Fine Art among the Black Settlers of Brazil—Sculpture

Abstract

Raimundo Nina Rodrigues was a qualified doctor and forensic pathologist who applied his medical training to the study of Afro-Brazilian cultural practices. In the course of his research,Nina Rodrigues assembled a collection of sculptural religious artifacts; some of African provenance, some made in Brazil. A selection of these works in bronze and wood are analyzed in this text, first published in 1904.Nina Rodrigues not only describes these artifacts in detail, but also explores their religious and cultural significance, seeing in them nascent works of art, understood in the European sense. According to Nina Rodrigues, however, they are still in a gestational phase, like gems “crying out to be polished and cut.”

Keywords:

• African art
• Afro-Brazilian art
• slavery
• sculpture
• Candomblé
• orisha
• filho de santo
• batucagé
• babalawo

Notes

1. Maurice Delafosse, “Le trône de Béhanzin et les portes des palais d’Abomé au Musée ethnographique du Trocadéro,” La Nature (21 April 1894): 326.