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Carlos Julião, a military engineer and draughtsman of Italian origin in the service of the Portuguese crown, never lived or settled in Brazil.

He lived in Portugal, where he worked in the colonial administration, but produced a vast body of work on the Portuguese colonies, including Brazil.

His drawings and watercolours document the social, cultural and ethnic life of the colonies and were created on the basis of reports, documents and possibly occasional visits.

Therefore, there is no record of Julião’s arrival or departure specifically for Brazil, but his work remains one of the most important iconographic representations of the Portuguese colonial period.

Carlos Julião’s works about Brazil

1. The Figuration of Colonial Space
2. Figurines of Whites and Blacks: an album of Brazilian types
3. Figurines in Painting

1. The Figuration of Colonial Space

According to the caption, an Elevasam, Fasada, which shows in maritime perspective the City of Salvador, located in the Bay of All Saints, in South America, situated at 13 degrees south latitude and 345 degrees and 36 minutes longitude. At the bottom are detailed plans and larger-scale perspectives of the entire fortification protecting the city.

This prospectus was taken by Carlos Julião, Captain of Miners in the Court Artillery Regiment, when he was on the Nau Nossa Senhora Madre de Deus.

In May 1779, it was preserved at the Gabinete de Estudos Arqueológicos de Engenharia Militar (GEAEM) in Lisbon (Figure 1).

The Elevation and façade is a work made up of three parts or segments, which are distributed in the four horizontal segments into which the supporting paper is divided:

1. First Segment

The first of these, the top one, is occupied by a fairly conventional prospectus view of Salvador, in which the city is represented in profile from the sea.

The drawing emphasises the way in which the urban centre rests on the natural relief of the site. In this prospectus, the main buildings and streets of the former capital of Brazil are labelled with numbers, each one corresponding to an item in the explanatory caption that takes up the entire bottom strip of the plank, flanking the long title.

Both Ferrez (1963:38) and Reis (2000:316) consider this prospectus of Salvador to be a copy of the profile of the city drawn up by José Antonio Caldas (1725-1782)³ in 1756, under the guidance of military engineer Manuel Cardoso de Saldanha.

He was a disciple of Manoel Cardoso de Saldanha, under whose guidance he was trained as a military engineer and was assigned to work on fortifications and religious buildings. He was a professor at the Aula Militar in Bahia from 1761 until the year of his death.

The main indication of this would be the representation, in the Elevation and façade, of the Cathedral of Salvador still with two towers, one of which had been demolished in 1756 as a result of a landslide on the Ladeira da Misericórdia.

According to both historians, Caldas ‘ survey was widely copied by various other authors throughout the 18th century.

2. Second Segment

The second segment depicts the city’s defence system, with its eight forts and two batteries drawn concurrently in plan and elevation, with the two batteries superimposed in the central niche of the segment.

The drawings are accompanied by explanatory captions detailing the geographical position of each fort and the calibre of its artillery, as shown in the captions below:

1. Fort of São Bartholomeu da Passagem, situated on the River Pirajá, one kilometre from Bahia. Its artillery is made up of eight iron pieces: one twelve calibre, one eight calibre and six six calibre.
2. Fort of Santo Antônio da Barra in the City of Bahia. This fort defends the Barra Gate, which gives access to the Bay. Its artillery is made up of 16 pieces, 8 of which are bronze: two 26 calibre, four 16 calibre and two 19 calibre. The other 8 pieces are 36 calibre iron.
3. Fort of Santa Maria. This fort, located to the north of the Santo Antônio da Barra Fort, is one shot from a piece and defends a strategic point in Barra, suitable for landing. Its artillery is made up of 24 and 18 calibre iron pieces.
4. Fortinho de São Diogo. Located to the north of the Fortinho de Santa Maria, one musket shot away. Between these two forts is Porto Irajá da Barra. Its artillery consists of five iron pieces: three 10 calibre and two 8 calibre.
5. Bateria de Paulo and Bateria da Ribeira. These batteries cross fire with the Fortaleza do Mar and are Bahia’s best defence. VI. Its artillery is made up of 19 iron pieces of 24 calibre. V. Its artillery is made up of 2 bronze pieces, one of 14 calibre and the other of 12 calibre. It also has another 30 iron pieces, 18 of which are of 26 calibre, 10 of 18 calibre and 2 of 8 calibre.
6. Sea Fortress. This fortress is located in the sea away from the earth and has two bronze musket barrels, 24, 18, 16 and 8 calibre, and iron barrels, 40, 36, 26 and 18 calibre.
7. Fortinho de Francisco. Situated in the centre of the town of Marinha in the city of Bahia, it is defective and undefended by the buildings advancing towards it from the side. Its artillery consists of 7 iron pieces: two 12 calibre, two 10 calibre and three 6 calibre.
8. Fortinho do Alberto. Located next to the Novitiate house that once belonged to the Jesuits, this fort is defective and is allied to the Navy. In this place, there is a need for [reinforcement?]. Its artillery consists of 7 iron pieces: two 72 calibre, three 10 calibre and two 8 calibre.
9. Monserate Fort. Situated on the northern tip of the peninsula, north, south with the Fort of Santa Maria, which is on the southern tip, on the […] line that forms the city of Bahia and its suburbs. Its artillery is iron, 18 calibre and 12 calibre.

Taken together, therefore, the two parts that make up the upper half of Julião ‘s plank constitute a type of representation that is very much in keeping with the universe of visual records of a military nature, abundant in 18th century iconographic production relating to Brazil.

The drawing serves to demonstrate dominion over the territory: the profile of the city shows the occupation of the site, points to the presence of such and such civil and religious institutions, an index of the degree of development of the urban centre; the record of the forts, on the other hand, shows the resources available to maintain this dominion.

We are faced with what Belluzzo calls a finalist, instrumental design, which ‘does not allow the imaginary to flow (…) and serves the construction of real life’ (Belluzzo 1994:3,49).

3. Third Segment

The third of the horizontalsegments that make up the Elevation and façade board, however, marks a difference in Julião ‘s work in terms of military iconography.

The five compartments into which this section of the work is divided contain representations of human figures, prototypes of the urban types that would be widely disseminated by the costumbrista production of 19th century travelling artists.

The figures represented in Julião ‘s painting roughly correspond to two white ladies, two figures of slaves (a black man with a clay jug on his head and a black woman carrying a tray of fruit), as well as a central group in which two slaves carry a white lady on a^chair4, accompanied by a gentleman who shows them the direction to ^follow5. The pictures are labelled with the following captions:

1. The way mulattoes dress in the city of Bahia
2. Black man selling milk in Bahia
3. Carriage or armchair in which the ladies ride in the city of Salvador, Bahia de Todos os Santos
4. Mossa dancing the landú from arse to girdle
5. Costume of the black mines of Bahia, chitandeiras

In view of this complementarity between text and image, it’s important to emphasise the importance of each character ‘s clothing as the main indicator of the figure’s identity, whether in terms of race, social status, cultural background or even the activity performed within the society being observed.

The mulatto from Bahia, for example, is defined here as a native of the Americas with African blood, less by the colour of her skin than by the way she dresses.

The black milk seller doesn’t have his slave status mentioned in the caption, although he is barefoot and his clothes are in tatters, which we know are enough evidence to define a captive.

In the central group, the refinement that surrounds the figure of the ‘lady’ of Bahia is evident, whether from the point of view of the little chair on which she is carried (made of carved wood, with gilding and ornaments), or her own clothing (which is more sophisticated than that of the other characters), or even the blacks who carry her, dressed with care, although barefoot.

It can’t go unnoticed that the fact that she is being carried and accompanied is also a clear indication that this is a society that grants privileges to certain individuals to the detriment of others, thus organising itself hierarchically.

The next figure is referred to only as a ‘mossa’ who dances (although she appears static in the image), without her race or social class being specified. However, the fact that she dances the lundu, a dance of African origin, can be taken as a sign that the character is indeed of African descent, or at least that the manifestations of this culture are familiar to her⁶.

Finally, we are presented with the costume of the ‘black Minas of Bahia’, in which we can distinguish the presence of the ‘bolsa de mandinga’ hanging from the sash at the waist, as well as the scarifications on the face, which Julião draws with great attention⁷.

Although we know that these are people who belong to and move within an urban context, nothing in their representation is a clear indication of this, not even the small patch of ground that supports them.

The association with the urban context comes from the general reading of the document, which relates the human figures to the occupation and defence of the territory. These figures were also cut out and glued onto the current support, which presupposes that the author made a selection and had a purpose in arranging them on the board.

In fact, it should be noted that the types chosen and arranged by the designer on the support reveal to contemporary eyes fundamental aspects for understanding structuring issues in colonial Brazilian society.

Naturally, aspects relating to material culture, expressed in fabrics and the way they were arranged on the body, hairstyles and adornments, utensils, means of transport, etc., are immediately highlighted.

On the other hand, there is also a social hierarchy that refers to the gradation of skin colour, the impact of manual labour on the African element, as well as the extent of the influence of African traditions on social segments other than just slaves.

In depicting the city of Salvador, what Julião makes visible is therefore a typical colony organisation: a hierarchical society that brings together different ethnicities and cultures and is maintained as such by actions of control and domination over the territory.

In the same Portuguese archive, there is another document which, although unsigned, can be attributed to the same author as the Elevation and Façade (Figure 2)⁸.

Its general layout is very similar to the previous one, and it is also divided into four horizontal segments, although in this case the city prospectuses occupy a much smaller area, just the top two strips.

It shows views taken from the sea of four cities in Portuguese possession in Asia, America and Africa, as indicated by the following captions:

1. Configuration of the entrance to Barra de Goa. Number 1: Agodá Fortress, Number 2: Reis Fortress and Number 3: Nossa Senhora da Piedade.
2. BC Prospectus showing Dio Square from the sea at a distance of meya No.4 to Dio Fortress, No.5 Barra Entrance.
3. CD Configuration showing the entrance to the River Ianeiro at a distance of half a league from the sea. No.6 Na. S.a de Copacabana, No.7 o Pão de Assucar, No. 8 Fortaleza de S.a Crus.
4. DE Prospectus showing the island of Mozambique in its harbour. This island is 850 fathoms long and 120 fathoms wide. No.9 The fortress of the d.a. is equipped with 40 pieces of bronze and 20 of iron.

Julião once again makes use of the resource of recording the profile of the cities, marking on the drawing the forts that garrison their defence systems.

The only exception is the profile of Rio de Janeiro, where we don’t actually see the city, but the entrance to Guanabara Bay, where, in addition to the forts of Copacabana and Santa Cruz, the Sugar Loaf rock stands out as a landmark in the relief.

It is essential to note the way in which Julião arranges the views together as if they were a representation of the same territory, even though we know they are geographically very distant cities.

The profile view, moreover, is linked to the practice of navigation, emphasising the condition of the territory seen from afar, of the risk taken on the high seas.

It is associated with the vision of those who deal with what Murilo Marx calls the ‘binomial of defending oneself and docking’ (Marx 1996), which guided the logic of Portuguese occupation in America.

These two upper strips are followed by two others in which we are shown nineteen human figures, some isolated, others in groups.

These types are identified by the following captions:

1. Hermit asking for alms
2. Black woman with a tray of sweets and a gourd of water
3. The black women of the Rozario
4. Hammock in which the Americans are transported to their estates or farms
5. A black woman carrying dinner in her cuya
6. A girl dancing the landu with her bum in a sling
7. Mulata receiving a letter for her
8. Dress of the salvage women
9. Macao women in costume
10. Gentiles from Goa in ordinary dress
11. Gentiles from Goa in gala costume
12. Baye de Goa in Bramine costume
13. Baye de Goa in Casta Chardos
14. Farás de Mancilla showing the Indian sun
15. Tapuyas already domesticated
16. Mistissa giving a canja
17. Costume of the Chinas from Macao
18. Baye with two glasses of water
19. Canarim taking a beating from the coconut tree

What immediately differentiates this board from the one analysed earlier is that the figures are not divided into compartments. Here they are presented in a row, like in a parade, which allows us to draw a parallel with the profiles of cities, drawn in a continuum.

Taken together, these images evoke the extent of Portuguese rule over a diversity of territories and peoples around the world, in that they bring together two points of Portuguese colonisation in Asia (Goa and Diu), one in Africa (Mozambique) and one in America (Rio de Janeiro), combining them with human types from these and other regions not represented.

Naturally, a certain levelling operation is implied – if the term is convenient in this context – since, in their variety, expressed in clothing and adornment, the characters are equivalent, as they live under the same rules of a Portuguese government. All these territories and all these peoples are united. And all of this is Portugal.

In this list of human types, Ferrez (2000) identifies figures from numbers one to eight as coming from Rio de Janeiro, which comprise the entire upper section of the ‘parade’, plus the wild Indian woman who begins the lower section.

Tenreiro (2007), on the other hand, considers it significant that all the types in the upper section are Brazilian, but not necessarily from the same region, and that the other Brazilians represented in the lower section are only indigenous: a savage and a ‘domesticated’ Tapuia couple⁹.

Once again, let’s pay attention to the sequence in which the types are arranged in the work, since, like Elevation and façade, all the figures have been cut out and pasted onto this new support.

From this point of view, it is curious to note how the figures of Brazilians in the upper segment are presented in such a way as to suggest a certain symmetry: a couple on the far left, one on the right; on either side a female figure, one black and one white, both with one arm raised to head height; in the centre, two black men carrying a hammock, which also allows us to establish a parallel with the central group of the plank containing Salvador’s profile.

In the lower section, Tenreiro (2007) also notes an intention of symmetry in the arrangement of the figures.

The author draws attention, for example, to a possible correspondence between those who occupy the ends of the strip, the wild Indian from Brazil and the ‘Canarim’ – inhabitant of Karnataka (or Canara), situated to the south of Goa -, both representative of ethnic groups that do not inhabit the urban space.

They can also be taken as emblematic figures of resistance to colonisation, always in the author’s opinion, since the Canarim continued to profess the Hindu religion, rejecting Catholicism, in a similar way to the native Brazilians, who also refused to submit to the condition of slavery.

To the right of the savage from Brazil, Julião shows us a ‘Nhonha’, a term for a lady from Macau, who would be matched on the right side by a Chinese woman and a mestiza from the same region, respectively the third and fourth figures from right to left.

In the sequence, we see four figures from Goa: two ‘Baye’, or women, both representatives of the highest Indian castes – Brahmins and Chardos – and two male figures, the ‘Gentiles’, one dressed in a gala, the other in their ordinary attire.

Occupying a position near the centre, the character designated as ‘Farás de Mancilla’ is the representative of the lowest of the Indian castes, who takes care of the jobs that all the others refuse to do.

The caption that identifies him not only points to his place in the social hierarchy, but also characterises his function: mancilla porter, or palanquin.

As a final suggestion of correspondences, it is also possible to relate ‘Farás’ to the central group of the upper segment, whose occupation is also to transport other people, in this case in a hammock.

However, it’s worth pointing out that these are attempts to approximate a supposed logic that would have guided the designer in organising the boards, and these readings may or may not be valid.

Above all, it’s important to avoid looking for resonances of pre-existing discourses in the works, as well as the parti pris that the drawing always corresponds to what is in front of the eyes.

The fact is that Carlos Julião executes a composition and it is not certain that there was any narrative intention in the operation of combining these types, or even that he was aware of everything that is expressed through his drawing for the contemporary view, already instrumented by anthropological studies.

