Focus on Batalha dos Guararapes and analyze the Process and inspirations.
For the execution, Meirelles carried out some research work. One of them was to go to the Instituto Arqueológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano (English: Archeological, Historical and Geographical Institute of Pernambuco), where he could visualize and research about weapons and other utensils present in his canvas. Another research he did was through the collection of the National Historical Museum, where there are several defense equipment, copies of war instruments, on which Meirelles could take as reference to produce the painting.So in the three months or so that he lived in Recife, he often went to Guararapes, where he spent whole days; He went around Olinda, knocking from door to door, so to speak, in search of some paintings depicting the battle he was going to paint, and only after a long time could he find them, ruined, thrown into a corner, detached, since they are painted on wood, representing two battles, the two battles of Guarapes and the third one of Tabocas; he went to Iguarassu, because he had been told about paintings commemorating the Dutch war; he went to Cabo Santo Agostinho; he visited in the capital all the paintings in the church of S. Cosme and S. Damião. Cosme and S. Damião; he went to Cabo de Santo Agostinho; he visited in the capital all the buildings bequeathed by the Batavians. He studied everything, asked everything for inspiration, and tried to take possession through the physical remains of the spirit that presided over them.Being a historical work, the artist used as one of his main sources, the narrative of the Brazilian historian Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, História das Lutas dos Holandeses no Brasil (English: History of the Fights of the Dutch in Brazil). With the countless information and details on how the battle presented in this narrative would be arranged, Meirelles composed his painting in three parts, according to the position of the Portuguese army. The care taken to be faithful to the event made Meirelles' work not only a representation of a national historical episode, but a kind of window to that past.The link between the narrative and the painting is so developed that a relationship between image and word is achieved. The influence is so present that the painting is not limited to just exposing the military strategy described in the narrative but also represents the moment as a combat between heroes rather than between civilized and barbarians. According to French historian Christiane Raynaud, "Batalha dos Guararapes seems to become an image-copy of História das Lutas dos Holandeses no Brasil." The idea of image-copy is also noted through the historical summary that accompanies the screen, as a kind of translation through image, when paraphrasing Varnhagen's text.The mention of the historian's work was a strategy used by Meirelles to legitimize his narrative. The instrument of citing renowned historians, eyewitness accounts, or even the artist's own personal experiences at the time of the battle itself, or the on-site observation of the place where it took place, is several times applied by painters in order to show references of their visual creation. These mechanisms confirm the narrative as true and demarcate the limit of verisimilitude in a historiographic painting, making the image more believable.
English Cabo de Santo Agostinho Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen Varnhagen's artist Portuguese Pernambuco National Historical Museum