Editorial note: This text was published in two parts. The present publication corresponds to the second part; the first was made available in the previous update of the blog. Read it here. 

In Brazilian colonial painting, more precisely in the second half of the eighteenth century, there are at least four examples of representations of the Five Senses, including touch. The first concerns tile panels (c. 1745–1755) in the cloister of the Convent of São Francisco in Salvador (Flexor, 2010; Maia, 1990). On the upper floor of the building is one of the most important sets of Portuguese tilework brought to Brazil, by Valentim de Almeida, which has been the subject of numerous studies: the representation of the Five Senses as female allegories. Touch is represented as a young woman caressing a small dog held in her arms; at the base of the image is the verb “to touch” (Apalpar) [Figure 18].

At the House of Padre Toledo in Tiradentes, Minas Gerais, we also find allegorical representations of the Five Senses as gallant and mythological couples, derived from European graphic models and Chinese porcelain (Andrade & Giovannini, 2024) [Figure 19]. Touch, in the central panel, is represented by Hermes or Mercury and Venus or Aphrodite, emphasizing the gesture of touching hands [Figure 20].

On the ceiling of an eighteenth-century residence, now relocated to the Regional Museum of São João del Rei, which contains a secular representation of the Five Senses inspired by popular Dutch engravings (apud Andrade), touch is depicted as a woman dressed in contemporary attire caressing two birds, two white doves [Figure 21].

However, we would like to focus especially on the example of the main church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição in Conceição do Mato Dentro, Minas Gerais, where the Five Senses are female allegories associated with the Five Wounds of Christ and the Three Theological Virtues on the ceiling of the sacristy, in paintings from the second half of the eighteenth century [Figure 22]. Here, a young woman caresses a hedgehog [Figure 23]. While the ceilings of the Regional Museum of São João del Rei and the Casa de Padre Toledo in Tiradentes may be considered allegories of the Five Senses related to a secular context—despite the fact that in the latter case the resident was a priest, an inconfidente, linked to libertine culture and Enlightenment thought—the allegories of Conceição do Mato Dentro are located within the sacred space of a sacristy, in the presence of a tabernacle.

Unlike the allegories of smell and sight [Figures 24 and 25] represented on the same ceiling—which wear chemise dresses or nightgowns—the female allegory of touch wears a heavier dress that covers nearly her entire body, although also dressed in late eighteenth-century fashion, as can be seen by the cut below the bust, and with a powdered hairstyle in the style of the Ancien Régime. She delicately caresses a small hedgehog resting on her lap [Figure 26]. The delicacy of her hands creates a striking contrast with the spines of the hedgehog. This animal, Erinaceus europaeus, though common in European fauna and abundant in Portugal, does not exist in Brazilian territory. This is certainly, as often occurred, a transposition by way of copying a graphic model—usually an engraving—used by the painter as a reference, although we have not identified the hedgehog in any engraving related to touch to date, even after analyzing hundreds of examples in different collections [Figure 27]. According to Warwick (2020), hedgehogs were not a particularly valued species in artistic representations, although they were part of everyday life and the European imagination.

In general, animals in Brazilian colonial art were commonly represented by artisans in a schematic manner (Daniel’s lion, Jonah’s whale), without realist intentions. Hedgehogs, as symbols, may represent, in an interpretive play, abundance or gluttony—since it was believed that they rolled over ripe fruits so that these would stick to their bodies and be consumed later (Warwick, 2020)—but also the capacity for defense and protection, as they curl up when threatened.

Theologically, in combining the theme of the Five Senses with the Five Wounds of Christ, with the female allegory depicted as a figure caressing a hedgehog, we may suppose that touch is associated with Christ’s suffering and with the symbols of the Passion represented there, such as the crown of thorns, the nails of the cross, and the spear of the coup de grâce. This allegory of touch stands next to another representing Charity, along with the symbols of the hammer and pincers. According to Warwick (2020), however, the hedgehog also provides an important reference for religions based on the idea of resurrection, as it is an animal that hibernates.

Beyond spiritual exercise, the Five Senses acquired new values in the worldly culture of the Rococo. Many spaces were transformed with the aim of stimulating the senses, which were essential to libertine sensibility. Decorations were oriented toward sensory stimuli as part of the experience of sociability—from the boudoir to the dining room, from the alcove to the gardens—hosting pleasures mediated by the senses. There was thus a process of domestication concerning the “confinement” of sensory experiences (Delon, 2000 apud Marques, 2015).

The Treatise on Sensations of 1745, reissued in 1798, was considered the most important of Abbé de Condillac’s writings and responsible for his success. References to the works of Condillac, as well as Rousseau, appear in eighteenth-century libraries in Minas Gerais, as evidenced by post-mortem inventories and judicial records. According to Poivet, Condillac’s ideas were discussed with great vitality by the men of his time and may have permeated the thought of different readers in eighteenth-century Brazil. Borrowing from Locke the principle that all knowledge comes from the senses, Condillac presented the theory that we receive our senses from nature and learn how to use them: we learn to see, feel, hear, taste, and touch.

Of particular interest, however, is the book by Father Balthazar da Encarnação, City of Consciousness in Five Speeches Through the Five Senses, published in 1700. Gandra (2004) has already observed the relationship between this book and the paintings in the sacristy of Nossa Senhora da Conceição in Conceição do Mato Dentro. In his “Instruction,” Balthazar da Encarnação warned that the Five Senses are the Five Gates of the City of Consciousness “through which the soul becomes capable of enjoying the delights of this earthly paradise, so that, through these known things, it may form some concept of the celestial things it ignores” (Encarnação, 1700). In each chapter, Balthazar examines one of the Five Senses, dedicating one of them to touch.

The female allegory of touch (our Lady and the Hedgehog) is part of a set of paintings dating from the second half of the eighteenth century on the ceiling of the sacristy of the main church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in the city of Conceição do Mato Dentro, Minas Gerais. Although understood in its context as an element of an iconography that associates the Five Senses with the Five Wounds of Christ and the symbols of the Passion, the young woman caressing a hedgehog nonetheless invites other interpretations. Is this merely a religious affirmation of touch as a tactile way of understanding the pain of Christ crowned with thorns and nailed to the Cross and his resurrection; or might we suppose other intertwined messages, such as a painful/pleasurable invitation to the senses?

Angela Brandão

Universidade Federal de São Paulo

CNPq

February 23, 2025 

*This work is the result of research carried out with the support of CNPq — Research Productivity Grant.

**Translation: Amanda Paitax (UNIFESP)

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