Restoration of the Chapel of Padre Faria in Ouro Preto, MG-Brazil

摘要

The article deals with the restorations made in 2004, describing in addition several previous interventions, in particular, the work made by restorers from the Institute for National Historic and Artistic Heritage - IPHAN, in the 1940′s, wherein still resonated the procedures of Viollet-le-Duc. The article seeks to illustrate the double pathway that characterizes the role of Brazilian architects in the first steps in our modern architecture, showing how this very chapel could have served as inspiration for one of the most significant creations of the architect Oscar Niemeyer: the Chapel of Saint Francis of Assisi, in the Pampulha Complex in Belo Horizonte. This claim is justified in the operation of various factors, as much those relative to the esthetic and ideological motivations of the Modernist Movement in Brazil, as those linked to the programmatic operation of these architects in two professional sectors; that of the renovation and conservation of the architecture of the Baroque Mineira and the employment and use of its vocabulary in the production of our first modern architecture. A comparison, albeit superficial, between the Chapel of Padre Faria and that of Saint Francis reveals the presence of common points; the same simplicity and austerity in the overall treatment, the employment of the same principles in the distribution and articulation of the spaces and volumetric solutions, the use of similar compositional elements, equal sensibility in the positioning of the monument in relation to the surrounding landscape, the attainment of the effects of light and shade in the interior, the same pictorial treatment of the surfaces and the integration of the various forms of artistic expression as the result of the achievement of a mystic and contemplative atmosphere. The restoration work demonstrates these historic, artistic and environmental values.