At least in the case of the figurines of Brazilian types, Julião takes up motifs that had already been explored by foreigners before him.

An obvious case in point is the ‘salvage woman’ represented in the configuration of the entrance to the bar…, an almost archetypal vision of the indigenous Brazilianwomanwhich, of course, cannot be taken as a record of a visual fact.

Julião’s drawing takes us back to the illustrations in Américo Vespúcio’s letters published in the 16th century, in which the American Indians were schematically represented with feathers around their hips and heads, holding bows and arrows (Figure 3), as well as to certain allegorical figures of America inserted into map cartridges.

Similarly, the theme of a woman being carried in a hammock had already been part of the repertoire of images of Brazil since at least the Dutch presence in the north-east of the country in the 16th century.

This can be seen, for example, in drawing no. 104 from Thierbuch¹⁰ by Zacharias Wagener (1614-1668) (Figure 4). Still in the context of Dutch Brazil, the same theme appears reworked in the decorative language of the Gobelins Manufactory in tapestry.

The two bulls (Figure 5), which alludes to the African presence near the sugar mills in Pernambuco.

It is quite clear that both the Elevation and façade and the Configuration of the entrance to the bar of Goa are organised, from a compositional point of view, based on the same operation: the superimposition of cut-outs of human figures on topographical views.

The main effect of this operation is to promote a direct identification between the figures and that ‘place’.

As far as the characters themselves are concerned, these drawings reinforce the idea of a ‘type’, a figure that is composed from the combination of certain attributes that make a particular social group visually recognisable.

Thinking strictly in terms of these means of representation, there is no great innovation in Julião ‘s work. Both the constitution of the type and the association between type and place refer to visual traditions that have been widespread in European art, notably in cartography and travel literature, since at least the 16th century. For now, we would like to suggest an approximation between Julião’s works and the well-known Map of Brazil under Dutch rule (Figure 6), by the geographer, astronomer and botanist Georg Marcgraf (1610-1644).

Like the Thierbuch, Marcgraf’s map is part of the exceptional iconographic series related to the brief government of Maurício de Nassau (1604-1679), based in Pernambuco between 1637 and 1644.

As Beatriz Bueno¹¹ points out, Georg Marcgraf ‘s cartographic representation is the result of observations and surveys made by the geographer himself during his stay in Brazil, and brings together detailed information on the river and road network that favoured interiorisation, the vegetation and relief of the region, the urban network and rural properties, the fortresses for the defence of the coast, as well as the indigenous tribes that were allies or enemies of the Dutch.

When it was transposed into an engraving in Amsterdam in 1647, the map was added with vignettes attributed to the artist Frans Post (1612-1680), as well as garlands and cartouches, and an extensive text that recounted Maurício de Nassau‘s conquests.

According to Bueno, this map is a kind of ‘report/register of the economic and military potential ’ of the Dutch occupation of north-eastern Brazil.

It represents the information of an atlas condensed into a single cartographic copy, summarising the Dutch vision of Brazil and its potential as a strategic territory for colonisation and economic exploitation.

The purpose of this brief digression was to emphasise the fact that the elements added to Marcgraf’s map – cartouches, vignettes, landscapes, garlands – far from being merely ornamental, or intended to make the cartographic representation more interesting, participate in the description intended by the publisher or the commissioner¹².

By drawing the coast, the waterways, the sugar mill, the battle with the Indians, the local fauna, etc. on the same board, the Map gives visibility to what would otherwise be invisible, constituting a record of a historical endeavour.

According to Alpers, the record of history on 17th century Dutch maps and atlases is ‘concise, factual and not interpretative – in short, descriptive’ (1999:305). In them, ‘it is places, not actions or events, that are their basis, and space, not time, that must be transposed’ (1999:305).

According to the understanding of Dutch cartography suggested by Alpers, the Marcgraf Map can be considered a historical description of the Dutch occupation of north-eastern Brazil.

And this point of view seems useful for approaching the two works by Carlos Julião that we have been dealing with so far. On the one hand, Julião ‘s comparison with Marcgraf can help elucidate the somewhat unusual combination of prospectus, profile, plan, elevation, text and human figures on the same support, while at the same time eliminating the possibility of viewing the presence of these figures on the boards as a mere decorative decision.

On the other hand, this hypothesis allows us to propose, for example, that the Elevation and façade be understood as a historical description of the development of Salvador, which is demonstrated through the presence of the institutions signalled in the prospectus, the presentation of its sophisticated defensive system, as well as the complexity of its social fabric, expressed by the human types represented there.

We are talking about the ability of the Portuguese to transpose their civilisation to America.

Although Salvador had lost its status as capital to Rio de Janeiro, it was still, and would be until the arrival of the royal family in 1808, the port with the largest volume of trade in the Portuguese colonial world, according to Boxer (2002:241).

The former capital of Brazil was therefore a strategic point for the Portuguese crown in terms of representing its overseas domains.

Is it possible to read the Configuration of the entrance to the bar… in the same key? It seems so to us, but to do so it is necessary to bring up some points that have not yet been addressed.

Carlos Julião was appointed to serve in the Portuguese State of India in 1774 and remained there for six years. Boxer notes that in the same year, a new viceroy and a new archbishop were sent to Goa, both with explicit instructions from the Marquis of Pombal himself (1699-1782) to ‘enforce the anti-racist legislation that their predecessors had quietly shelved’ (Boxer 2002:269).

The racial issue in Portuguese India had different connotations to those that characterised the colonisation of America.

The arduous conditions of the voyage of the Carreira da Índia – a journey that lasted six to eight months on crowded ships, where various diseases raged and a very high mortality rate reigned (it was said that between one third and one half of those embarked on the voyage died) – added to the notorious insalubrity of Goa, did not constitute a major attraction for the immigration of Portuguese women, who had always been few in number in the Portuguese East.

The Portuguese immigrants, most of whom were unable to afford the journey back to Lisbon, ended up marrying native women who had converted to Christianity.

The mestizo population was therefore quite large. As a rule, they were denied access to public office or even the possibility of ascending the ecclesiastical career ladder.

The royal charter of 2 April 1761 was the first attempt to equalise the legal and social status of subjects born in the East, provided they were Christians, with that of those born in the Kingdom.

Signed by the king and the then Count of Oeiras, the charter orders that ‘all My Vassals born in East India and the Dominion I have in Portuguese Asia; being Christians and baptised; and having no other inhability of Law, shall enjoy the same honours, preeminences, prerogatives and privileges enjoyed by the natives of these Kingdoms, without the slightest difference¹³ .

Although the penalties were severe for those who broke the law – ranging from the loss of titles and privileges to the payment of fines and banishment to Mozambique – it had to be reiterated two years later in more forceful terms.

However, nothing was done by the local authorities to effectively implement the orders contained in the charter, which meant that Pombal continued to insist on validating an anti-racist policy in India.

According to Boxer, it was central to his logic of government that the Portuguese acted overseas with ‘the same strategies used by the Romans in their conquests’ (2002:270), which meant including the natives in the system of granting positions and benefits, without which the climate of social tension would become unbearable for the Portuguese.

We don’t think it’s a coincidence that, in this context in which the debate on the promotion of social equality was rekindling and new political and religious authorities were sent to Goa, Julião carried out a design that united geographically distant territories and lined up culturally distinct peoples.

If we take the Configuration of the entrance to the bar… as a historical description, in the terms put forward by Alpers, the ‘levelling’ carried out by Julião from the point of view of representation, to which we referred earlier, becomes much more significant.

It finds its counterpart in the very policy of Portuguese domination in the East, allowing us to suppose that the plank gives visibility to Pombal‘s famous phrase: “His Majesty does not distinguish his vassals by colour, but by the merits of each one” (apud Boxer 2002:269).

In any case, we don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the presence of these ‘figurines’ is what gives Carlos Julião‘s work its artistic interest.

Undoubtedly, they set him apart from the iconographic production resulting from the work of military draughtsmen, authors of such a significant part of the visual records of Portuguese America in the 18th century.

It’s enough to remember that, without them, the Elevation and façade would be just another of the known copies of the prospectus of Salvador drawn up by José António Caldas.

2. Figurines of Whites and Blacks: an album of Brazilian types

We must also consider that the fact that these figurines were cut out and recombined on different supports suggests the existence of a repertoire of types constituted a priori by the designer. In this sense, the set of watercolour drawings that make up the Riscos Iluminados (Illuminated Scratches) called figurines of Whites and Blacks from the uses of Rio de Janeiro and Serro do Frio, belonging to the collection of the National Library Foundation (FBN), Rio de Janeiro, deserves attention.

Composed of 43 plates of illustrations not accompanied by text, this manuscript has no indication of authorship, but is traditionally attributed to Julião due to the similarity and even direct correspondence between many of his figures and those that make up the plates mentioned above.

Originally, the set of drawings attributed to Julião was part of a volume that brought together three works: Noticia summaria do Gentilismo da Ásia com dez riscos iluminados ditos de figurinhos de Brancos e Negros dos uzos do Rio de Janeiro, and Serro do Frio Ditos de Vazos e Tecidos Peruvianos¹⁴.

According to a document signed by Lygia Cunha, dated 11 January 1971, which is glued to the back cover of the volume containing these works, the album with the Brazilian sticker drawings was dismembered from its original binding in 1950, when the Riscos iluminados became part of a separate volume.

There is, however, a misunderstanding of the nomenclature of the different manuscripts. The ‘illuminated scratches’ actually refer to the ten illustrations in the Notícia sumaria do Gentilíssimo da Ásia, while the ‘black and white figurines’ are referred to only as Ditos de figurinhos… .

However, traditionally, the set of figurines drawn by Carlos Julião is known as ‘Riscos iluminados de figurinhos de brancos e negros…’, a title used even in the facsimile edition of the manuscript, published in 1960 by the FBN (Cunha 1960).

The first part of the volume, Notícia sumária... , covers aspects of the Hindu religion in 107 chapters, especially the ways in which its deities (devas) are worshipped.

The text is accompanied by ten illustrations that differ greatly in technique and style from the others that make up the other two parts of the volume.

Three other copies of this manuscript are known to exist in the collections of the National Library of Portugal (BNP) and the Orient Foundation, both in Lisbon. One of the copies in the BNP – codex 607 in the Reserved Section – is transcribed and commented on in Collecção de noticias para a história e geografia das nações ultramarinas, published by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (ACL).

The preface to this edition states that an original manuscript written by a Portuguese Jesuit missionary in India at the beginning of the 17th century was found in the Registry of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus after the order was expelled from Goa in 1759.

This manuscript had allegedly been copied, and the copy was sent to the ACL by one of its corresponding members, Francisco Luiz de Menezes, Captain of the Goa Ordinances. The codex later became the property of the BNP.

The codex, which contains 107 chapters and 11 illustrations, was bound with two other texts, Relação histórica and Profecia política, published later in Lisbon.

The Fundação Oriente copy, on the other hand, has the same 107 chapters, but illustrated with 15 watercolours.

In the entry accompanying its inclusion in the catalogue Presença portuguesa na Ásia (Pereira 2008), it is stated that the manuscript dates from the late 18th or early 19th century, came from Goa and belonged to José Câncio Freire de Lima, a member of the Government Council of the State of India (1840).

The author of the entry also suggests that the original from which all the copies derive ‘cannot be earlier than 1764, since, in the text, the author refers to the British as lords of the territory between Allahabad and Bengal, after the battle of Buxar, in October 1764’ (Pereira 2008:65).

Whatever the date of the original manuscript, it is a fact that the copies of Notícia Sumária… found in Portuguese collections all come from Goa and date from the second half of the 18th century. Aware of Carlos Julião ‘s presence in that region between 1774 and 1779 – as we will have the opportunity to find out in chapter 2 of this work – it would be natural to assume that the FBN copy was copied by him during his period of service in India.

However, as has already been noted, there is nothing from the point of view of style that brings the illustrations in this codex any closer to the drawings attributed to Julião in the Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, so it remains to be admitted that the hypothesis of considering him the author of the copy of the Notícia sumária… is only due to the presence of both manuscripts in the same binding.

However, the combination of different documents in the same volume is not a sure sign of authorship, since the operation is often based on criteria established by the owner‘s convenience. The question of authorship needs to be considered carefully in this case, as it is not at all obvious that the copy of the Indian codex in the FBN ‘s collection was made by Julião.

The part referring to the Ditos de vasos e tecidos peruvianos (Sayings on Peruvian vases and textiles ) is made up of 33 plates of sepia watercolour illustrations, unaccompanied by text. In these images, it is curious to note the attention paid by the draughtsman to the patterns that decorate vases and textiles, as well as to certain instruments such as looms, for making fabrics and lace. Below the title that opens the album, there is an annotation in graphite that states:

‘the ten pieces of these vessels were taken from the originals found on the Hespanish galleon that washed ashore in Peniche and came laden with Silver during the reign of Queen Maria 1st’.

The most famous shipwreck off the coast of Peniche during the Mariano period was that of the Spanish warship San Pedro de Alcantara in February 1786¹⁶.

With a crew of four hundred people, including some Peruvian rebels from the separatist movement led by Túpac Amaru (1780-1781), the ship had left Peru two years earlier and had made a four-month stopover in Rio de Janeiro for repairs because, as was well known, the load of silver, gold and copper it had taken on was greater than its transport capacity.

The cargo also contained an important collection of pre-Hispanic ceramics from the Chimu culture, which had been collected in Peru by two European botanists.

The cargo was so valuable that its disappearance sparked a huge recovery movement promoted by the Spanish government.

In three years, almost all of the items transported by the San Pedro de Alcantara were retrieved from the seabed by divers of various nationalities hired by the Spanish crown.

Of course, only a more careful comparison between the drawings in the FBN manuscript and the ceramic objects recovered from the San Pedro de Alcantara could attest to the existence or otherwise of a direct relationship between them.

In any case, it doesn’t seem very likely that another Spanish ship with a cargo of silver and ‘Peruvian vases’ would have collided with the rocks at Peniche during the same period, which helps to support the hypothesis.

In the case of an event of great repercussion and a cargo of notable rarity, it is justifiable to record these items in a drawing, either as a curiosity or at the request of a superior.

In any case, the same applies to this manuscript as to the Notícia Sumária. In other words, the fact that it was bound together with the Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros is not sufficient reason to assume that the authorship of these drawings was due to Carlos Julião¹⁷.

The Ditos of black and white figurines¹⁸ originally occupied the centre of the volume, as can still be seen from the gap in the binding.

The album of drawings attributed to Julião opens with an allegorical scene that evokes what appears to be a military victory, as we see a uniformed figure on horseback waving a sword in his right hand under a triumphal arch, being greeted by figures of the people in the foreground (Figure 10).

On the triumphal arch, just below the pediment, you can see the coat of arms of Portugal, while on the ruin that occupies the left side of the drawing, there is a fallen mast where you can see the Spanish flag.

Between the two buildings, we see soldiers in uniform as the main figure leading a group of other soldiers towards the back of the scene.

The allegory is interpreted by Lygia Cunha ((1960:XIII) from a graphite inscription in the margins of the drawing, according to her, written in ‘18th centuryhandwriting’: ‘victory achieved by Pinto Bandeira de Minas Geraes against the Hespanhoes, probably in the war of the south in 1762’.

