As antigas talhas da igreja do Colégio, parte 2 (original) (raw)

Here we will approach the old carvings of the church of the Pátio do Colégio in São Paulo, Brazil. Built in the mid-seventeenth century, the third Jesuit church in São Paulo was ruined in March 1896, due to the heavy rains of late summer. It had been closed for a few years, and given the disinterest of the government of the state of São Paulo, at the time administrator of the seventeenth century church, it fell down for simple lack of maintenance. Although venerable, the building was considered very rude in appearance and therefore impossible to continue existing among the modern eclectic buildings recently built in the vicinity. Its ruins were destroyed without remorse and in the place the government had erected official constructions in extension to the palace of the government, contiguous building that from 1881 took the place of the Jesuit convent. Inside the ruined church, there was an altarpiece at the back of the high altar and in each of the six side chapels. Carving works then considered of little artistic value. By way of remembrance or testimony, parts of the main altarpiece, which was intact, and some carved woods fragments from other semi-destroyed altarpieces were collected. The rest was simply discarded, or, as they have said, distributed among characters of high economic and social standing. Unconnected, the pieces of collected wood were installed in an "artistic" arrangement in the church of the Sacred Heart of Maria (1897-1899). They returned only to the Pátio do Colégio in the late 1970s, when the replica of the ancient temple was concluded (1970-1979), re-established as a way of honoring the Fourth Centennial (1954) of the city of São Paulo. Exposed in the main chapel, with the reform of this chapel, occurred in 2009, the fragments were removed from the interior of the temple. Our objective in this work is to identify each of the altarpieces on the eve of the disaster of 1896, correlating them with the lateral chapels of the old church, with the successive invocations they had, according to the sacred images they harbored, and to draw stylistic considerations to respect for these ancient and relevant examples of religious art in São Paulo, now disappeared, from photographs taken immediately after the disaster. In addition, we discussed the supposed influence of Hispanic-American religious art in the creation of the famous 18th century litlle monkeys wood carving panel.