Atlantic Masters: Three Early Modern Afro-Brazilian Artists

Brazil received the largest number of Africans enslaved into Americas: nearly five million by some estimates. Thus, became world’s slavocracy. But slavery was not only experience available to and Brazilians African descent in slavery-era Brazil. Numerically, Afro-Brazilians dominated arts colonial However, very few those artists artisans, many whom were enslaved, are known name today. Free Afro-Brazilian artists, such as Aleijadinho, Mestre Valentim, Teófilo de Jesus, on other hand, fared far better. In this article, I turn these three mixed-race artists’ works what little is their lives, exemplary but also most important Brazil’s late period, where they had greatest impact artistic developments home regions. These careers thus illustrate how contributed defined urban sacred spaces early modern Atlantic. This therefore an invitation look at Afrodescendants’ role art beyond anonymity static representation.