Thus, the author concludes, the allegory alludes to the most important victory commanded by Rafael Pinto Bandeira (1740-1795), a colonel in the cavalry corps of Rio Grande do Sul (and not Minas Gerais, as the inscription states): the taking and destruction of the Spanish fort of Santa Tecla in 1776, which put an end to the Castilian invasion of what is now Rio Grande do Sul territory.

Pinto Bandeira is a name as legendary as it is controversial, having been involved in several decisive military campaigns to define the border lines in the southern part of Portuguese America.

Seen alternately as a hero and a rogue, Pinto Bandeira was appointed to the military governorship of Rio Grande de São Pedro do Sul, at the same time as he was openly accused of what we would call today ‘illicit enrichment’ through smuggling.

These accusations resulted in a criminal case against him that was only shelved in 1780 by royal decree of Queen Maria I. His biggest opponents were the governor of the captaincy, José Marcelino de Figueiredo (1735-1814)²⁰, who ended up losing his post, and the viceroy Luís de Vasconcelos (1742-1809).

Despite the replacement of the governor, Vasconcelos continued to try to gather evidence to incriminate Pinto Bandeira.

Aware of this situation, the colonel set out, in the words of Augusto da Silva (1999:135), to ‘bypass the viceroy and seek support in the metropolis’.

Pinto Bandeira thus arrived in Lisbon in February 1789, where he stayed for around a year. On his return, he was not only recognised for his work in extending Brazil’s southern borders, but also awarded the rank of brigadier.

Figures 10 to 12 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 1 to 3 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Figures 13 to 16 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 4 to 7 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Undoubtedly, the international situation benefited Bandeira on this occasion, since in the tumultuous year of 1789 the differences that would end up placing Portugal and Spain, allies of England and France respectively, on opposite sides of the European conflict were beginning to worsen, which would certainly have reverberations in the American territories.

For the Portuguese crown, therefore, it was essential to be able to count on the experience of war against the Spanish that Pinto Bandeira already possessed.

The fact is that, as early as August 1790, he was despatching documents as Commander General of the Captaincy of São Pedro (Silva 1999:137).

There is only one image of Pinto Bandeira reproduced in Augusto da Silva ‘s dissertation (1999) dedicated to him.

The illustration has no indication of authorship, date or source, but it allows us to state that it is the same character brandishing the sword on horseback on the title page of the FBN manuscript [Figure 9].

This confirms Cunha ‘s hypothesis that this allegorical scene celebrates Pinto Bandeira ’s victories against the Spanish in the south.

The military theme continues in prints two to seven of the Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, which depict various types of officers’ uniforms [Figures 11 to 16] and a scene with more anecdotal content, in which a girl says goodbye to an officer while crying.

They were identified by José Washt Rodrigues (1891-1957) in 1949, according to a typewritten document signed by this artist and historian, which is attached to the album’s opening page and is entitled:

‘Clarification on some military costumes existing in the book of original prints, in colour, from the last quarter of the 18th century acquired in the North USA by the Brazilian government, and currently in the National Library, Rio de Janeiro’.

The name given by Rodrigues served as the basis for the titles with which Ferrez (2000: v.1, 115) identifies the prints in his Iconografia do Rio de Janeiro, as well as the captions cited by Cunha in the facsimile edition of the album (1960). Even the designation of print seven as a ‘romantic scene’ is repeated by both authors.

The theme of military uniforms is undoubtedly one of the most recurrent with regard to the representation of the human figure in 18th century Portugal, which can be attested to by its presence in practically all the archives consulted, notably the ANTT [Figure 17], the AHU [Figure 18] and the FBN [Figures 19 and 20].

These drawings circulated in various formats, usually as annexes to documents sent from the colonies to the Kingdom. Thus, during our research we came across military costumes from São Tomé and Príncipe, Mozambique and Macau, as well as Brazil.

The drawings often accompanied the ‘Troop Maps’, tables in which all the officers and soldiers who made up each regiment of paid and auxiliary troops in a given region were listed and quantified.

They should certainly be understood as part of the process of reorganising the Portuguese army led by the Count of Lippe (1724-1777) in the 1760s, which we will discuss in the next chapter.

It was Lippe who first equipped the Portuguese army with a uniform plan in 1764, which covered all the troops of the Kingdom and Conquests, and it is not surprising that military costume designs began to multiply from this date onwards.

It is important to note that the manufacture of the various elements that made up the uniforms of officers and soldiers serving in Portugal and overseas – such as buttons, shoes, galloons, hats, weapons, etc. – as well as the acquisition of fabrics and the manufacture of uniforms were centralised at the Royal Army Arsenal in Lisbon.

It seems logical to conclude that the drawings of military costumes, accompanied by troop maps, also served to enable the Arsenal to quantify the material needed to dress the military forces in each region.

It is worth remembering that the Portuguese army comprised troops serving in Europe, Asia, Africa and America and the visualisation of uniforms made possible by the drawing certainly facilitated the logistics of uniforming all the contingents according to the Count of Lippe‘s recent instructions.

With regard to figuration, in no genre – if costumes can be considered a ‘genre’ – is the issue of drawing from models more evident.

The various series are very similar, differing only in terms of line, or rather the author’s personal style, depending on whether he has greater or lesser skill in depicting the human figure, more or less skill in the use of watercolour.

In fact, they are often the same figure dressed differently: there are hardly any variations in the positioning of the hands – which can be resting on a stick, holding a weapon or on the chest – or in the organisation of the body.

Figures 19 and 20 – José Corrêa Rangel. Illustration of the Rio de Janeiro garrison with its uniforms and maps of the number of paid regiments and auxiliaries. Made by José Corrêa Rangel. Infantry adjutant with engineer’s drill, 1786 – Watercolour and ink on paper – National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Figure 21 – Author unknown. General uniforms of the Spanish troops, 1778. Etching and watercolour on paper. Gabinete de Estudos Arqueológicos de Engenharia Militar, Lisbon (Cota 4309_I-4-55-64-1)

And Julião’s military costumes are part of this universe of ‘lead soldier’ armies. The matrices for these designs are to be found in engravings, especially in prints depicting troop maps, as can be seen in Figure 21.

The military uniforms are followed by a group of four illustrations in which the characters are indigenous couples [Figures 22 to 25].

Figures 22 to 25 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 8 to 11 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro

In print eight, for the first time, there is a backdrop in which the figures move, in this case a river, mountains and trees.

The couple appear to be still wild, as they both carry bows and arrows and have just shot a jaguar that is bleeding in the foreground.

Once again, we draw attention to the archetypal representation of the Brazilian Indian: the figure of the Indian woman with a single breast evokes the ancient myths of the Amazon warriors, while the Indian man, although dressed in a headdress and feathered skirt, is represented as bearded as a European.

The other couples seem much more peaceful, with the one in print eleven looking exactly like the domesticated Tapuias depicted in the configuration at the entrance to the bar….

Print ten is somewhat more curious in terms of composition, as it has the same mirrored figure, a feature also used in Figure 15.

The presence of plant elements and some suggestion of relief, which is common to all four illustrations, contributes to the creation of meaning in the image, reinforcing the assumption that the indigenous people’s habitat is the natural environment, not yet transformed by civilisation.

In a way, these attributes allegorise the characters represented, and are distantly reminiscent of the ethnographic paintings of Albert Eckhout (1610-1666).

The indigenous couples are followed by three other illustrations of women being transported [Figures 26 to 28], the first in a hammock and the others by black slaves carrying the famous armchairs on their shoulders.

Print twelve [Figure 26] is similar to the central figure on the board of the Entrance Configuration…, although there the porters are black.

In print thirteen [Figure 27], the central figure of the group of three women following the armchair, which Lygia Cunha (1960) identifies as slaves, is also identical to the mulatto woman in Elevação e fachada.

The group in print fourteen [Figure 28] is repeated in the same work on the Salvador prospectus.

It’s important to note that the theme of armchairs has had a strong resonance in the imagery of Portuguese society in the East since the 16th century.

Both Chaudhuri and Russell-Wood²¹ remind us that the desire for enrichment and social distinction was the main motto of the Portuguese travelling to the Indian states, and that public ostentation was common practice in Portuguese society overseas.

In this context, the means of transport served to distinguish the noblemen and noblewomen, who were carried on palanquins, followed by retinues of slaves.

This practice, as well as the pomp of dress, is noted and criticised by the various chroniclers who dealt with Portuguese India, the most famous of whom is certainly the Dutchman Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611), whom we will return to in due course.

Here we highlight, by way of comparison, an engraving from his Histoire de la navigation (…) aux Indes Orientales, in which we see a Portuguese woman and her daughters being carried in a litter. [Figure 29]

Prints fifteen to seventeen refer to the clothing of white characters and we see a repetition of the feature used by the designer in military costumes.

The same figures are replicated with slight variations in the positioning of the heads and dressed differently. In fact, the clothing itself doesn’t vary, what changes are the colours and patterns of the fabrics and ornaments [Figures 30 to 32].

In these illustrations, a trait that is so characteristic of Julião’s watercolours is more evident: the jacket wraps around the character in such a way as to reveal their figure at the back.

Figures 26 to 28 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 12 to 14 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Figures 30 to 33 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 15 to 18 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Figures 34 to 37 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 19 to 22 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Prints eighteen and nineteen show scenes with interacting characters [Figures 33 and 34]. The first, apparently a street scene, shows a black man serving milk to a lady, both being watched by a man (similar to the male figure in print fifteen).

The other is defined by Cunha (1960) as a duck hunting scene and doesn’t seem to have much to do with the others. The clothing of white women reappears in prints 20 to 22 [Figures 35 to 37], also characterised by the repetition of the same character whose costume, ornaments and position of the hands have changed.

In print 23 [Figure 38], we see another scene classified by Cunha as a ‘romantic scene’, in which a man with a cane, ‘dressed in 18th century fashion’ (Cunha 1960), hands a young woman a letter which reads: ‘To Mrs Joanna Rosa’.

Another white couple occupies print 24 [Figure 39], the male figure being similar to those illustrating prints sixteen and seventeen. Print 25 [Figure 40] shows two female figures that could well be compared to the mulatto woman in Elevação e fachada.

From print 26 onwards, all the others refer to black characters. The first five, from 26 to 30 [Figures 41 to 45], are dedicated exclusively to costumes, while the next four, from 31 to 34 [Figures 46 to 49], feature black street vendors.

Here we find the fruit seller in a version identical to the one in Elevation and façade, as well as the milk seller in the same prospectus by Salvador, and the sweet seller in the Configuration of the entrance to the bar of Goa… in slightly altered versions.

It’s interesting to note that the street vendors are depicted in a way that incorporates various suggestions of movement, unlike the other characters seen so far.

Prints 35 to 39 [Figures 50 to 54] are perhaps the most reproduced illustrations in this set, always used when illustrating texts about festivals in the colonial period in Brazil.

In fact, they refer to the celebrations of the coronation of the kings and queens of the Congo linked to the Brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Black People. They are also the prints that differ most, from a style point of view, from the other illustrations in the manuscript, since they include various characters in an entourage with varied body movements and props.

Figures 38 to 41 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 23 to 26 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Figures 42 to 45 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 27 to 30 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Figures 46 to 49 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 31 to 34 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Much of the charm of the drawings in this series lies precisely in the miniaturisation of these characters, each treated with their own colourful clothes, musical instruments, head adornments and dance moves. In prints 36 and 39, it is curious to note how, when faced with a larger number of figures, the author composes them individually, making the conformation of the ‘scene’ result from the sum of these elements.

The figures are not subject to any prior spatial ordering; on the contrary, it is their positioning on the paper that shapes the space. It’s also worth noting that this kind of parasol under which the king and queen walk in the procession is a well-known attribute of African kings, and it’s enough to mention here two examples in which it is present: the tapestry The Black King Carried in Triumph, from the Nouvelles Indes series (Gobelins Manufacture) and the Allegory of Africa [Fig.59], engraved from a drawing by Charles Le Brun (1619-1690).

The last illustrations in the album refer to the extraction work in the diamond‘catas’, possibly in Serro do Frio (Diamantina), as the title of the volume states. In print 40 [Figure 55], we see the black stone breakers, who reappear on the left-hand side of print 41 [Figure 56], a more comprehensive view that takes in more stages of the extraction technique. The washing of the gravel is represented in print 42 [Figure 57], characterised by the presence of a constructive structure drawn in an extraordinarily accentuated perspective, which visually constitutes a strange parallelepiped embedded in a landscape of hills and more gracefully delineated volumes.

A similarillustration appears at the beginning of the 19th century in the book Travels in the interior of Brazil (1812) by the British mineralogist John Mawe (1764-1829) [Figure 60], the first foreigner to be authorised to visit the Minas Gerais gold district.

Finally, illustration 43 [Figure 58], which closes the Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, shows a slave undressed to be inspected by the overseers.

Of the 43 illustrations commented on, seventeen (around 40 per cent) refer exclusively to the dress code of different strata of the Brazilian population, including military costumes.

Other themes involve indigenous types (from the most savage to the most civilised), illustrations relating to social practices (including means of transport, street vendors, African festivals), as well as an important (and lucrative) extractive activity.

We have already noted the importance that Julião attaches to all the elements that make up the costume and to the possible presence of identity marks as characterising the characters represented.

In general, the figure does not need a backdrop, which is only used in cases where the presence of other narrative elements contributes to the creation of meaning in the image.

Figures 50 to 54 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 35 to 39 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

Figures 55 to 58 – Carlos Julião (attributed to). Prints 40 to 43 from Ditos de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, undated (18th century). Watercolour on paper. National Library Foundation, Rio de Janeiro.

We have been examining Julião’s works so far in order to assess the extent to which we might be dealing with a work based on codifications of representation and which traditions might be involved.

It remains to be seen what Carlos Julião ‘s motivation was in putting together this set of illustrations, organised in the form of an album.

It should be borne in mind that the very notion of an album implies that the motifs have been apprehended in the world and reorganised in a different order. Therefore, is it possible to consider that the FBN album was composed with a recipient in mind?

Lygia Cunha comments on this:

the iconographic set was prepared by Carlos Julião during the period in which, travelling through distant plagues, he was gathering what he found most characteristic, with the intention of organising an album of curiosities, perhaps to present it to a hierarchical superior, a plausible hypothesis in view of the subject illustrating plank no. 1.

In fact, the allegorical composition that opens the volume leads us to think of a possible dedication, perhaps addressed to Brigadier Rafael Pinto Bandeira himself. We’ve already seen that Bandeira stayed in Lisbon for most of 1789. As he was a military man, just like Julião²², who at the time was captain of one of the companies in the Court Artillery Regiment, it is quite reasonable to assume that they met during this period.

Bandeira’s exploits in the wars against the Spanish in southern Brazil possibly made him a reputable name in the Portuguese army, which led to his promotion to brigadier.

Considering that Julião gave him an album of drawings of Brazilian types as a sign of admiration or friendship is not unreasonable, although the hypothesis still needs more convincing evidence. A commission from Bandeira cannot be ruled out either.

Still with regard to this argument, if the title page was drawn especially in honour of the recipient of the album, it is possible to assume that the entire set of illustrations was also composed on the same occasion, with the intention of being offered.

In other words, it is possible that Julião, from a wider repertoire of drawings that included characters from different parts of the Portuguese world, selected some Brazilian types to make up an album that he wanted to give away.

