The work of Jean-Baptiste Debret as a historical source for the studies of the costumes used in Brazil in the early nineteenth century

Abstract

The article presents a view of fashion in Brazil in the first decades of the nineteenth century in the light of the work of the French painter Jean-Baptiste Debret. His paintings constitute an iconographic corpus with lithographs made from his watercolors and canvas that would compose the collections of “Picturesque and historic voyage to Brazil”. The costumes portrayed by Debret are analyzed in contrast to the reports of the fashion historians, concluding that the fashion in Brasil in the Johannine Era and the D. Pedro Era followed the European trends of the time, the Empire style and the Romantic style.O artigo apresenta uma visão da moda usada no Brasil no início do século XIX à luz da obra do pintor francês Jean-Baptiste Debret. Sua obra constitui um corpus iconográfico com litografias feitas a partir de suas aquarelas e pranchas que comporiam os fascículos de Viagem pitoresca e histórica ao Brasil. Os trajes retratados por Debret foram analisados sob o olhar de historiadores da moda, concluindo-se que a moda usada no Brasil no período joanino e no Brasil de Pedro I seguiu as tendências europeias da época, o estilo Império e o estilo Romântico