By Luciano Migliaccio
Seven extant paintings by Joseph Brüggemann depict the same view of Florianópolis taken from a bend on the old road, known as “José Mendes curve”. In 1989, the Galeria de Arte do Rio de Janeiro owned one of these versions. Another painting is conserved at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, in Rio de Janeiro. The dimensions of the canvas in the Masp Collection are identical to those in paintings mentioned in Cabral (1971, p. 111), owned by Rudi Schnorr and Tom Wildi, in Florianópolis. Pietro M. Bardi purchased View of Desterro in an antique market in Florence, in 1959, and donated it to Masp in 1961. The other paintings are conserved at the Museu Imperial, in Petrópolis, RJ, at the Museu Arquidiocesano Dom Joaquim, in Brusque, SC, and at the Archaeological Museum of Colégio Catarinense.
— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998