Several reasons lead us to this hypothesis: firstly, we know that he drew other types than just Brazilians, as can be seen from the Indians and Chinese present in the Configuration of the entrance to the bar of Goa… Secondly, if the figures on the GEAEM boards were cut out and pasted together with the city brochures, it’s because they had previously existed on some other medium or were copied from there; finally, the fact that several figures are repeated in the FBN album and on the GEAEM boards is an indication that the author had a practice of multiplying or ‘reusing’ types and that, therefore, there was a set of models to which he referred in order to do so.

In view of this, in our opinion, the FBN album should be seen as the result of a selection of drawings made from a more extensive repertoire, a selection that was probably intended to make up a volume to be offered or commissioned.

3. Figurines in Paintings

Also contributing to this hypothesis is the existence of two paintings that currently belong to the collection of the Ricardo Brennand Institute in Recife [Figures 61 and 62].

The canvases were bought at Sotheby’s in New York and were lot 400 of the auction on 28 January 1999 (Sotheby’s 1999) ²³. In the catalogue, they were only entitled Peoples of Lisbon and Portugal, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Angola.

There is no mention of where the pieces came from. The catalogue entry states that the attribution to Carlos Julião was made by diplomat Mário Calábria.

In fact, there is no way not to relate the paintings in question to Julião’s work, since they present us with a cast of human figures, among whom we can recognise some of the characters we have already come across in the works analysed above.

In addition, the types are organised in the same structure as the ‘parade ’ that we had the opportunity to observe in the Configuration of the bar of Goa, now surprisingly including types from the Kingdom and not just from the Conquests, as was the case in the other works.

It is worth noting, however, some significant differences with regard to certain formal solutions adopted, such as the support on which the characters sit, which is quite different from the works we have already seen, as well as the fact that some of the figures are much more expressive in terms of gestures and the suggestion of bodily movement.

Each canvas is divided into three horizontal bands

Each of the canvases is divided into three horizontal bands in which the types are presented with subtitles in Portuguese and Italian.

In the upper band of the painting 61, occupying a central position in the context of the composition, we see the symbol of the city of Lisbon – the caravel with two ravens²⁴ – surrounded by a golden ornament in the style of a rocaille carving, topped by a royal crown.

Below this coat of arms, we read the following inscription: “A painting that represents the Arms of the City of Lisbon and the various ways of dressing in Portugal, especially at Court. Quadro che rapresenta l’armi della Cittá di Lisbona e le diverse maniere di vestire di Portugallo e particolarmente di Lisbona, 1779″.

This inscription therefore allows us to date the paintings to 1779, which indicates that they are contemporary with the Elevation and façade board.

In this painting (figure 61), 24 types are represented, all referring to metropolitan Portugal, with the exception of the first soldier, who is Brazilian.

The characters are identified by the following captions (starting at the top, from left to right):

1. Sergeant Major of the Mines / Sargento Maggiore delle Mine del Brasile
2. Sergeant Major Auxiliary / Sargento Maggiore della Milizia Urbana
3. Auxiliary Captain / Capitano Maggiore della Milizia Urbana
4. Magistrate / Un Ministro del Tribunale
5. Porter of the House / Portiero del Palazzo
6. Soldier of Malta / Soldato di Malta
7. Auxiliary Sergeant / Sargento della Milizia Urbana
8. Auxiliary Soldier / Soldato della Milizia Urbana
9. Huma mulher de caza con sua / A Woman in a House with Her Own Hair
10. Slave / Schiava
11. Woman from Porto / Femina del Porto
12. A Midwife / Mammana
13. A Noblewoman on foot on Holy Week / A Lady dressed for Holy Week on foot and visiting the Churches on Holy Week
14. A woman in a cloak with her / A woman in a cloak and her
15. Maid / Servant
16. A Waterman / A Waterwoman
17. A fishmonger / A fishmonger who sells fish in the city
18. A Confraternity walker, who begs for alms / A Congregation Fratello, who begs for alms
19. A hillbilly dressed for the summer / A hillbilly dressed for the estate
20. The town bailiff with his blacks on a feast day / An official of the town or a bandit with his two servants
21. A hillbilly on horseback dressed for winter / A hillbilly on horseback dressed for winter
22. Huma Colareja / A fruit seller
23. Huma Galinheira / A chicken seller
24. Hum Mariola de Alfandega / Un Facchino della Dogana

The first strip (figure 61) is therefore occupied by six military figures, similar to the ones we saw in the FBN manuscript. Flanking the arms of Lisbon, we see two figures linked to the judiciary: the Desembargador and the Porteiro.

Among the military, there is a black officer in the uniform of the Minas Gerais regiment, as well as a soldier designated as ‘de Malta’, certainly linked to the military Order of the Knights of Malta.

The other officers are the captain, sergeant major, sergeant and soldier of auxiliary troops, responsible for maintaining order in the city. Taken together, the figures seem to evoke a sense of authority.

In the next segment of figure 61, all the characters are women, with the noblewoman dressed for Holy Week occupying the central position, below the city’s coat of arms.

The section is made up of three other ladies, one from Porto, another accompanied by her maid and another by her slave. It is surprising that an urban slave is mentioned in this context, since slavery had been abolished in the Kingdom and in India in 1761.

As well as the midwife, standing next to the noblewoman, the last two figures on the right of the canvas already introduce the theme of street vendors, which is also dealt with in the following section.

In the lower segment, we once again see in a central position a character who denotes authority: the Meirinho, a local administrator and executor of sentences.

He is accompanied by ‘his Prettos on gang day’, i.e. guys dressed and dressed up for the public declaration of a decree or sentence imposed on an offender.

The other male characters are the customs porter and the brother asking for alms for the Confraternity. Four female figures complete the painting: the ‘saloia’, or peasant woman, in summer and winter clothes, as well as two street vendors.

The painting as a whole therefore includes six soldiers, three male figures representing authority, four street vendors, eight women in costume (thenoblewoman, the ladies, the servant, the slave, the midwife and the peasant), as well as the beggar brother and the customs por ter.

The second painting (figure 62) is also divided into three horizontal bands, but its 22 characters are distributed in a less symmetrical and orderly fashion.

The correspondence with Julião ‘s drawings can be seen more clearly here than in the previous painting. The captions that identify the characters are:

The first strip of figure 62, therefore, is occupied by six military characters, similar to those we saw in the FBN manuscript. Flanking the arms of Lisbon, we see two figures linked to the judiciary: the Desembargador and the Porteiro²⁵.

.

Amongst the military, there is a black officer in the uniform of the Minas Gerais regiment, as well as a soldier designated as ‘de Malta’, certainly linked to the military Order of the Knights of Malta. The other officers are the captain, sergeant major, sergeant and soldier of auxiliary troops, responsible for maintaining order in the city.

Taken together, the figures seem to evoke a sense of authority.

In the next segment of figure 62, all the characters are women, with the noblewoman dressed for Holy Week occupying the central position, below the city’s coat of arms. The section is made up of three other ladies, one from Porto, another accompanied by her maid and another by her slave.

It is surprising that an urban slave is mentioned in this context, since slavery had been abolished in the Kingdom and in India in 1761. As well as the midwife, standing next to the noblewoman, the last two figures on the right of the canvas already introduce the theme of street vendors, which is also dealt with in the following section.

In the lower segment, we once again see in a central position a character who denotes authority: the Meirinho, a local administrator and executor of sentences.

He is accompanied by ‘his Prettos on gang day’, i.e. guys dressed and dressed up for the public declaration of a decree or sentence imposed on an offender. The other male characters are the customs porter and the brother asking for alms for the Confraternity.

Four female figures complete the painting: the ‘saloia’, or peasant woman, in summer and winter clothes, as well as two street vendors. The painting as a whole therefore includes six soldiers, three male figures representing authority, four street vendors, eight women in costume (thenoblewoman, the ladies, the servant, the slave, the midwife and the peasant), as well as the beggar brother and the customs por ter.

The second painting (figure 62) is also divided into three horizontal bands, but its 22 characters are distributed in a less symmetrical and orderly fashion. The correspondence with Julião ‘s drawings can be seen more clearly here than in the previous painting.

The subtitles that identify the characters are:

1. o do Rio de Jan.o / Zerbinetto del Rio di Jan.o
2. Huma a de Rio de Jan.o / Una Sig.a del Rio di Jan.o
3. O modo com q vem o Preto do Mato a despacharem na Alfandega de Angola p. se Venderem / Modo como viene un Negro dal Bosco […] nella Dogana di Angola per vendersi
4. Mocamba da Baya / Serva della cittá della Baya
5. Mocamba, which becomes soft, if treated with gravity / Servant, called Mulatta che si tratta con Pulizia
6. Mocamba do Rio de o / Serva del Rio di Jan.o
7. Mocamba from Rio de o / Servant from Rio di Jan.o
8. Mocamba do Rio de o / Serva del Rio di Jan.o
9. As the Signores of Rio de Jan.o ride in the Chairs, the ones who go behind are the Mocambas who always accompany them / Maniera che vanno nella Segette le Signore di Rio de Jan.o e quelle che vanno dietro sono le serve che l’accompagnano sempre
10. Mocamba […] / Servant who goes […] from Night to […]
11. Mocamba in disguise / Transvestite maidservant
12. Mocamba do Rio de o / Serva del Rio di Jan.o
13. How women usually stay in their homes in Rio de Janeiro / Come siano le donne in sue Caze nel Rio di Jan.o
14. Pretta Mocamba do Rio de o / Serva di Rio di Jan.o
15. Preto vende Agua no Rio de Jan.o / Negro che vende acqua nel Rio di Jan.o
16. Mocamba di Angola / Serva di Angola
17. Preta q. vende limonada no Rio de Jan.o / Negra che vende lemonata nel Rio di o
18. The way black people carry themselves in Rio de Janeiro / La Maniera di […] li Negri nel Rio di Janeiro
19. The Way Black People Walk in Angola / La maniera che vanno li Negri in Angola
20. Preta sells sweets in Rio de Janeiro / Negra che vende dolci nel Rio di Jan.o
21. Preta sells eggs in Rio de Jan.o / Negra che vende ovi nel Rio di Jan.o
22. Black woman from Baya / Serva Negra della Baya

Unlike the previous painting (figure 61), the central part of each segment of this work is occupied by groups of characters:

• in the upper strip, we see a slave market scene in Angola;
• in the centre, an armchair being carried by two slaves and followed by maids (which corresponds to print thirteen in the FBN album, see Figure 27);
• in the lower strip, a group of blacks carrying a barrel.

Only three characters occupy the upper section: a knight and a lady, both from Rio de Janeiro, and a mucama from Bahia.

In the second segment, there are seven ‘mocambas’ – a vocabulary unknown to Bluteau, but possibly synonymous with ‘mucama’, or house servant – all white, four of whom come from Rio de Janeiro. The last character in this segment is a woman in the clothes she wears in the house.

The lower section is occupied exclusively by black characters. Among them, we again see three ‘mocambas’, one from Rio de Janeiro, one from Bahia and one from Angola, plus four street vendors (water, lemonade, sweets and eggs), as well as a character wearing the costume worn by the natives in Angola.

In view of this, it remains to devote a little more attention to the question of the authorship of the paintings. In this sense, there are two paths to consider: whether or not to accept the attribution made to Carlos Julião.

If we consider that the works were in fact executed by him, the first thing to pay attention to is their dating.

Although only one of them is dated, we can assume that both canvases date from 1779, which leads us to conclude that they were necessarily painted while Julião was in the service of the Portuguese crown in the overseas possessions.

During this period, in fact, he was probably in Brazil, since the date coincides with that of the Elevation and façade painting. It follows that the entire list of types from the Kingdom was already organised when Julião left Portugal in 1774, which implies that the habit of drawing with a view to composing ‘an album of curiosities’ therefore predates the trips ‘to distant plagues’, as Cunha (1960) would have it.

This leads us to another important conclusion: Julião ‘s interest in recording human types was not sparked by what was later called the “exoticism” of the peoples of Portuguese overseas territories.

On the contrary, it seems to have been an interest that predated the voyage to the Conquests, and was perhaps informed by international visual traditions such as costume books, illustrated travel literature and cartography.

It would be worth investigating how Julião apprehends these traditions.

In view of the agreement with the attribution of the paintings to Julião, there are two other aspects that need to be addressed.

The first concerns the supposed ability of a military man to paint in oil. Now, we know, and we will have the opportunity to return to this subject later, that drawing was part of military training in 18th century Portugal, as was instruction in the use of watercolours, both of which were very useful tools for these professionals, especially those directly linked to building.

Drawing and watercolour were easy to manipulate in the field, i.e. outside the controlled conditions of working in an office, and at the same time they were highly effective in ‘demonstrating’, ‘making visible’ what needed to be communicated to superiors. It’s no coincidence that there are treatises that establish rules for military drawing in the Portuguese 18th century²⁶.

However, the practice of oil painting requires a different kind of technical training, which is certainly not acquired at the Military Class.

But assuming that he did possess this skill, which is possible, it seems unlikely that Julião painted these canvases in Brazil out of dilettantism, which suggests that he was commissioned to do so.

The fact that the captions are in Italian reinforces this assumption. To the extent that it is possible to ascertain who these canvases were intended for, new sources of research would certainly be brought to light, which would broaden our understanding of Carlos Julião’s work in the field of visual arts.

If, on the other hand, we accept that Carlos Julião may not have been the author of these works, then some other artist comes into play, who certainly took his drawings as a basis for the composition of the canvases in question.

And here a new problem arises: if Julião only returned to Portugal in July 1780, as we shall see, the two canvases could not have been painted simultaneously.

The first painting, which features the symbol of Lisbon, must therefore have been executed in 1779 by an anonymous artist, based on models by designer (s) other than Julião.

The second painting, on the other hand, must have been done some time later, using Julião’s watercolours as its main reference.

In this case, the short time interval between the first and second works would perhaps explain some of the differences in composition between them, especially with regard to the ordering of the characters, who are much more agglutinated in the second painting and better individualised in the first.

In any case, there is no doubt that these works occupy a unique position in the context of 18th-century Portuguese art, as depictions of local popular types in painting were not common before the last decade of the century. Tenreiro (2008:129) notes this singularity by suggesting that the paintings be renamed ‘Castas de Portugal’ and ‘Castas do Atlântico Sul’, alluding, of course, to the caste paintings of the Spanish-American 18th century.

Although we have prioritised Julião ‘s relationship with the world of military drawing for this work and the existence of any tradition of caste painting in Portugal is unknown to us, it is worth examining whether it is possible to associate these two traditions in some way.

As García Sáiz (1989) points out, the emergence of the genre of caste paintings in eighteenth-century Spanish America corresponds to a chapter in the artistic practices focused on profane themes in the art of the colonial period.

With mestizaje as their main subject, caste paintings are concerned with the representation of family groups made up of a couple, whose individuals come from different racial groups, and at least one child derived from this union and is therefore mestizo.

Taking into account all the possible crosses between the three main ethnic groups – white, identified as Spanish, black and Indian – and the mestizo types resulting from each mix, we arrive at sixteen different ‘castes’ that would make up the total Mexican population.

Thus, it is common for paintings of castes to be presented in series of sixteen pictures, and in some cases the painter chooses to represent them in a single panel divided into sixteen compartments.

