By Eugênia Gorini Esmeraldo
Dom Pedro de Alcântara was born in 1825 at the São Cristóvão Palace in Rio de Janeiro. He was crowned on April 7, 1831, upon his father’s abdication. However, in view of his youth, the country underwent a regency period. Political problems led to Dom Pedro’s premature assumption of power. He was sworn in on July 18, 1840, and governed until the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889. Exiled in Europe, he died in Paris in 1891. Dom Pedro II (Emperor) is a full-body portrait of the Emperor of Brazil in gala attire with a two-cornered hat in his left hand and looking directly at the viewer. The attire has epaulettes typical of a field marshal, and the coat is so heavily embroidered in gold that, as Serafina Borges do Amaral noted, it looks almost like an armor. The right hand at the waist lends the figure a haughty air. The surroundings consist of an office with a desk, books, and a globe, and highlighting some artworks on the walls and a bust on a column, alluding to the Emperor’s humanistic and cultural interests. Behind the Emperor is a fringed banquette upholstered in blue, and a rug, also blue with flowered borders, covers the floor.
— Eugênia Gorini Esmeraldo, 1998
