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Florian Klingele

Ph. D. Candidate (Scholarship holder 10/2007 - 15.08.2010)
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Matthias Kaufmann

The usage of Mariengnadenbilder in Brazil between the 16th and 18th century

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Matthias Kaufmann

By means of a specific kind of images - paintings and statues of Virgin Mary - I want to investigate the interferences concerning the usage of these images among different cultures meeting in Brazil during the first centuries of its colonisation.
Due to their specific semantic structure, images seem a suitable subject for such an investigation: On the one hand, visible appearances of images are more or less immediately comprehensible and on the other hand images (especially in a religious context) require further information or interpretation to be completely understood and used in the appropriate way. As a result of this ambiguous structure, images are predisposed for different or alternative interpretations and differing usages through other cultures.
The cultural and social setting in Brasil at this time is determined by the subjugation of the indigenous population, the enslavement of West Africans and the conversion of both to Catholicism by the Portuguese conquerors. All three of them bring in their own differentiated tradition of using religious or even sacred images and will influence each other in their own pictorial traditions.

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