The constant presence of an inscription explaining the racial mix featured in the painting – such as ‘de Cambujo e Índia produce Sambaigo’ – seems to be a practice borrowed from the natural sciences. It is important to note that some historians suggest that the caste charts were intended for parishes and that the inscriptions served as a guide for parish priests when registering births, since civil registration was only established in Mexico, for example, in 1856²⁷. [Figures 63 and 64]

Mexican caste paintings are set as domestic scenes, in which the characters are recorded inside their homes or performing their trades, constituting a vast repertoire of everyday activities in colonial Mexico.

Therefore, in these paintings, castes are defined not only by the racial mix from which they originated, but also by the way they dressed and the trades they carried out. The series of sixteen canvases explains the status and place of each caste, thus outlining a general picture of the social structure of 18th century New Spain.

When thinking about the series of castes in a possible parallel with the paintings attributed to Carlos Julião, a first issue to consider is the fact that the genre of painting that emerged in Mexico is characterised as a vision of American society constructed in America.

As such, it points to the mestizo character of this society as a distinctive factor and does not shy away from a moral judgement on the mixing of races.

In the paintings in the Pernambuco collection (as well as in the other works attributed to Carlos Julião), on the other hand, the author seems to be developing a narrative about the diversity of peoples and customs that come together under the same “crown ’ (as literally happens in the painting of Portuguese types), a diversity that he chooses to express through the different ways of dressing.

It is not, therefore, a discourse about oneself, as in the case of castes, but about the ‘other’.

And so we can’t ignore Carlos Julião ‘s dual status : a Piedmontese by birth in the service of the Portuguese army.

As a military man, he personifies what Pratt (1992) calls the ‘eyes of the empire’, in that he observes and figures the scope of Portuguese rule over different peoples and territories.

At the same time, he is also a foreigner in these domains, possibly attracted by the multiplicity of customs he encounters in this universe. In any case, there doesn’t seem to be any moral judgement in Julião, nor is there any appreciation of the mixing of races, although the mixing of customs is perceived and represented by him.

However, as both productions are typical of the 18th century, it is inevitable that both the caste paintings and Carlos Julião ‘s works are somehow imbued with an illustrated mentality, which aims to classify and order the world.

This underlying intention makes hierarchical social organisations visible.

In Carlos Julião, there is no intention to compose a complete picture of all the possibilities of social types in the Portuguese world of the kingdom and overseas and, in this way, reveal a social structure.

But it is possible to glimpse this structure, which can be seen in the more or less sophisticated ways of dressing, in the fact that all the blacks carry something on their shoulders or heads and none of the whites carry anything, or in the whites who supervise the work of the blacks in the mines, or in the fact that the indigenous people are close to natural resources.

In the caste paintings, on the other hand, there is a compositional programme to be fulfilled – the sixteen possibilities of interbreeding between the three races, represented through couples and a child – which ends up revealing the extent to which the more or less prosperous living conditions in New Spain in the 18th century were directly proportional to the amount of white blood brought by the type that represented that particular social stratum.

On the other hand, since castes is a properly pictorial genre, it is natural that it is referenced by the conventions of erudite painting²⁸.

Thus, it is possible to see in many of the canvases that make up the various series ways of representing gestures and body postures that come from Baroque religious painting, or even the genre scenes – the bodegones – of the Spanish 18th century.

In the Pernambuco paintings, it is quite clear that the figures, always thought of individually, are referenced by other figures, probably from drawing or engraving, but not by models from painting.

In the case of the other works attributed to Julião, even if there is more than one character represented on the same board, they rarely interact or make up a scene. His drawings maintain the impression of a fragmented vision, which removes the characters from their usual context and rearranges them in another order.

It’s also worth noting that Julião‘s drawings generally show a certain ’affectation ‘ in the way he represents gestures and body postures, which is typical of 18th century illustration.

Contributing to this is the notion of “theatricality ’ which, inherited from the Baroque, continues to inform visuality when it comes to representing the human figure.

In any case, we must recognise that the Pernambuco canvases have a configuration that resembles certain caste paintings, specifically those in which the sixteen couples are grouped together in the same painting.

As we can see in Figure 65, in this typology the castes are organised in isolated compartments and, like the paintings in the Brennand collection, they have captions to identify the characters.

The purpose of the particularised examination of the set of works by Carlos Julião or attributed to him was, firstly, to circumscribe the corpus around which this work is being developed. At the same time, we endeavoured to ascertain what has already been said about them, to assess the ‘state of the question’, in order to build hypotheses about utterances and recipients.

We also tried to ascertain the extent to which these works imply familiarity with already established image repertoires.

The first issue that arises when looking at this corpus is the lack of clarity regarding authorship.

Only one of the works is signed by the military officer Julião, while the others are attributed to him by similarity to this first one. Now, if we consider that the prospectus and the forts represented in the Elevation and façade are copies of other drawings, what guarantees that the figures aren’t either?

Similarly, it is not difficult to see that there is a certain inequality in the treatment of the figures in the Configuration of the entrance to the bar… However, as a starting point, we accept this set as a single corpus, which presents itself under the same spectrum of issues.

Problems of authorship are quite recurrent in the context of Portuguese-Brazilian iconography from the 18th century. We’ll have occasion to return to this subject in due course.

Among the hypotheses that have arisen throughout this chapter, we would like to highlight those relating to the two plates by Carlos Julião kept at the GEAEM.

According to the reading that Alpers (1999) proposes of Marcgraf ‘s map of Dutch Brazil as a “historical cartography”, we suggest that the Elevation and façade be taken as a “historical description” of Salvador, as well as that the Configuration of the entrance to the bar… be related to the attempts to implement anti-racist laws in Portuguese India.

Naturally, this reading implies that the recipient of these works is the Portuguese state itself, which is perfectly consistent with Julião ‘s status as an army officer. The fact that they are currently part of the collection of a military institution only reinforces the likelihood that their origin is linked to some higher request. These drawings show metropolitan eyes what would otherwise be invisible.

The FBN‘s ’sticker ‘ album, on the other hand, seems to have another addressee, which, as we have suggested, would be Brigadier Rafael Pinto Bandeira, the central character in the allegorical composition that opens the volume. This also implies that the album was composed as a gift from a wider repertoire of ‘stickers’.

It’s worth noting that some scenes of a more anecdotal nature, such as Figures 16 and 34, stand out from the rest, introducing a different narrative rhythm to the others.

As for the paintings belonging to the Ricardo Brennand Institute, we consider it unlikely that Julião is the author.

There is no doubt that the painter refers to Julião ‘s drawings for the composition, which is a perfectly usual procedure in the period in question, but this is not enough evidence to assume that he is the author of these works.

On the other hand, we disagree with Tenreiro ‘s opinion about interpreting them according to the model of Spanish-American caste paintings. In our opinion, Julião is not concerned with mestizaje, but rather with diversity, which he represents through the way people dress.

In any case, it is possible to glimpse many traditions and conventions of representation in this body of work. This makes Julião not only an attentive observer, but also an informed one.

In other words, what manifests itself in these works comes not only from perception, but also from some prior knowledge of the subjects portrayed.

Next, we’ll go through Julião‘s biographical career, at least as far as we’ve been able to reconstruct it. Let’s see what can be revealed about his artistic personality from there.

Resumo da Biografia de Carlos Julião

1. Italian background and origins

Carlos Julião was probably born in Italy in the mid-18th century. There is little information about his youth, but it is known that he acquired a solid education in military engineering and the visual arts, which qualified him for technical and artistic service.

This training was essential for his later work in the context of the Portuguese Empire.

2. Military service and work in Portugal

He worked as a military engineer and was assigned to different administrative and technical functions, mainly related to the Portuguese colonies.

It was during this period that he began to develop his artistic production, which combines artistic talent and technical skill with the aim of documenting aspects of the overseas colonies.

3. Journey to India and Passage through Brazil

A defining phase of his career was his assignment to India, where he worked in the context of the Portuguese possessions in the Indian subcontinent.

During his stay in India, Julião had direct contact with the cultural and social diversity of that region, which influenced the ethnographic richness of his works.

On his return journey to Portugal, Julião passed through Brazil, where he had the opportunity to observe and record elements of Brazilian colonial society.

Although his stay in Brazil was brief, this experience helped to deepen his understanding of the social, cultural and economic dynamics of the colony. Many of his drawings and watercolours reflect this direct experience and demonstrate his ability to capture aspects of the daily lives of local populations.

4. Artistic Production and Colonial Iconography

Carlos Julião ‘s work is one of the most important visual representations of the Portuguese colonial period. He produced drawings and watercolours that depict the ethnic, social and cultural diversity of the Portuguese colonies, including Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Goa and other regions.

His output includes the famous album ‘Riscos Iluminados de Figurinos de Várias Nações’ (Illuminated Scratches of Costumes from Various Nations), which brings together detailed illustrations of social types, cultural practices and clothing typical of the vast Portuguese Empire.

Although some of his work was based on reports and documents, his time in Brazil and his stay in India lend authenticity and descriptive richness to many of his works, making them invaluable historical sources.

5. Recognition and Legacy

Carlos Julião died at the end of the 18th century, leaving behind an important iconographic legacy.

His work, initially produced for administrative and documentary purposes, is now recognised as an essential historical source on life in the Portuguese colonies.

He contributed to the construction of a comprehensive and detailed view of colonial daily life, from aspects of slavery and forced labour to the cultural manifestations of the local populations.

Julião ‘s work is preserved in archives and public collections, such as the National Library of Portugal.

His drawings continue to be studied by historians, anthropologists and other specialists, who consider him a central figure for understanding the Portuguese Empire in the 18th century.

Carlos Julião’s Biography and Military Career

Carlos Julião is just one of the countless officials that the Portuguese Crown put ‘on the move’ – to use Russel-Wood ‘s (1998) expression – travelling around the colonial space spread over four continents. Therefore, he is definitely not a character mentioned in dictionaries or compilations of biographies of famous men.

The biographical data that can be verified by documentation about him is still scarce and, for a chronological reconstruction of his career, it is necessary to resort to very dispersed sources.

The first work to outline a biography of Julião was published by Lygia Cunha in 1960, as an introduction to the facsimile edition of the album Riscos iluminados de figurinhos de brancos e negros…, belonging to the FBN, Rio de Janeiro (Cunha 1960).

Silvia Hunold Lara (2002 and 2007) largely took forward the biography already drawn up by Cunha, adding some hypotheses, such as those relating to the artist’s place of death.

Maria Manuela Tenreiro (2007 and 2008) took a fundamental step towards delving deeper into the issue by examining documentation in the Portuguese archives and bringing to light the manuscript from the National Library of Portugal (which we’ll talk about later), as well as various other important pieces of information.

Another source to highlight in this regard is the brief text by Carlo Burdet (1986), the first to note the proximity between Julião and Colonel Carlo Antonio Napione (1756-1814) from 1801, when the metallurgist and mineralogist from Turin joined the Portuguese army as inspector of the Royal Army Arsenal.

Both Cunha, Lara and Tenreiro believe that Julião served as an engineer in the Portuguese army, as can be deduced from the following statements: ‘the data that has come to our hands does not show the date on which he became an engineer’ (Cunha 1960), or ‘an engineer by training’²⁹ (Lara 2002) or even ‘Julião who served in the Portuguese colonial army as an engineer’ (Tenreiro 2007).

Therefore, in order to properly understand the genesis of Carlos Julião‘s iconographic work, it becomes a priority to evaluate his presence in the context of military engineers in the Portuguese 18th century.

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The importance of the role that these professionals played during the 18th century in Portuguese America in areas as wide-ranging as cartographic surveying and the delimitation of borders, civil construction and urban design, among others, is well known.

In view of this, it is sometimes difficult to precisely circumscribe their range of activities, as Rafael Moreira reminds us when he calls the 18th century engineer a ‘generalist, a man of a thousand unspecified trades’ (apud Faria 2001:72).

In fact, the expectation surrounding the work of these pragmatic professionals was that they would be able to make the occupation and defence of the territories subject to the Portuguese crown feasible, finding solutions and proposing interventions based on the characteristics and variables presented by the site itself, and not just taking theoretical precepts into account.

Underpinning the exercise of all their functions was a knowledge of maths and drawing.

Beatriz Bueno (2003) notes the confluence of meaning between the words ‘desenho’ and ‘desígnio’ in that context. The notion of ‘drawing’ among the Portuguese was then imbued with a strong instrumental character, since it was identified with reasoning, the ‘mental exercise that preceded the realisation of any intention’ (Bueno 2004a:153).

Another important aspect to emphasise is the use of drawing during the 18th century in Portugal with the aim of ‘demonstrating’, making known and showing metropolitan managers the process of effective occupation and control of the territories of the Conquests.

Within the colonial logic, the drawings produced by military engineers in the Portuguese overseas territories were mediators of the political action of territorial domination undertaken by the metropolis.

It is essential to differentiate between the “utilitarian ’ nature of the drawing practised in Portugal and the more speculative nature of the drawing engendered by classical culture, in which it became a way of apprehending the visible structure of things, becoming a means of knowing the world. Given the need to convey objective information, it was natural that the practice of drawing among military engineers was, to a large extent, standardised by the use of conventions of representation. In fact, it was mainly in the publications of the kingdom’s chief engineer Manoel de Azevedo Fortes (1722 and 1729) that the methods, instruments and codification of graphic representation used in the Portuguese 18th century were compiled (Bueno 2004a:176).

In view of these considerations, in this chapter, the information on Julião ‘s life provided by the aforementioned authors will be complemented and confronted with the documentation found during research carried out in Portuguese archives during the course of this work, namely in the Arquivo Histórico Militar (AHM), Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU), Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT) and Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP).

The information gleaned from the documentation will be contrasted with other historical information, which aims to shed light on whether, and in what way, Carlos Julião was linked to the practice of military engineering or to the establishments that taught drawing in the context of the Portuguese army: the Artillery Regiment Classes (instituted on the occasion of the 1762 army reform ), the Royal Academy of Fortification, Artillery and Drawing (created in 1790), the Drawing and Metalworking Class at the Army Arsenal Foundry (in operation since the mid-18th century) or the Casa do Risco of the Royal Botanical Garden of Ajuda (created in 1780)30. Let’s see how far we’ve been able to piece together this puzzle.

1. Origin and Formation

As stated in several of the documents consulted, Julian was born in Turin, then the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia³¹, in 1740.

One of the questions that emerges from recognising his Piedmontese nationality is the surname ‘Julião’ itself. Burdet (1986) draws attention to this fact, stating that it is difficult to deduce the original Italian name from the Portuguese version of the surname.

According to the author, the surnames Giuliano or Giuliani – which could be translated into Julião in Portuguese – are very common in the region, even written with the initial ‘J’. Burdet also doesn’t rule out the possibility that Julião was born in Piedmont into a family of Portuguese origin, a possibility that Tenreiro also considers (2008:27).

The question, however, could only be properly clarified through more careful research in Turinese archives.

The fact is that, in all the documentation consulted about Carlos Julião in Portugal, his surname always appears in the Portuguese form, with one exception: the Almanac of Lisbon of 1807.

In this publication, Julião ‘s name is mentioned twice: firstly on page 120, where it reads “Carlos Juliani, at the Royal Army Arsenal, Campo de Santa Clara”; and secondly on page 355, where he is referred to as “Colonel Carlos Juliani, near the Campo de Santa Clara Park”.

It is probably based on the Almanac that Silvia Lara adopts the spelling of the Juliani surname in her writings (2007).

Julião himself, however, always used the Portuguese form of his name, both in his correspondence and in his works, signing ‘Carlos Julião’ the plank Elevation and façade… and ‘Carlos Valentim Julião’ the BNP manuscript.

