De médicos a meninos: vitalidade gemelar na escultura doméstica popular dos santos Cosme e Damião no Brasil

Abstract

Starting from the sculptures belonging to Ludmilla Pomerantzeff Breda Collection, the present thesis investigates the transformations occurred in Brazilian domestic devotional sculptures of Saints Cosmas and Damian, also aiming at comprehending the symbolic and cultural factors that allowed such transformations. With representations from the XVIII, XIX and XX centuries, the sculptures from the above mentioned collection demonstrate that, through the centuries, substantial iconographic transformations occurred with the twin Saints transformations related to new cosmological attributes accrued to the Holy Unmercenaries. I state that the transformations undertaken by the iconography representing the twin Saints happened because Western cosmological and artistic contents encountered the cosmological and artistic contents of varied Black ethnic groups brought to Brazil. Due to the fusion between Saints Cosmas and Damian and the African twin Deities, the Christian Saints lost their medicine symbols and became Patrons of childhood, a fact that can be seen not only in their morphology, but also in the cosmological domain of the child Saints in Brazil.