(b Mariana, Minas Gerais, bapt 18 Oct 1762; d Mariana, 2 Feb 1830). Brazilian painter. He was the most important painter active in the province of Minas Gerais during the Colonial period. He learnt his craft in the workshop with other artists and from such theoretical treatises as Andrea Pozzo’s Perspectivae pictorum atque architectorum (1693–1700) and such technical manuals as the Segredos necessarios para os officcios, artes e manufaturas (Lisbon, 1794), which was recorded in the inventory of his possessions. He was also strongly influenced by engravings of religious subjects in bibles and missals. He had a great influence on the development of religious painting in the region, especially through his numerous pupils and followers, who until the middle of the 19th century continued to make use of his compositional methods, particularly in the perspective ceilings of churches. Often referred to in documents as ‘professor de pintura’, in 1818 he unsuccessfully petitioned for official permission to found an art school in his native city. He left an extensive body of work, which includes decorative painting of architecture, single pictures and the painting of religious statues (gilding and flesh-colouring). Especially famous are the vast perspective paintings such as the Glorification of the Virgin (1801–10; see BRAZIL, fig. 8) on the vaulted ceilings of the church of São Francisco de Assis in Ouro Preto and similar compositions for the parish churches of Sta Bárbara and Itaverava; in these he transforms the overweight Baroque schemes derived from Andrea Pozzo into light and graceful compositions of the purest Rococo, giving rise to an important regional tradition that has no equal elsewhere in colonial Brazil.

• Ataíde, Manoel da Costa
  • Brazil, §III: Afro-American culture
  • Brazil, §X: Patronage, collecting and dealing
  • patrons and collectors
    • Brazil, §XI: Museums
  • works
    • Brazil, §V, 1: Painting, graphic arts and sculpture, before c 1822
    • Ouro Prêto