of the lining, in its arched portion, anchored to the wall and to the roof structure by wooden braces (Fig. 9).
We could mention other details of the paintings and decorations, but it would not be appropriate here, having written the essentials. A similar example is the coffered ceiling of the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora do Pilar, in Ouro Preto (Fig. 3), also very ingenious, in which the key to interpreting the painted panels also involves the allegorical representation of Mary, also including a painting of Judith in its entirety.
The paintings on the ceiling of Salvador have been attributed to several artists, such as Jerônimo da Graça or Antônio Simões Ribeiro, who were said to have painted them in the 1730s. Referring to Carlos Ott, Luís de Moura Sobral emphatically defended the attribution to Simões Ribeiro. In any case, the work certainly involved the participation of many other craftsmen for its final creation. These works of architecture, in general, exist and have been preserved due to the work of many people over the centuries.
They were, therefore, very collective works, effectively executed by dozens of architects, painters, carvers, gilderers and sculptors, often modified during their creation; a process that historically documents an extremely important artistic and constructive knowledge, orally disseminated and collectively shared, which could also be recognized as intangible heritage of Brazilian architecture and society – both the know-how and the knowledge of conservation – all collectively. This recognition could help justify, among many other necessary measures, investments that would allow for better preservation of our artistic and architectural heritage. Among them, a greater appreciation of these works in our contemporary culture, which easily discards or allows their memory to be destroyed; and a greater appreciation, also, of all those who dedicate their lives to the preservation of heritage.
Churches like the one in São Francisco served throughout Brazil during the colonial period as elements of religious and political persuasion. However, they were built by the people who lived here, free and enslaved artisans who, also being part of religious brotherhoods of that time, helped to build and give new meaning to these monuments – in this case, since the 17th century. Art history and social history must recognize, together, that that society had complete confidence in what those skies meant, which also explains the great care with which they designed their representation.
Furthermore, affective values have been so deeply embedded in this heritage since its construction that they have become fabulous social documents – living and extremely important documents of a precious artistic creation that, for all these reasons, requires rigorous and diligent preservation (and now more than ever, restoration). For example, if you follow the religious festivals – many of them syncretic – that take place throughout the country, in Bahia, Goiás, Santa Catarina or Minas Gerais, and that have also helped to historically shape the festive character of the city and the blue skies of Salvador, you can easily understand that the understanding of these monuments of the so-called “colonial” heritage, in addition to being documents of an important moment in our history, has long transcended the original political meaning they had, accumulating several other values and meanings that are essential to our culture.
Furthermore, in the current context, with the emergence of research, studies and interpretations that challenge the North Atlantic and Eurocentric structures of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, it is even more important, contrary to what one might suppose, to preserve Brazilian heritage sites such as the Church of São Francisco in Salvador and also to better understand them. Any deconstruction of thought requires a deep understanding of the historical process that generated its object of attention.
If one of the most relevant contributions of postcolonial or decolonial studies, as well as perspectives that debate race, identity and gender, is to try to deconstruct systems of oppression that maintain the coloniality of power, especially economic and political ones, appropriated by neoliberal capitalism, one of the deepest foundations of this process should be better historical knowledge of what the complex colonial regime was, never its erasure.
In recent decades, the notion of heritage has undergone very important debates and transformations. These debates have influenced fundamental aspects of the disciplinary field, expanding the understanding, identification, management, instruments and practices for preserving cultural heritage. The incorporation of the category of intangible assets, for example, of popular knowledge and practices, and the agenda of greater participation of civil society and communities in the recognition of cultural references have brought decisive contributions to a significant expansion of the field, also including the relatively recent and extremely important endorsements of the cultural landscape and biocultural heritage.
As much as all of this is extremely useful, and even greatly necessary, I have noticed narratives that are worrying, especially in the context of a serious incident such as this one, which victimized the Church of Salvador. These epistemological renewals and fundamental social achievements are often contrasted with IPHAN's diligence in recognizing and registering, at the beginning of its history, mainly colonial artistic and architectural monuments. It is true that this happened, also responding to the ancient value of these assets, a portrait of a very dated moment in our history that spanned the 20th century.
But awareness is renewed and the process of expansion is promising. As I said before, the ways in which cultural heritage is recognized and given meaning change over time, but we must be sensitively alert to the temptation to replace, alternate or ignore memories, especially when it comes to academic debate or public policies. The providential expansion of the field of heritage, including through reparation, cannot open space for antinomic discourses or narratives that understand heritage as being inimical to one another.
Even though it is recognized that heritage is a field in permanent “dispute”, it is not, or cannot be, allowed to exist, a dispute between heritage sites, between those once recognized as “artistic” or “architectural” and those recently claimed as “cultural” – as if monuments “made of stone and mortar” lost their importance in contexts of “change” or epistemological renewal. They continue to be fundamental, whether for their historical, scenic and artistic relevance, or for their social meanings – all of them “cultural”. The greatest virtue of this recent process must be precisely the expansion of the field, to be understood and prudently conducted, I argue, as a “sensitive accumulation of heritages”, all of them relevant because they are part of the culture and collective memory of the nation, permanently under construction.
*Rodrigo Bastos is a professor of theory and history of architecture in the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). Author of, among other books, The wonderful factory of virtues: decorum in the religious architecture of Vila Rica, Minas Gerais (1711-1822) (edusp). [https://amzn.to/41r27D7]
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