The information on Carlos Julião ‘s education is rather imprecise, as are the reasons for his move to Portugal. The document that may give us some clues to clarifying these fundamental questions is kept in the AHU and is dated February 1781.

It is a Notice from the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Aires de Sá e Melo (1715-1786), to the Secretary of the Navy and Overseas Territories, Martinho de Melo e Castro (1716-1795), in which it was determined that the artillery officers returning from service in Brazil and India should be added to the Court’s artillery regiments, in the positions that were vacant.

Attached to this Notice is a document written in Julião‘s own handwriting, in which the then first lieutenant of artillery states that he is “a native of the Court of Turin, from where he came to Lisbon, just to enjoy the glory of serving Your Most Faithful Majesty”³³.

It is also worth highlighting the statement contained in another document attached to a case file from 1780, which reads ‘Carlos Julião, who they say is the son of João Baptista, a native of Turin, who declared that he came to this Kingdom in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three’.

From these two excerpts, it is possible to deduce that Carlos Julião moved to Portugal at the age of 23, in what seems to have been a professional choice to put himself at the service of the Portuguese crown.

His arrival and the immediate start of his career in the Portuguese army at the rank of officer (as we will have the opportunity to confirm later), brings us to another fundamental question for understanding Julião‘s biography: that his training took place in Italy³⁵.

The same document from February 1781 – which could almost be considered a curriculum vitae – gives us another important clue about Julião‘s formative years, especially in the passage in which the first lieutenant states that “the exercise and application that the Sup.te had in taking moulds, making dexos, and risks at the regal academy of Turinwas constant”. Everything suggests, therefore, that Julião arrived in Portugal after completing his military training, which took place in his hometown, possibly at the Reale Accademia di Savoia (or di Torino), founded in 1679 by the regent Giovanna Battista (1644-1724), widow of Duke Carlo Emmanuele II (1634-1675)³⁶.

The book Turin, 1564-1680 by Martha Pollak (1991) is particularly relevant for understanding the military culture that developed in this city, as the place chosen by the House of Savoy to install its capital from 1560 onwards.

According to the author, during the 16th and 17th centuries, Turin – which until the 1500s still maintained its primitive Roman castrum form – would have its urban design and architectural physiognomy successively transformed to make it a capital city, an expression of the power of the reigning ducal court.

And the central concern of this court, according to Pollak, was none other than maintaining the newly acquired independence of its state, made possible through a series of diplomatic agreements with other European royal houses.

This certain political fragility was further aggravated by the duchy‘s geographical situation, located right at the foot of the Alps.

This location meant that Piedmont was considered by the other Italian states to be an important bastion of defence, as it would be the first target for possible invaders of the Italian peninsula.

On the other hand, it was located between the territories controlled by the greatest military powers of the period, France and Spain (then occupier of Lombardy). And in successive episodes, Piedmont was invaded alternately by one and the other.

According to Pollak ‘s thesis (1991:18), these factors favoured the development among the Savoys of a condition of “constant vigilance”, which was decisive for the constitution of a true “military culture” in the Turinese environment.

This culture was expressed not only in the appearance of its buildings and fortifications, but also in the elaborate symbolism evoked by the festivals and ceremonies organised by the ducal court.

The constitution of ‘the richest princely collection of military books in Italy’³⁷ (Pollak, 1991:156), made up of the main writings of the 16th and 17th centuries, not only by Italian authors, but also by French and Flemish authors, as well as representative collections of maps, treatises and manuscripts, are also significant aspects of the Dukes of Savoy ‘s interest in military matters.

This environment, so shaped by concerns such as the defence and fortification of the plazas, the improvement of artillery weapons, the ordering of the urban space for the circulation of troops and war equipment, supposedly guaranteed Julião a sophisticated military education, which would allow him remarkable versatility in various areas of activity, as we will see below.

2. Beginning your career in the Army

Nor can it go unnoticed that Julião moved to Portugal at a time of profound restructuring of the Portuguese army, a fact that deserves some consideration. The second half of the 18th century corresponds to a period of modernisation and organisation of the army as an institution in Portugal, at the same time as it reveals the emergence of the military as a social category in that country.

It is Boxer who reminds us of the total unpopularity and lack of prestige that military service had until then among the Portuguese, not least because the Crown was a ‘bad employer’, paying ‘badly, late, or never’ (2002:310-325).

Another factor that contributed to the poor reputation of military service was the system of recruitment undertaken by the ‘levas’, which travelled through the interior of the country practically dragging by force the young men who were fit to serve in the army. According to Marques (1981), until the Pombaline period, there were still practices within the army that meant that its organisation reproduced a stratification typical of Portuguese society.

Roughly speaking, the high nobility, by tradition and heredity, occupied the command posts, while the rest of the officer corps came from a small provincial aristocracy that could count on the favour of some ‘great’. The ranks were completed by adventurers and outcasts who volunteered, or soldiers who had been able to rise a little in the ranks by taking advantage of the success of some campaign.

The army ‘s inoperability had already been felt to some extent during the earthquake that struck Lisbon in November 1755 (Marques 1981:30), when the officers were unable to contain the chaos that quickly spread throughout the city.

But the process that triggered the necessary professionalisation of the military forces in Portugal was the War of the Family Pact, or Fantastic War, as the part of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) that took place in Portuguese territory between May and November 1762 came to be known.

The conflict stemmed from José I’ s refusal to adhere to the family pact of the Bourbons of France, Spain, Naples and Parma against England and Prussia. Once Portugal had disobeyed the ultimatum to close its ports to English ships, the country was invaded by Franco-Spanish troops across the border at Trás-os-Montes on 5 May 1762.

By this time, the Portuguese army had already been reduced to half its strength, ‘all poorly armed and worse disciplined’ (Cordeiro 1895:191). In 1761, the troops had not been paid for a year and a half, and soldiers often resorted to begging and violence (Marques 1981:31).

Faced with the alarming number of desertions, some emergency measures were successfully taken by the administration of the then Count of Oeiras to increase manpower, such as the payment of overdue salaries. By September 1762, the army had grown from eighteen to sixty thousand men.

However, as had often happened in the past, in the face of conflict, it was still necessary to resort to foreign aid in order to complete the military cadres and arm them adequately for the confrontation with the invaders.

King George III of England sent a force of 8,000 men to Portugal, along with several senior officers, who would be assigned to command posts in the Portuguese army.

Also recommended by the British, the person who would take on a leading role in the process of modernising Portugal‘s military forces arrived in the country: the Count of Schaumburg-Lippe (1724-1777)³⁸, whom José I made marshal-general and commander-in-chief of the Portuguese-British army on 10 July 1762.

Aware of the inferiority of his troops, Lippe limited his actions to a war of positions, preventing the enemy army from advancing. The war went on without any significant battles being fought, and on 1 December the armistice was signed. In February 1763, the peace treaty was ratified in Paris.

Despite the end of hostilities, it was clear that Portugal was unable to defend the integrity of its territory without resorting to foreign aid, particularly from England.

As Marques states, within the logic of the Pombaline project of government, the process of modernising the state would necessarily have to take into account the restructuring of its army. ‘The army had to correspond to the despotic nature of power, (…) to be, in short, the guarantor of the authority of the state imposing itself on global society’ (Marques 1981:48).

It was precisely in this context that the Count of Lippe was invited by Minister Carvalho e Melo to stay in Portugal and carry out all the necessary reforms to provide the country with an army capable of confronting potential enemies.

To this end, Lippe extended his stay in Portugal until September 1764, then returned for another spell between September 1767 and March 1768, when he returned permanently to Germany.

However, even at a distance, the Count continued to be a figure of reference for the Portuguese: he frequently sent instructions and advice on military matters to officers, many of whom corresponded with him regularly, drew up documents, and was always the first name to come to mind, especially by King José I, when Portugal was faced with any more effective threat.

The main measures adopted by Lippe concerned, firstly, the organisation of the army itself. With regard to artillery – which is of particular interest to us, as it was the weapon that Carlos Julião worked with – four regiments were organised: the Lisbon (or Court) regiment, the Lagos (or Algarve) regiment, the Extremoz (or Alentejo) regiment and the Oporto (or North) regiment.

Each of these regiments was made up of twelve companies, one of which was for firefighters (or bombers), one for miners, one for craftsmen and nine for artillerymen³⁹ (Cordeiro 1895).

With regard to the discipline and instruction of troops, a major concern of Lippe‘s, the count presented, at the beginning of 1763, the Regulations for cavalry and infantry, which would continue to be the benchmark for the Portuguese army until the 19th century.

Lippe also provided the Portuguese military forces with their first uniform plan, including army and navy uniforms, dated 1764, which was extended to the overseas possessions.

It wasn’t until this year that the appearance and manner of wearing the uniforms began to be strictly defined.

The cut would be the same for all arms and the units would be differentiated by the shapes and colours of the collars, lapels, bands, sights, stripes, buttons, etc.

It wasn’t until 1806 that the custom of dressing the entire army in identical uniforms was established in Portugal (Rodrigues 1999:13).

Other important initiatives by the Count included encouraging the teaching and practice of artillery and military engineering, defining the readings and syllabuses for each weapon, indicating which foreign military books should be translated into Portuguese, as well as the most suitable works for ‘military meditation exercises’ (Marques 1981:50).

According to Marques, the reforms undertaken by Lippe guaranteed Portugal the creation of a modern army, both from the point of view of its structure and the militaristic values that began to guide the troops’ conduct, such as obedience, respect for the hierarchy and a sense of honour in relation to service to the homeland.

As a whole, they induced military officers to adopt a new type of hierarchical relationship, which was no longer social but functional.

Assignments of rank no longer related to the granting of privileges, but became dependent on professional criteria such as seniority and the correct fulfilment of functional obligations.

This was, of course, not without resistance from those still attached to the old methods.

Is it possible that Julião was aware of the reforms undertaken by the Count of Lippe in the Portuguese military forces and that this seemed tempting enough for him to move to Portugal? It’s certainly a hypothesis. Since the presence of foreigners in the Portuguese army was so significant, perhaps the young man saw this as a chance to achieve greater professional prominence than he could in his own country. However, this is just a hypothesis, impossible to verify at the current stage of research.

In any case, Lisbon was still rebuilding after the destruction caused by the 1755 earthquake, and many foreigners headed there in search of professional opportunities.

The fact is that Julião ‘s career in the Portuguese army began right in the middle of this process, in October 1763, when he received the rank of second lieutenant⁴⁰ in the fire brigade of the Lagos Artillery Regiment, which had only a few months earlier been reorganised to replace the former Artillery and Marine Regiment of the Kingdom of the Algarve⁴².

The command of the new regiment was in the hands of Colonel Cristiano Frederico de Weinholtz (1732-1789), son of Frederico Jacob de Weinholtz (1700-1752), a soldier of German origin who had achieved a great deal of prestige in the service of the Portuguese crown.

Julião ‘s first promotion came quickly, just a few months later, although his rank was only confirmed in 1768. This is, in fact, the first of a number of confusions involving our officer‘s ranks.

In an undated document from 1765, Carlos Julião is listed as first lieutenant of the fire brigade of the Lagos Artillery Regiment.

However, it is stated that ‘he does not have a Patent for this Post in which he was appointed on 1st February 1764 by Lieutenant Colonel Diogo Ferrier, approved by the Marshal General’. He also ‘collected the double Soldier, which he does not collect now because he has no title, nor any order passed to the General Treasurer for this payment’⁴⁴.

In fact, the lack of a patent would only be corrected on 24 March 1768, when it would be issued ‘inconsideration of the merits and other parts that concur in the person of Carlos Julião (…) and the services that he has done to me and the fact that he is without the patent that he should have in the form of My Royal Orders’. It’s also worth pointing out that, since June 1764, the Lagos regiment, where Carlos Julião was stationed, had been transferred to the Feitoria Barracks in Oeiras, where our officer would live.

Given that his next promotion would only take place thirteen years after his second letter patent, it is worth pausing to investigate what his activities might have been during this period.

Julião’s Individual File, kept in the AHM, mentions some ‘landings’ in which he took part, including ‘the Mazagão Expedition’, when he ‘went to save the inhabitants of the said Prezidio under fire from the Enemy, and at obvious risk to his life’.

Once again, it will be necessary to refer to the AHU document mentioned above to shed more light on the nature of this expedition. In that document, Julião claims to have ‘made a coastguard with the sea and war captain Bernardo Remires for a year, whose campaign was concluded with the transport of residents of the square of Marzagão [sic]’.

Mazagão had been founded by the Portuguese in 1513 as a trading post on the coast of present-day Morocco, still in the context of the Lusitanian maritime expansion towards the Maghreb. Its fortress, built in 1541 to a design by the Italian Benedetto da Ravenna, was one of the most impregnable built by the Portuguese, which probably explains why Mazagão was the last Portuguese stronghold on the west coast of Africa to fall in the second half of the 18th century.

At the time, the city, in the words of António Dias Farinha, ‘languished in an intermittent struggle with the Moors’, until, in 1769, it was unable to resist the siege by Sultan Sidi Mohamede ben Abdala.

Faced with the city’s declining importance in the Portuguese colonial system, it was decided to evacuate, for which a truce was negotiated.

Still according to Farinha, ‘a strong armada was sent to Mazagão to bring all the inhabitants, the military garrison and all the goods that could be shipped in’, after which the fortress was mined. Its inhabitants and garrison were transported first to Lisbon and, shortly afterwards, to the newly founded city of Nova Mazagão, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, now the state of Amapá.

If Julião acted, as he claims, in transporting the inhabitants of Mazagão, it is certain that the ship on which he served as a bodyguard was part of the ‘strong armada’ assembled for the evacuation of the city ordered by King José I in 1769.

As a result of this expedition and the ‘contagious society’ to which he was subjected, the officer claims to have acquired a ‘rigourous illness with which he disembarked for his home without hope of life, and in whose long and dangerous illness he spent much of his patrimony’.

There is yet another passage in the aforementioned 1781 AHU document that will be very useful to us, not only for bringing to light activities in which Julião was involved and which are not mentioned in his Individual File, but also for highlighting the versatility and scope of his military training. In it, the officer states that his training at the Turin academy motivated the Superintendent to make a model of the Bugio Fortress, which he had the honour of offering to the Most Serene Prince; and that he was commissioned to make a small model of the Equestrian Statue by Francisco Xavier de Mendonça, which, due to his almost sudden death, was never made on a large scale.

A piece of artillery with its proportional repairs, cast by his own hand, was presented to Marshal Conde de Lippe in the Aula de São Julião da Barra. And the stone portrait of the same Count of Lippe, which the Superintendent presented in the hands of King José, of glorious memory.

In the light of all this information, we should analyse the tasks one by one. Let’s start with the ‘Bugio fortress’.

The model to which Julião refers is probably a model of the Fortress of São Lourenço da Cabeça Seca, or Bugio, which is located in the middle of the Tagus estuary, in a position bordering the Fort of São Julião da Barra, near Oeiras.

It was built during the reign of King João IV (1604-1656, king from 1640), with a design inspired by the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, which in turn served as a model for the construction of the Forte de São Marcelo, or Forte do Mar, in Salvador.

We know that the 1755 earthquake destroyed the Bugio lighthouse, the reconstruction of which was ordered by Secretary Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo three years later. Julião was possibly commissioned to produce a model for the lighthouse’s rebuilding, which would only be completed in 1775.

