Saint Theresa and the Founders: Iconology of the Painting of João de Deus e Sepúlveda in the Church of the Third Order of Carmel, Recife (18th century).

This article is an iconological analysis of the painting “Jesus offers comfort to Saint Teresa and speaks about the founder saints of the orders”, painted by João de Deus e Sepúlveda in the eighteenth century, and located in the Church of the Third Order of Carmel of Recife. The methodology was based on Rafael García Mahíques’s reading of Erwin Panofsky’s iconology inspired, the first, by Omar Calabreses’s take on the intertextuality of iconography. By using concepts that are contemporary with the painting, such as decorum, ingenuity, and marvel, the article attempts to understand the panel in the context of its production, recognizing it as a social-cultural construct which exerts and exposes the symbolic power of the Third Order.

Keywords:
Sepúlveda; Iconology; Recife; Third Order; Carmelites