In the context of this artwork, analyze the Kingdom of the History.
First identified by Georg Braun in his map of Braga in 1594, the document indicated the location of the spring (marked by a channel of water).By 1695, the land on which the fountain is located was owned by Father Santos Rodrigues, vicar of São João de Castelões, in Guimarães. On his death, his property passed to his niece, D. Angélica de Barros, who later bequeathed it to her brother-in-law Vicente Gomes do Couto.In the 18th century, the accountant D. Jerónimo Contador de Argote, noted in his records: "behind the church of São João Marcos is a garden, that is called "Idol", in which is located a deep spring, which has a rock, which appears to be living rock, with a figure in long robes, that is five palms [in size]: it looks like [the figure] has a long beard, and part of his body is missing; his right hand is broken and on the left the form of a envolotório, and above the head there are letters..." Jerónimo recounts with this detailed description, a design of the fountain of the Idol that was first created by the Bishop of Urianópolis, Alves de Figueire.Domingos Fernandes da Silva attempted to acquire the lands judicially, under the pretext that the lands were part of his property in 1816.On 6 August 1861, Emílio Hübner visited the garden of the Idol, informed that name of the divinity was obscured by lime, and attempted to correct the inscription, following the notes of D. Jerónimo.A year later, King Pedro V and the marquess of Sousa examine the fountain, then offered to the monarch as a gift by its owner João de Abreu Guedes do Couto. The King wanted to remove it and install it on the grounds of Quinta dos Falcões, as a base of a lapidary museum, but desisted.Around the 1870s, the fountain was sold to Luís do Amaral Ferreira, then known as o Alemão (the German), but later passed into the hands of Maria do Carmo Sousa, wife of Luís do Amaral Ferreira (in 1875). By the 1890s, the fountain was the property of José Joaquim de Oliveira, who married Maria do Carmo Sousa.By 1894, José Leite de Vasconcelos visited the Idol's garden, and completed a study of the structure (in a letter date 27 March 1894 to Martins Sarmento). Martins Sarmento, for his part, was interested in creating a mould of the fountain for the Museum of the Sociedade Martins Sarmento, in Guimarães. Leite de Vasconcelos returned a year later to Braga, in order to examine the inscriptions, which had by then become covered in lime: he rectified the obscurity of some of the inscription, re-reading TONGOE rather than PONGOE. Leite de Vasconcelos made return visits in 1903 and 1905 to study the fountain further, hypothesizing that the human figure on the left was the religious practitioner and the image within the structure the divinity.
José Leite de Vasconcelos lime Guimarães Braga fountain Pedro V D. Idol Georg Braun