Aleijadinho

Aleijadinho [Port.,=little cripple], 1730-1814, Brazilian sculptor. His real name was Antônio Francisco Lisboa. Although he was maimed in hands and feet, he is known for the brilliance of his church sculpture. His most famous works are the carvings in the Church of São Francisco at Ouro Prêto and the statues of the Twelve Prophets at Congonhas do Campo. The distinctive baroque style of Aleijadinho's works, carved in wood and indigenous soapstone, has caused much church sculpture in his native Minas Gerais to be attributed to him.

Aleijadinho, António Francisco Lisboa, known as O (1738–1814). The leading practitioner of Baroque and Rococo in Brazil, he was born the illegitimate son of the Portuguese architect Manoel Francisco Lisboa (fl. c.1720–before 1767) near Ouro Prêto, Brazil. The ‘little cripple’ (as O Aleijadinho means) suffered from a disease (possibly syphilis or leprosy) that gradually cost him his toes, fingers, sight, and skin. In spite of these disadvantages he succeeded in transforming traditional types of Lusitanian church-architecture by means of the most rich and imaginative applied sculptural decoration, much of it carved by himself in the soft soapstone found in abundance in the interior captaincy of Minas Gerais, where gold and diamonds were mined. The capital, Ouro Prêto, acquired numerous chapels, altars, doorways, and façades by Aleijadinho, and his masterpieces are recognized as the Churches of São Francisco de Assis (1766–94), Ouro Prêto (with twin cylindrical towers set on either side of a curved front in which is set a sumptuous carved door-case, while the interior of the Church is remarkably unified, undulating, and elegant), and Bom Jesus de Matozinhos in Congonhas do Campo near Ouro Prêto (with 12 carved figures guarding the entrance to the Church, while the rest of the ensemble is a synthesis of dramatic, powerful, and richly plastic elements, evolved over a long period from 1777 to 1805).

Bibliography

Bazin (1963);
Brétas (1951);
Kubler & and Soria (1959);
Norberg-Schulz (1986a);
Jane Turner (1996)

Lisboa, António Francisco (b Vila Rica [now Ouro Prêto], c.1738; d Vila Rica, 18 Nov. 1814). Brazilian mulatto sculptor and architect, the illegitimate son of a Portuguese-born architect and stonemason, Manuel Francisco Lisboa (d c.1767), and an African slave. He was known as O Aleijadinho (little cripple) because he suffered from a disease (possibly leprosy or syphilis) that from his late thirties progressively deformed his limbs and caused him to lose some of his fingers and toes (he died in pain and poverty). He is said to have worked with chisel and mallet tied to half paralysed hands, but in spite of his handicap, he is considered the greatest sculptor as well as the greatest architect of colonial Brazil. Much of his work is in Ouro Prêto, a town that grew extremely wealthy as a gold-mining centre, but his masterpiece is the group of twelve life-size prophets (1800–5), carved in soapstone, adorning the great staircase leading to the pilgrimage church of Nosso Senhor Bom Jesus de Matozinhos at Congonhas do Campo. These figures have been described as ‘the most dynamic ensemble of open-air statuary in the Lusitanian world’ ( George Kubler and Martin Soria, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and their American Dominions: 1500–1800, 1959).