Francisco Brennand's Ceramic Workshop and visit to Instituto Ricardo Brennand museums

The first part of the next to last day was spent at Francisco Brennand's ceramic workshop. How to describe Mr.Brennand's artwork? Hmmmm, interesting. I will say he is a good artist at what he does. I wasn't too interested in the sculptures. I thought his paintings were impressive. The Brennand family is maybe the most prominent family in the state of Pernambuco. If they are not then lets just say they are a very prominent family. Francisco has built a massive compound full of various buildings with sculptures, paintings and other forms of art. He is a preeminent artist in Brazil.

The Compound

Fierce Warrior

Mr. Brennand himself.

Egypt

Gardens

Trojan Horse

Ugh....

Yuck, jaws ripped out

The device for jaw removal?

The second part of the day we visited Ricardo Brennands museum. Ricardo was Francisco's father. I enjoyed this museum much more than the art museum. Actually there were two museums that made up the Instituto Ricardo Brennand. One of the museums dealt with the history of Pernambuco and Brazil. The other museum contained weaponry of all sorts. The most weaponry I have ever seen.

I feel like this museum covered the native populations with more depth than other museums we had visited. The paintings contained in this museum were phenomenal. This museum houses the most paintings by Frans Post. These paintngs depict Dutch rule in Brazil

The paintings also showed the city at different points in history. We saw images not so different than the ones we saw in Triunfo and other locations. Rather than the scene being from hundreds of years ago it was in fact days ago we saw those same images.

Early Explorer, Portuguese

Look at this rug!

The second museum as I mentioned contained massive amounts of weaponry. The museum was set in a castle. There was a moat and drawbridge protecting the castle. This castle has been built specifically to hold all of the weapons. It is an incredible amount of knives, swords, rifles, pistols and other military objects. In fact the museum houses one of the largest collections of armory in the world with around 3,000 pieces.

That night we took the graduate students out for dinner at a nice restaurant. The graduate students have been so amazing. I feel like I have learned so much more on this trip than others I have been on. This is due in large part from the participation from the graduate students that have joined us from the Federal University of Pernambuco. Bruno, Larissa, Kleython, Diogo, Lucas, Ronaldo, Clara and Jonas have been so helpful. If it was not for these individuals our trip would not have been nearly as enjoyable. We presented them with gifts back at our hotel and vowed to stay in touch in the future.