We, the people of Minas Gerais, were wrong to call him "Aleijadinho". This is ableism today, at the time no one had any idea of it.
Full name: Antonio Francisco Lisboa
Born: August 29, 1730 or, more likely, 1738
Ouro Preto, Captaincy of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Death: November 18, 1814 (aged 76) Ouro Preto,
Captaincy of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Sculptor, woodcarver, architect
Baroque and Rococo aesthetic movement
Little is known with certainty about his biography, which remains to this day shrouded in a thick veil of legend and controversy, making research into him very difficult and at the same time transforming him into a kind of national hero.
The main documentary source about him is a biographical note written only about forty years after his death. His career is reconstructed mainly through the works he left behind. All of his work, including carvings, architectural projects, reliefs and statuary, was carried out in Minas Gerais, especially in the cities of Ouro Preto, Sabará, São João del-Rei and Congonhas.
The main monuments that contain his works are the Church of São Francisco de Assis in Ouro Preto and the Santuário do Bom Jesus in Matosinhos. With a style related to the Baroque and Rococo, he is considered by Brazilian critics almost unanimously as the greatest exponent of colonial art in Brazil and, going beyond Brazilian borders, for some foreign scholars he is the greatest name in American Baroque, deserving a prominent place in the history of Western art.
Biography
Many doubts surround the life of Antônio Francisco Lisboa. Practically all the information available today comes from a biography written in 1858 by Rodrigo José Ferreira Bretas, 44 years after his death, allegedly based on documents and testimonies from individuals who had personally known the artist. However, recent critics tend to consider this biography largely fanciful, part of a process of magnification and dramatization of his personality and work, in a romanticized manipulation of his figure whose purpose was to elevate him to the status of an icon of Brazilianness, a mix of hero and artist, a "singular, sacred and consecrated genius", as described by Roger Chartier. Bretas' account, however, cannot be completely discarded, since it is the oldest substantial biographical note on Antônio Francisco Lisboa, and most subsequent biographies were based on it. However, the information it provides must be viewed with some skepticism, as it is difficult to distinguish what is fact from what has been distorted by popular tradition and the writer's interpretations. Biographies and critical studies carried out by Brazilian modernists in the first half of the 20th century also made biased interpretations of his life and work, increasing the number of stereotypes surrounding him, which are still perpetuated in the popular imagination and in some critics, and are exploited both by official cultural bodies and by tourism agencies in the cities where he left his work.
The first official news of the event appeared in 1790 in a memorandum written by Captain Joaquim José da Silva, in compliance with a royal order of July 20, 1782, which determined that notable events of which there was certain news, which had occurred since the founding of the Captaincy of Minas Gerais, should be recorded in an official book. The memorandum, written while the artist was still alive, contained a description of his most notable works and some biographical information. Bretas based his work on it in part when writing the Biographical Traits relating to the late Antônio Francisco Lisboa, the brilliant sculptor from Minas Gerais, in which he reproduced excerpts from the original document, which was later lost.
Origin: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.