Sept. 22, Brazil

regions

Portuguese map by Lopo Homem (c. 1519) showing the coast of Brazil and natives extracting brazilwood.

By Albert Eckhout (1610-1665), Dance of the Tapuias

Joan Blaeu, Atlas maior, sive Geographia Blaviana (Amsterdam, 1662), vol. 11, between pp. 243 and 245. (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library; also, The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)

Captioned "Praefecturae Paranambucae pars Borealis," this inset from a map of Brazil (ca. 1640) by Frans Post and Georg Marggraf shows slaves engaged in various tasks of sugar manufacture and, in the center, a group of slaves is transporting a planter's wife in a hammock, a ubiquitous mode of transport for Brazil's wealthier whites. Also shown are various plantation buildings, including the "manor house" or "great house" and a vertical roller sugar mill powered by water. First published in Joan Blaeu's "Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum . . . Historia" (Amsterdam, 1647).

more images at 

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record (search: Brazil)

View of a sugar-producing farm (engenho) in colonial Pernambuco by Dutch painter Frans Post (17th century).

Frans Post (c.1612-1680) spent several years in Brazil before returning to his native Holland in 1644. This village scene was one of a number of early records of Brazil which he painted on his return home. It has been in the Royal Collection since the 1760s. The Royal Collection copyright 2006 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II