Portrait, biography and historical knowledge in the nineteenth century Brazil

Abstract

Portrait and biography, image and text. What happens when both languages connect themselves to give rise to another way of expression? This is the subject of the present paper. Works generically known as illustrated galleries, already circulating in Brazil in the first decades of the 19th century are the objects of analysis. In them, apparently excluding languages come together to produce another way of describing the past. As material bearers of memory, in the definition by Aleida Assmann, these works show a growing concern in connecting images and texts aiming at both, generalizing and institutionalizing a memory policy. In this context, based on the concept of historical culture, I intend to analyze how this connection occurred when preparing the historical knowledge in nineteenth century Brazil. I show that textual and visual languages complemented each other in the mission of turning visible the past, until then invisible.