But what is the ‘small model of the Equestrian Statue’? According to Julião, the model of this statue was commissioned by Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furtado (1700-1769), brother of the future Count of Oeiras and Marquis of Pombal, who was governor-general of the Captaincy of Grão-Pará and Maranhão from its creation in 1751 until 1759.

Isabel Mendonça (2003:6) reminds us that, on Mendonça Furtado’s return to the Kingdom, the councillors of Belém do Pará asked him to find an artist in Portugal who could create a statue of King José I to be placed in the square outside the new Palace of the Governors, a building that was beginning to be built to a design by the Bolognese architect Antonio José Landi (1713-1791).

The work, however, didn’t proceed at the planned speed, and the Palace wasn’t finished until 1772. Shortly before this, in 1769, the city’s councillors once again approached Mendonça Furtado, reiterating their request for help in making a statue of the king for Belém.

On that occasion, a pedestal project for the sculpture was sent to Portugal, also drawn up by Landi, which received an unfavourable opinion from Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos (1731-1791), the architect of public works.

It is not known who commissioned the sculpture for Belém, but it is certain that Mendonça Furtado’s death interrupted the project, ‘thus preventing the pioneering idea of a ’royal square‘ from being realised in Belém do Pará, centred by the first royal statue in Portuguese art’ (Mendonça 2003:6).

It is curious that Julião was involved in this process by making a scale model – perhaps made of wax or even cast in bronze – of a sculpture of King José I planned to occupy the centre of a square designed by Landi in Pará .

As well as models of fortresses and sculptures, Julião ‘s skills included casting artillery pieces, which he proved to the Count of Lippe himself at the Aula de São Julião da Barra. It’s worth remembering that the Fort of São Julião da Barra was where the Court Artillery Regiment had been stationed since its creation in 1762.

In the same charter that ordered the constitution of the Regiment, ‘a class was created in which lessons and practical exercises were given three days a week, an hour and a half in the morning and an hour in the afternoon’ (Cordeiro 1895:262).

Either Julião was involved in these ‘practical exercises’, or he simply intended to impress Lippe, given the chronic shortage of foundrymen in Portugal, as Cordeiro (1895:207) points out.

It remains to comment on his declared ability as a sculptor, proven by the execution of a stone portrait of the Count of Lippe, presented to King José. Undoubtedly, we are entering a field that goes beyond the technical qualifications of military training, bringing Julião closer to artistic expressions.

It is curious, however, that the officer makes so few references to his drawing skills, which is nevertheless noted by Captain José Sanches de Brito (?-1797), when he praises Julião‘s honourable conduct, which, in his opinion, brings together “all the arts needed by a perfect military man, which are drawing, fortification, metal casting and artillery making”.

In the same document, Brito also emphasises that Julião was ‘seconded to a Palla de Guerra to teach artillery on board ships’, which also places him as an officer skilled in teaching naval artillery⁵³.

3. Embarkation to the States of India

Still in reference to the ‘landings “ mentioned in his Individual File, it appears that Julião also travelled to ”Brazil, India and China’**, although the dates of these trips are not mentioned in this document.

Once again, we have resorted to documentation from other archives in order to clarify the nature of Julião ‘s missions overseas in Portugal.

Let’s start by highlighting a letter from Colonel Weinholtz addressed to the Count of Lippe and dated Faro, 21 May 1777. In it, the colonel of the Lagos Artillery Regiment reports that

Mon ancien Régiment fût divisé l’ann 1774 en grands Détachements, dont les premiers embarquerent sur les vaisseaux du Roy, et les derniers, qui étaient de cinq Compagnies, se rendirent par ordre de Sa Majesté dans le pays-ci, où, avec d’autres semblables Détachements tirés des autres Régiments d’Artillerie, se forma, sous les ordres de M. Ferrier, a new Artillerie Regulation was formed.⁵⁵

Artillery. It is to be assumed that much of Julião ‘s work during his time in the East took place there.

For other possible services in which Julião may have been involved in India, it is necessary to refer again to his Individual File. It mentions a trip by the officer to Macau, ‘where he went at the suggestion of Martinho de Mello⁵⁸, Secretary of State, to draw up a plan of the whole district, which belongs to Your Royal Highness, which he carried out with the utmost accuracy, and handed over to the said Minister’.

It is clear that a long period of service in the overseas domains enabled those involved to request benefits in the form of bounties and promotions from the Crown, and there is no reason not to consider that Julião relied on this practice, which dated back to the time of the Discoveries, to wait for the rewards he thought he deserved. In fact, since his return to Lisbon in 1780, our officer began a sequence of correspondence in which he asked for favours as payment for services rendered.

Firstly, he claims the rank of captain that had been promised to him and which, according to him, had only not been granted because he was absent from the Court. As is quite clear from the following passage, Julião felt he had been passed over because, except for the embarkation for which he had been appointed on the Nau Nossa Senhora da Madre de Deus, he would have been Captain of Firemen in the promotion that was made in his regiment in 1776, in which, because he was on distant service, he was passed over. It is true that General McLean⁶² gave his word of honour to Colonel Dalemcour⁶³ that, as soon as the Chief arrived from India, he would make him Fire Brigade Captain, as shown by Dalemcour‘s attestation.

It was therefore in the certainty of his promotion to captain, which was to take place as soon as the trip to Asia was over, that Julião signed the Elevation and façade board, the prospectus of Salvador, as ‘Captain of miners of the Court Artillery Regiment’ (emphasis added).

It should be noted that, according to the AHU document, the officers arriving from service in India were to be incorporated into the Court Artillery Regiment in the positions that were vacant.

Therefore, in our opinion, the appointment to command a company of miners cannot be seen as a choice made by the officer, or even that the fact presupposes some kind of specialisation or expertise ⁶⁵.

As we have seen,Julião had a solid background as an artillery officer, for which it was necessary to gather knowledge in the area of manufacturing weapons of war – the manufacture of gunpowder for projectiles, bombs and mines, the best alloys for casting bronze parts for cannons and other war instruments, as well as having a mastery of mathematics and physics to be able to calculate the trajectory of a projectile, which influences the calculation of defence and fortification systems. However, it seems a little excessive to consider him an ‘engineer, specialising in metallurgy, mineralogy and chemistry’ (Lara 2007:242).

Of course, since artillery was the army’s most ‘scientific’ weapon, there was a close relationship between the practice of the artillery officer and that of the military engineer, as highlighted by Lyra Tavares, reflecting what he calls the ‘artillery-engineering binomial’ (Tavares, 1965).

The origins of military engineering, as a corporation, lie in the artisans‘ and miners’ companies of the artillery regiments.

However, there is no documentation to prove thatJulião worked as a military engineer during his career.

Even the fortification surveys to which he was later assigned, as we shall see, referred to assessing the state of the artillery and ammunition, not the physical condition of the buildings.

The rank of captain, which Julião had longed for, was only confirmed in July 1781, when he took command of the company of miners.

However, the desire to be rewarded for his seventeen years of dedication to the army led him to request, shortly after his return to Lisbon in September 1780, the honour of the Order of Christ with the corresponding tença, as payment for his services overseas.

He claims that his services were not properly remunerated. Although the document leaves no doubt about the validity of Julião’s services, he was not granted the honour.

Years later, in 1789, Julião gave up on receiving the honour of the Order of Christ, accepting only a tença.

The decision was made after realising the ‘repugnance’ of the competent authority to grant him the grace, and he preferred to conform to the ‘royal will’.

He attached a declaration of renunciation of tença to his request, which was formalised by the notary of the city of Oeiras, Manoel Freire de Faria. This time, an effective tença of 65,000 réis was granted, based on his services as second and first lieutenant. His renunciation of the benefit was then formalised.

In December 1790, Julião again applied for royal recognition, now requesting the Order of St Benedict of Avis and an equivalent tença, again with the possibility of renouncing it.

Maria I ‘s “repugnance” didn’t seem to be so great this time, since in January 1791 he was given the standard letter of the Order of Avis, with an effective tenure of 45,000 réis and the possibility of renouncing part of it, 33,000 réis, which he renounced in favour of Ana Apolónia de Vilhena Abreu Soares.

In March, the charter was signed for Julião to be made a Knight of the Order, accompanied by a letter of habit, a profession licence and a letter of discharge.

Before moving on, it is worth quoting Fernanda Olival, who reminds us ‘how liberality, the gesture of giving, was considered, in the political culture of the Ancien Régime, as a virtue proper to kings’ (2001:15), and how much the survival and longevity of the Portuguese monarchy (as well as others) depended on this ability to repay the political, administrative and military services rendered in its name with honours, benefits and privileges. Since 1551, the Portuguese Crown had perpetually incorporated by papal bull the control of the Masters of the three military orders of the kingdom – the Order of Christ, the Order of St James and the Order of St Benedict of Avis – descendants of the medieval orders of chivalry linked to the crusades to the Holy Land and the battles to reconquer the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors.

In the middle of the 16th century, the Moors no longer represented such a significant threat, at least not in Portuguese territory. On the contrary, they were interested in confronting them in their own lands, in North Africa, as well as extending Portugal ‘s power further and further throughout the newly conquered territories.

The distribution of honours in the orders was then directly related to the defence of the African plazas and periods of service to the Crown in the Indian states. For Africa, however, a shorter period of stay (around three years) was required, since the opportunities for enrichment there were almost non-existent.

Contrary to what happened in India, on the other hand, where the length of service required was not only longer, but the deeds that justified the granting of the favour had to be particularly noteworthy.

In fact, no habit or commendation could be achieved without remuneration for services rendered to the Crown, a notion that had been clearly rooted in Portuguese society since the end of the 16th century.

Another papal bull, from 1570, limited the granting of bounties and commendations from the three Portuguese military orders to applicants who could prove ‘purity of blood’ (no Jewish or Moorish ancestry), as well as ‘cleanliness of trade’, since the recipients could not be sons or grandsons of mechanical officers. Consequently, from the point of view of his social status, a knight in the habit was – and was seen as such until the 18th century – first and foremost an honourable servant of the king, to which was added being ‘clean of blood and with sufficient assets not to dirty his hands with work’ (Olival 2001:56). This situation lasted until 1773, when the distinctions between New Christians and Old Christians were definitively abolished in Portugal.

Of the three military orders, the Order of Christ was by far the most sought-after and prestigious. According to Olival, ‘it sometimes happened that a commendation or habit was requested without specifying the order. However, the insignia of Christwas accepted with greater satisfaction’ (2001:8).

It is therefore not surprising that Julião requested it on his first attempt. However, a letter of law issued by Queen Maria I on 19 June 1789 brought about a major reform in the regulation of the orders.

From then on, it was established that military services would be rewarded exclusively with the Order of Avis, while the Order of Santiago would be used to honour magistrates, with the insignia of Christ reserved for political offices and high civil and military positions.

The military orders then became less a grant of privileges than a recognition of professional distinction. There is no doubt that Julião saw this reform promoted by the queen as his chance to be honoured.

Almost nothing is known about Carlos Julião ‘s activities during the fifteen years he served in the Court Artillery Regiment, but a clue is once again provided by the AHM documentation. His Individual File mentions that he was commissioned by the marshal-general, the Duke of Lafões⁷³, ‘tovisit all the artillery of the fortifications of the Province of Extremadura, of which he gave an exact letter, presenting the most detailed accounts of the state of the artillery and munitions of war that existed in them, a task that was certainly carried out between 1791 and 1795.

5. Royal Army Arsenal

In 1795, Julião received his first senior officer’s rank, that of sergeant major, now working at the Royal Army Arsenal. This was where the rest of his military career would take place.

When Julião was transferred to the Army Arsenal, it was one of the largest manufacturing establishments in Portugal, employing more than a thousand people in 25 different workshops.

The entire process of making war material (weapons and ammunition) to supply the country’s army and navy was concentrated there, as well as the logistics of its storage and distribution to the military forces of the Kingdom and overseas.

Its workshops also produced all the components for the uniforms of officers serving at court and in the colonies, as well as other artefacts such as surgical instruments.

The Arsenal also housed an important artistic training centre, the Drawing, Engraving and Metalworking Class, where two of the most representative works of Portuguese art from the end of the Ancien Régime were made: the equestrian statue of José I and the silver table offered by Regent João to the Duke of Wellington in 1814 .

In the last quarter of the 18th century, the Arsenal comprised a complex of three buildings: the so-called Baixo, Cima and Santa Clara Foundries. The Baixo Foundry was housed in the building now occupied by the Lisbon Military Museum, which replaced the old artillery depots destroyed by the 1755 earthquake.

The Cima Foundry was housed in buildings adjacent to the temple of Santa Engrácia, now the National Pantheon, which were adapted in the early 1760s to house the manufacture of fire hydrants.

In the 1770s, the complex was joined by the Santa Clara Foundry, built on the ruins of the former 13th century convent of the Poor Clares, one of the most important convent buildings in Lisbon, which was completely destroyed by the earthquake.

This is where the weapons factories were concentrated, as well as houses for officers.

The organisation of the Arsenal, as well as the substantial increase in its activity during this period, must be understood in the context of the reforms carried out in the Portuguese armed forces by the Count of Lippe, who was responsible for renaming the former Tenência to the Royal Army Arsenal.

Bartolomeu da Costa (1731-1801) also played an essential role in the command of the institution, which he held from 1762 until his death. A career military man and engineer, Costa stood out as Portugal’s most notable artillery foundryman, responsible for regulating the calibres of the fireboxes and building specialised furnaces for manufacturing activities.

In 1774, he was promoted to brigadier and appointed Intendente Geral das Fundições in recognition of his services in founding the equestrian statue of King José I.

To understand Julião ‘s activities at the Arsenal, we need to look at his Individual File. An opinion signed by Bartolomeu da Costa, dated 31 March 1800, is addressed to the Minister of War and highlights Julião’s duties. The document states that Julião had been appointed by His Royal Highness to assist the Emigrant French Artillery Regiment, requisitioning the necessary supplies from the Arsenal to repair the regiment’s train and the armaments of the British Auxiliary Fleet. The opinion praised the officer for his dedication and zeal in all his tasks.

In 1800, at the age of 60, Julião began the process of applying for promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel. His appointment, justified by his length of service and the activities carried out in the Inventory of the Royal Arsenal, was granted on 14 November 1802, although the letter of patent was only issued in November 1804.

On the occasion of this request, Julião wrote a document, currently attached to his Individual File, preserved in the AHM (Military Historical Archive). In this text, he lists his main achievements in the Portuguese army, although without specific dates. This document was used as a basis by authors such as Cunha (1960), Lara (2002 and 2007) and Tenreiro (2007 and 2008) to compose biographies of Julião.

In 1801, Carlos Julião appeared as the translator of a work published by Tipografia do Arco do Cego, entitled Experiências e observações sobre a liga dos bronzes, que devem servir nas fundições das peças de artilharia, by Carlos Antonio Napion, lieutenant-colonel of the Court Artillery. The translation by Julião is credited as:

“Carlos Julião, sergeant major with exercise in the Royal Arsenal. Lisbon at the Typographia Chalcographica, Typoplastica e Litteraria do Arco do Cego. Anno MDCCCI.”

By Superior Order. Its author, officer Carlo Antonio Galeani Napione, was also a native of Turin and had arrived in Portugal the previous year at the invitation of the Secretary of the Navy and Overseas Territories, Mr Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho (1755-1812)⁸⁰.

