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Reflexão
The First Mass in Brazil
The picture painted by Victor Meirelles depicts the first mass celebrated in Brazil, based on the travel accounts made by Pero Vaz de Caminha.
The moment is represented by a central figure, Friar Henrique de Coimbra, who also occupies the physical centre of the canvas, raising the chalice to the cross planted there. The other figures in the scene stand around him in different planes.
The painting depicts indigenous people and Portuguese settlers, differentiated both by their physical characteristics and by their attitude and expression towards the Mass. While the Portuguese kneel in a serious posture before the altar, the indigenous people are arranged between the trees and the ground, in a lower and darker plane, with expressions of doubt and curiosity.
The centre of the image, where the cross and the colonisers meet, is the brightest point in the painting, leaving the rest of the space occupied by the indigenous people in the darkness of the jungle. The way this scene and the figures who inhabit it are represented does not necessarily reflect the reality of the event, but rather the perspective of the painter and the social context in which he lived.
This and other prints like it, always painted from the perspective of the coloniser, determine the narrative of the events, fictionalising history according to the Western view of colonisation and its prejudices. The shadow is cast on the indigenous people to represent the contrast with the light of the civilised and Christian coloniser, placing them in a place of opposition (savage and pagan). The representation of the posture of these figures could also be expected, since we know that indigenous resistance to colonising occupation began from the first contact and there were several indigenous revolts throughout the centuries of colonial invasions in Latin America.