Celestial harmony seen “from below”: Economy, society and baroque in colonial Minas Gerais

Abstract

In colonial Minas Gerais the Crown claimed control of precious minerals and had great distrust of the autonomy of some branches of the Church in the competition for revenues. However, in spite of the absence of the regular Orders, wonderful Baroque churches were built (even with ceiling paintings in illusionist perspective), erected and decorated at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, in a context of declining mining industry, tax rise and political, fiscal and administrative crisis. To build these churches, many investments made by lay people must have been necessary (a topic that we can not address): tertiaries and brotherhoods of different ethnic groups. These churches served as a stage for the manifestations of Baroque religiosity and support for a series of iconographic programs that, we believe, would be related to that period of time. Inside the churches we see a shift from the Baroque to the Rococo with a complete display of techniques, resources, models, capital invested in the machinery of representation and reproduction of belief. How do we explain the golden age of religious Baroque in Minas Gerais at the same time of the decay of gold production? And fundamentally: What does the presence of these churches and certain images painted on their roofs mean at a sociocultural level? We refer to two historiographical frameworks: the studies of the regional socioeconomic context and the historiography of the Baroque in Minas Gerais, seeking to articulate the main contributions separated by two theoretically different views. After restoring both contexts in an intersection, we will try to understand the functions of the images of the perspective painting of the roofs of the churches in Minas Gerais, analyzing the case of São Francisco dos Penitentes, in Ouro Preto, from the point of view of the cultural history of images, thinking about that source and its possible functions in the coordinates of the sociocultural context in the post-rebellion transition in Minas Gerais.

Keywords: ceilings, heaven, churches, Minas Gerais, cultural history.