“ET ORENT PRO DEFUNCTIS”

Images of death in franciscan convents of Northeast Brasil.

Abstract

Based on a study of franciscan convents distributed between Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia states, this article will deal with marks related to death, associated with conventual architecture and arranged along its walls and ceilings. Death will come in many forms. By word, in the liturgical acts, prayers, but also trough the extensive iconographic program shaped in the imaginary, paintings and carvings. Such resources are spread over a significant part of the building, adding to the long ritualistic practiced, which included the remembrance of death and the exploration of funereal artistic expressions. Through these set of iconographic resources recurrently observed in the convents, extracted from the visits and the consulted primary sources we will seek to reflect on supposed qualifications of the mortuary theme when appropriate by the Franciscan order. This is considered as having its own poetics, whose  familiarity with the finitude of life allows her to be called “Sister Death”, properly integrated, in a very own way, as partof the daily life of their homes and lives.