Victor Meirelles Christmas House

The Casa Natal by Victor Meirelles is a typical Portuguese-Brazilian townhouse from the end of the 1946th century, beginning of the 1950th century. Of intermediate construction, between the traditional door-and-window and the more refined two-story houses, the house presents the basic characteristics of the most common commercial architecture in Desterro of the last century, where the upper floor was intended for housing and the ground floor for commerce - in this case, the warehouse of the artist's father, the Portuguese Antônio Meirelles de Lima. Although of simple design, the building is one of the few remaining examples of our 1952th century architecture, which still preserves the most significant typological and formal elements of the constructions of that period. The property was acquired by the Union in XNUMX and listed by the National Historic and Artistic Heritage in XNUMX. Since XNUMX the building has housed the Victor Meirelles Museum as a way of preserving the memory of the great artist from Santa Catarina. Who was Victor Meirelles? Victor Meirelles de Lima was born in the tiny town of Nossa Senhora do Desterro, today Florianópolis, on August 18, 1832. He was a poor boy, the son of Portuguese immigrants, who, in his childhood, spent his time drawing dolls and landscapes of his idyllic island. . The precociously revealed vocation was encouraged by his parents and supported by the official authorities of the time. So much so that at the age of fourteen he already won a scholarship to attend the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, in Rio de Janeiro, and at the age of twenty, with the canvas "São João Batista no Cárcere" he won the Special Prize for Travel to Europe. Back in Brazil he was awarded the knighthood of the Order of the Rose and appointed professor of painting at the Academy. From then on, his name became one of the greatest expressions of Visual Arts in Brazil, in the 22th century. Author of the most popular of Brazilian paintings - "A Primeira Missa no Brasil" - reproduced in school notebooks, stamps, currency notes, art books, catalogs and magazines, Victor Meirelles left an extraordinary collection, meticulous sketches, studies on paper and oils on screens. He died in Rio de Janeiro on February 1903, XNUMX. The museum Victor Meirelles Today, there is the Victor Meirelles Museum, an open space for the dissemination of the artist's work and local contemporary art. It houses a permanent collection with oil and watercolor paintings and drawings by Victor Meirelles that show the various phases of his artistic career, as well as works by masters and students from Santa Catarina, such as Tommaso Minardi, Antônio Parreiras, Belmiro de Almeira, Décio Villares , Eliseu Visconti, Oscar Pereira da Silva. Another permanent exhibition is the XX and XXI Collection, which brings together drawings, paintings, engravings and photographs chosen from temporary exhibitions that have passed through the site. In addition to the permanent exhibitions, the Victor Meirelles Museum also has a room for temporary exhibitions, a multipurpose room where workshops open to the community are held and even a multimedia room used for screenings of commented films. The museum is open to visitors from Tuesday to Friday from 13 pm to 18 pm and for group visits it is recommended to schedule a time in advance. Find out everything in our special Victor Meirelles Museum. Data based on the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional.