Jean-Baptiste Debret, history painter and member of the French Artistic Mission of 1816, in his iconographic album Picturesque and Historical Travel to Brazil, has made illustrations from the observation of Brazilian uses. Part of his work was dedicated to the life of the Court in Brazil. The author seeks to in this article to analyze the conception of both the Portrait of D. João VI and the Portrait of D. Pedro I, official images of the Royalty in Brazil produced by the French artist. There is, in Debret, a clear counterpoint between the portraits of the father D. João and his son Pedro, offering interpretative keys for the political moments in question. The author seeks to analyze and contrast the images, in the sense of their physical description - the differential presence of attributes and their political representation -, bringing to the surface the iconographic changes between the portraits, highlighting the importance of the European and American models in the compositions.
Portrait; D. João VI; D. Pedro I; Jean-Baptiste Debret; Henrique José da Silva; Hyancinthe Rigaud
