Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss the way that The Historic and Artistic National Heritage Institute - IPHAN -, in Brazil, had taken the work of Frei Agostinho de Santa Maria - 'Santuário Mariano' - as an kind of visual source to the Brazilian Heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The Historic and Artistic National Heritage Institute was created in 1937, during the 'Estado Novo', a in Brazil. Monuments, buildings, collections and objects started do be catalogued, classified and, at the same time, some of the most important federal museums was established and had started their collections.

In this context, this paper aims to present some of the IPHAN's restoration strategies dealing with a visual culture that was toking place by the official Brazilian culture. At this perspective, some collections in the interior of these federal museums were taken by IPHAN to establish and place a natural and crystalized reference about the past. As the same, 'Santuário Mariano e história das imagens milagrosas de Nossa Senhora', wroted by Frei Agostinho de Santa Maria during 1707 and 1723, was taken as an important reference not only to the research, catalogation and classification of the monuments but also important to the restoration of the monuments.

This paper is about to discuss the work of Frei Agostinho, placing the problem of (mis-) understanding. A problem that author had advised, saying that some misunderstandings were inevitable because, as he explains, he hadn't visited all the sanctuaries. In other perspective, Santuário Mariano' was taken by IPHAN as a kind first 'visual' source of the Brazilian heritage or as the proto-geneses of this kind of source. Thus, trough the reading of this work, some (mis-)understandings could be taking place in the interior of the IPHAN.

Paper Download (212 KB)