An upper class woman being transported in her sedan chair by two slaves, each dressed in livery but barefoot; they follow a white man, dressed in the same colors, but who is wearing shoes. The matching colors of the clothing and the sedan chair indicate they all belong to the same owner or property. Born in Italy ca. 1740, Juliao joined the Portuguese army and traveled widely in the Portuguese empire; by the 1760s or 1770s he was in Brazil, where he died in 1811 or 1814. For a detailed analysis and critique of Juliao's figures as representations of Brazilian slave life, as well as a biographical sketch of Juliao and suggested dates for his paintings, see Silvia Hunold Lara, Customs and Costumes: Carlos Juliao and the Image of Black Slaves in Late Eighteenth-Century Brazil (Slavery & Abolition, vol. 23 [2002], pp. 125-146).

Carlos Juliao, Riscos illuminados de figurinhos de broncos e negros dos uzos do Rio de Janeiro e Serro do Frio (Rio de Janeiro, 1960), plate 14. The prints used as plates in this book are housed in the Secao de Iconografia in the National Library of Brazil; the historical introduction and descriptive catalog were written by Lygia da Foneseca Fernandes da Cunha. (Copy in Tulane University Library)

Juliao, Carlos

Portuguese

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

juliao01

South America--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro

"Carrying a Sedan Chair (Palanquin), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ca. 1770s", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed April 12, 2021, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/466