Decorum; Ingenuity; Sacred Art; Portuguese America

Between 1760 and 1761, the Third Order of Mount Carmel in Recife commissioned over fifty paintings from the workshop of João de Deus e Sepúlveda, with forty of them intended for the decoration of their church's ceiling. Depicting moments from the life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, these paintings adhere to the iconographic pattern of hagiographic prints developed in the 17th and 18th centuries in Rome, Lyon, and Antwerp. Despite existing works exploring the iconography of this set of European prints, there is a lack of research aiming to understand the socio-cultural influence on the creation and/or transformation of the iconographic types used. The identified continuities and ruptures in the images will allow us to access the adaptations required for the prints in their transposition to the context of 18th-century Recife. The goal of this study is to deepen the discussion on the ingenuity of artisans and the maintenance of decorum in the creation of lifelike images, expanding the understanding of the formation and maturation process of sacred art in, and of, Portuguese America.