Innovation in Brazilian architecture: The churches of colonial Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais.

At the start of the eighteenth century, when Brazil was still a Portuguese colony, the town of Vila Rica emerged out of a mass immigration due to a gold rush. Masons, carpenters, architects, and artisans built numerous churches there to fill the needs of this burgeoning population. This dissertation is a study of six of the churches built at that time in Vila Rica, now called Ouro Preto, in the province of Minas Gerais. They are representative of the various church types in the region: parish churches (matrizes), Third (lay) Order churches and churches built by religious brotherhoods ( irmandades). Of the six churches chosen for this investigation, two were brotherhood churches built by sodalities comprised almost entirely of Africans brought to Brazil as part of the slave trade, and of people of African descent. The differences between these two churches are a significant aspect of this research. The emerging culture in Vila Rica was a mixture of both Portuguese and African traditions, as well as other sources. This investigation seeks to understand issues of influence, precedent, symbolism, syncretism, and creativity through the examination of the history and form of a small group of buildings within their cultural milieu. By doing so, both the formal principles and social forces that shaped the architecture of Vila Rica can be better understood. Some of the features of the churches in Vila Rica and the surrounding region are unlike any other in Portugal, Brazil, or elsewhere in the Americas. This dissertation suggests that it was the combination of both the local syncretic culture and the infusion of European architectural vocabulary that provided the stimulus for creating these distinctive forms.Ph.D.ArchitectureArt historyCommunication and the ArtsHistory, ChurchLatin American historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124711/2/3150237.pd