A Brazilian’s Grand Tour: the importance of Italy for the ideas of Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre

Abstract

Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre (1806-1879) was one of the most important thinkers in nineteenth-century Brazil; this article discusses the impact a trip to Italy had on his trajectory. His contact with the classics and the universe of picturesque travels marked his artistic production. The few pieces of his work that have survived show this artist’s connection to the culture of the Grand Tour as well as his Romantic sensibility. Furthermore, what he learned in Italy familiarized this Brazilian artist with the values and methods discussed in the antiquarian and erudite environments of the era. It is thanks to this experience that Porto-Alegre some years later interpreted the history of Brazilian art inspired by readings of authors such as Johann J. Winckelmann and Luigi Lanzi. Finally, this article also defends that Porto-Alegre’s time in Italy was a symbolic passport among the scholars of the Institut Historique of Paris as well as the Instituto Histórico Brasileiro. Porto-Alegre may have gone to Europe to become a painter, but he returned from Italy as an intellectual.

Keywords
Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre; Grand Tour; Classical tradition