Também Burdet (1986) reproduz um comentário de Napione sobre a coleção de madeiras constituída por Carlos Julião:

Colonel Julião, who has made a special study of the woods, of which he has a rich collection, was kind enough to lend himself to my requests and shared with me some very interesting observations on a number of them.⁸³

Vale destacar que o mesmo Burdet (1991) assinala o interesse da Accademia delle Scienze di Torino sobre o estudo das madeiras do Brasil que Napione, sócio da instituição desde sua fundação, conduzia a partir de Lisboa. Em sua biografia do oficial-cientista, o autor reproduz a carta de um sócio da Accademia datada de 1806, em que se lê:

In a few days I will have in my hands the manuscript and series of beautiful and original experiments on the strength and hardness of timber, particularly that of Brazil, by our Cav. Napione, who also gave me permission to give an extract to this Academy. It is already translated into French, and the Portuguese translation is being completed, and there are various comparative tables ⁸⁴.

Carlos Julião ‘s dedication to the study of trees and wood went beyond simply building up a collection of samples. An example of this is his manuscript, dated 1801, which has the extensive title:

‘DICTIONARIO HISTORICO DAS ARVORES, E ARBUSTOS which contains the names, and synonyms of each one of them taken from the best Auctores, who will write in this matter: considerably augmented of many Trees of the Conquests of Portugal until the present not described: With a summarised account of their natural characteristics, trunks, branches, bark, leaves, flowers, fruits, balsams, gums, zest, oils, and the most noteworthy things that distinguish them.

SUMMARY INSTRUCTION – For the knowledge they give of the different woods, their solids, and utilities for the construction of the works of the Arcenaes, Buildings, and all the artefacts that with them are constituted for the Domestic Economy, and Public Utility.

BY CARLOS VALENTIM JULIÃO – Knight Professed in the Royal Military Order of S.Bento de Avis, by His Royal Highness The Prince Regent Major of Artillery with Exercise in the Royal Arcenal of the Army, Member of the Military Inspection, &c. LISBON MDCCCI’.

This manuscript shows Julião’s commitment to cataloguing and studying the botanical diversity, especially the trees and shrubs of the Portuguese colonies, including detailed characteristics such as trunks, branches, bark, flowers, fruit and the various applications of wood in the domestic economy and in construction. The work demonstrates Julião’s ambition to systematise botanical and practical knowledge, contributing to both science and the military and economic needs of the Kingdom of Portugal.

Everything indicates that this was a publication project: the pages are all lined, numbered sequentially in the top right-hand corner, and each page is divided into two columns of text. The entries in the dictionary are made in different spellings: script for the Portuguese name; cursive for the French name; script again, but in sepia ink for the Latin or scientific version.

When the French or Latin name doesn’t exist, the Portuguese name is repeated three times. Most entries are between five and fifteen lines long, but some take up an entire column. Unfortunately, at the point of letter C, the manuscript is already becoming difficult to read due to the ferrogalic ink.

The volume has a leather binding with traces of gilding on the cover, where you can see the mark of an old coat of arms, certainly indicative of the previous owner. It’s important to note that there are no illustrations in the manuscript.

But let’s see what kind of approach Julião gives us in his dictionary with regard to the species described.

Taking two examples at random:

• Acajaiba / Acajaiba / Acajaiba
• A largetree from Brazil, a species of cashew called Cedro de St Domingos. The trunk is so thick that canoes 40 feet long and 6 feet wide are made from it. The wood is reddish and can also be stained yellow and white. It is well polished and hardly ever rots, and furniture is made from it that imparts its soft odour to clothes. The bark is brown and thick, the leaves are small and dark green, the heart-shaped fruit is always green and usually contains 4 very bitter almonds covered in thick skin.
• Vanilla / Vanille / Vanilla
• A shrub that climbs up trees like ivy, the light green leaves are pleasant to look at, long, narrow and pointed. After seven years, it produces sheaths containing tiny seeds mixed with a kind of dark, balsamic and very sweet-smelling pulp, which is the main ingredient in chocolate, to which it imparts marvellous properties. There are three species that differ in their trunk, or in the different grain of maturity. The first, called Pompona or Bova, has a very strong odour; the second, longer, has a delicious smell, and is used under the name of legitimate vanilla; the third has little smell, the best is from Mexico or Peru; the one from Hindustan is monstrously thick and smells like a plum. In another era, this ingredient was used to perfume tobacco, but smells are, like other things, subject to fashion.

Julião’s Diccionario deserves a few comments. The very choice of the dictionary format for the information is reminiscent of the structure of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, the great paradigm of the Enlightenment in the systematisation of knowledge. The fact that it is a ‘work of summa instrucção’, as stated in the title, also meets the expectations and orientation of the Enlightenment in Portugal, as in the rest of Europe, regarding the dissemination of ‘useful knowledge’.

In the Prologue that introduces his work, Julião argues that ‘this is not a description of any botanical system, nor of the medicinal virtues of plants’, a task that falls to the great scientists and not to a man like him, of ‘small enlightenment’.

In this way, the author preserves himself, to a certain extent, from the responsibility of not being a scientist and venturing into the realisation of a work that slips into scientific study. More importantly, in doing so, Julião emphasises the importance of practical knowledge, the experience that teaches us to recognise the usefulness and appropriate use of the natural resources at our disposal.

Of the species included in the Diccionario, trees are the ones to which the author devotes the most attention, stating that the ‘Knowledge, and combination of the strength and consistency of woods for any construction, is certainly the most interesting point, and the main object to which this tract is addressed’.

Certainly, determining data on the resistance of wood could only be achieved through experiments, and in fact the author alludes in the Prologue to experiments of this kind conducted at the Arsenal.

It is possible that these were the same experiments that Napione carried out, as mentioned by Burdet (1991).

Carlos Julião goes on to reaffirm the importance of wood in a wide variety of fields: in the Navy arsenals, for the construction of “Cadastres, Masts, Vergas, Caverns, rudders and side boards. The monstrous buildings, which look more like floating villas than ships, are formalised on the wings‘; in the army arsenals, for the construction of ’machines, devices, artillery repairs, different field cars, gun butts, and many items belonging to the artillery train and other bellic instruments‘; and in civil construction, for the manufacture of ’beams, girders, planks and boards “.

He concludes by saying that ‘everything from wood can be used: when it’s not used for work, it’s used for burning, or to make charcoal, and even the ashes in the barrels can be used’.

It shouldn’t go unnoticed that the study of wood at that historical moment was in line, as Pataca (2006:396) reminds us, with the new concerns expressed by Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho when he took over the portfolio of the Secretariat of Marine and Overseas Affairs in 1796.

Well, the concerns weren’t so new. The issue of rationalising logging had been debated since the administration of his predecessor, Melo e Castro. There was a realisation that resources were finite, since timber production in the Kingdom itself was in short supply.

Coutinho ‘s efforts therefore intensified to combat burning and indiscriminate logging, regulate it and promote the rational exploitation of resources, with a view to making the best use of them.

To this end, he sent guidelines to the entire ‘ informationnetwork’ made up of naturalists, governors and the intellectual elite of the colonies so that the properties of the local woods could be scientifically described and optimisation of their use planned.

As well as encouraging the study of woods, which were essential for shipbuilding and the manufacture of weapons, Coutinho also dedicated himself to promoting research into saltpetre, the raw material used to make gunpowder.

It’s worth remembering that the context in which Coutinho took over the Secretariat was quite different from that during Melo e Castro‘s administration.

The possibility of Portugal, or even Brazil, being invaded by Spain or France was becoming more and more concrete, which certainly contributed to the Secretary ‘s emphasis on the study of these materials.

Julião ‘s efforts to produce the Diccionario should therefore be understood in this context.

Nor should it be overlooked that, having already translated Napione ‘s work for the Tipografia do Arco do Cego, the official may have wanted to see his own work published by the same publishing house.

Let’s remember the importance of the initiative to create the Casa Literária do Arco do Cego for the dissemination of scientific research in the Portuguese eighteenth century.

Although its activities were short-lived – it only operated between 1799 and 1801 – the Arco do Cego achieved a publishing system that was unprecedented in the history of printed books in Portugal, as Faria recalls, becoming a centre for disseminating useful knowledge aimed at improving agricultural techniques, modernising methods of exploiting natural resources, studies on Brazilian flora, translating scientific works into Portuguese, among many others.

It was part of a larger Enlightenment project, headed by Sousa Coutinho, which aimed to carry out reforms and rationalise the actions of the state.

In the editorial line promoted under the guidance of botanist Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso (1742-1811), agricultural economics and natural history played a leading role.

In view of this, Julião perhaps saw this as a chance to achieve ‘the glory of constituting myself raccomandable to the so wise Nacionaes’, as he states in the Prologue to the Diccionario, and to have his scientific inclinations recognised.

After all, it would take a few years for his study of wood to be publicised and it would only be partially. Napione had an article by Carlos Julião published posthumously in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Patriota, which appeared in the November-December 1814 issue under the title ‘Observations made by Colonel Carlos Julião on some Brazilian woods’.

The article repeats the format of the Diccionario, presenting the characteristics of 25 types of Brazilian wood.

In July 1802, Carlos Julião ‘s name appears on a list of six officers consulted on the pertinence of adopting new calibres for the Portuguese army’s artillery pieces to be used on campaign.

The other names involved in this consultation are: Field Marshal Quief de Ville, Major Jean-Philippe de Tardy, Marshal Conde de Vioménil, Lieutenant General Leonardo Aleixo, Chevalier de Chalupe, as well as Napione, referred to in the document as Charles Napion.

Julião ‘s opinion on this occasion seems quite sensible. The officer defended the maintenance of the calibres already in use, arguing that the fact that they were smaller, rather than being a disadvantage, actually made them easier to carry, which was convenient given the rugged topography of Portuguese territory.

He also justifies the fact that the calibre used by the Portuguese was the same as that of most other nations, including England – ‘our ally’, he writes – which would always be a facilitating element in the event of an urgent request for help.

Changing calibre, on the other hand, would mean discarding all the existing war material, which would undoubtedly cause immense expense for the Portuguese state coffers.

It’s worth trying to identify the other panellists, all of French origin. Jean-Philippe Tardy de la Brossy (1751-?) and Léonard-Alexis, Count of Chalup de Fareyron (1738-?) were both officers in the French Royal Army who served in the American War of Independence.

The Count of Vioménil, Charles-Joseph-Hyacinthe du Houx (1734-1827), had also fought in the United States, and had achieved such prominence in the campaign that he was appointed governor of Martinique in 1789.

With the establishment of the Terror, he served in the army organised by Prince Louis V Joseph de Bourbon-Condé (1736-1818), one of several French royalist émigré armies that joined forces with Great Britain, Russia and Austria against revolutionary France.

As an émigré fighter, he was called to Portugal in 1801 by the future Count of Linhares to be one of the commanders of the Portuguese army.

Inviting a foreign officer to command the Portuguese military forces wasn’t exactly a novelty.

But the measure taken by Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, as well as the concern about field artillery expressed in the request for opinions from various officers, suggest that Portugal was already living in a climate of war.

In fact, the invasion of the territory had been expected since 1796.

In that year, the Treaty of Santo Ildefonso had sealed an offensive and defensive alliance between France and Spain, which suited Bonaparte‘s expansionist and anti-British policy immensely, further intensified after 18 Brumaire.

Spain ‘s declaration of war against England definitively polarised the Iberian Peninsula and put pressure on the Portuguese to abandon their position of neutrality, which they had maintained until then with great zeal.

Faced with this threat, Portugal once again turned to England for military aid. From 1797 onwards, George III sent auxiliary forces to Lisbon, which included not only English and Irish officers, but also three regiments of French emigrants in the service of Great Britain (Cordeiro 1895).

It was precisely the arrangements for the material needed to repair the armaments and artillery of this foreign contingent that Julião dealt with at the Royal Arsenal, as mentioned in his Individual File cited above.

Portugal was effectively involved in the conflict in February 1801.

In just eighteen days, the Spanish military forces took all the main plazas in the Alto Alentejo, which caused the fall of the octogenarian Duke of Lafões and forced the crown to think of new names to command the Portuguese army.

In the end, the war was short-lived, as the peace treaty was signed in Madrid in September 1801. It would, however, be the preamble to the Peninsular War, triggered by the French invasion of Portugal in 1807.

It is unnecessary, and even excessive, to go over the implications of the events that took place from then on, but it is enough to remember the event that would have the greatest impact on the history of Portugal and its colonies, as well as on Carlos Julião’s career: the transfer of the royal family and its court to Brazil.

Embarked at Belém dock on 27 November 1807 was Brigadier Carlo Napione, who, as we have seen, would have an important role to play in Rio de Janeiro.

The brigadier was leaving the post of inspector of the Royal Army Arsenal and the Barcarena Gunpowder and Alcântara Saltpetre Refining Factories vacant.

In a decree dated the same day, issued from the Junqueira Barracks, Julião was informed that ‘Mr General Marques de Vagos orders Your Lordship to act as Inspector of the Royal Army Arsenal until further notice from the same Lord’. It’s worth remembering that in April 1805, the officer had received the rank of Colonel of Artillery.

However, Colonel Julião didn’t fully agree with the procedure adopted for his appointment as Napione‘s replacement.

Just a few days later, on 1st December, the officer wrote to Miguel Pereira Forjaz (1769-1827) requesting an official appointment to the post of inspector of the Arsenal, on the grounds that

‘The Excellency General and Marquis of Vagos ordered Colonel Julião to fulfil the Commissions of the Brigadier. There is an authorised Board in the said Arsenal with the August name of S.A., (…) and this Board was only informed of the aforementioned vacancy and made the appointment of the same Colonel.

Both these appointments, although they authorise the Arsenal to carry out its functions, in any case as these commissions are a grace from H.R.H. that was conferred until now by Decree, and the said appointment not being made by this Supreme Government, by H.R.H. who is privately authorised to confer the graces, could cause some inconvenience to the promptness of the Service, therefore the undersigned Carlos Julião implores this Supreme Government with the utmost respect and respect to appoint him to the post of Inspector of the Foundries, Workshops and Laboratory of the d.o Arsenal, and Director of the Real Fabrica de Barcarena and Refino de Alcantara.’

The official appointment requested, however, never came to fruition. Above all, this was a period of near-disintegration for the Portuguese army.

Bonaparte ‘s express instructions after Junot (1771-1813) entered Lisbon were for the army to be immediately disarmed and the soldiers reorganised into columns that would march to France and be incorporated into the imperial army under the name of the Portuguese Legion.

The situation only began to change after the armistice and the signing of the Convention of Sintra in August 1808. The reinstatement of the Council of the Regency in September made it possible to start taking steps to reconstitute the army as it had existed before the invasion.

Certainly for this reason, Julião’s correspondence as inspector of the Arsenal, at least that which we have been able to locate, refers only to the months of July to September 1808.

In a series of documents, he requested guidance from his superiors on how to manage the Arsenal’s activities in order to ‘return it to its former state’, as well as giving an account of its organisation in tables such as:

‘Relação dos Soldos que vencem os Officiaes actualmente empregados no Arsenal do Exército e dos Mezes que lhes estão devem‘, ’Mappa dos Mestres Officiaes, e mais pessoas empregadas nas Officinas do Arsenal Real do Exército, e da importancia total das mesmas Officinas‘, ’Mappa dos Officiaes d’Artilharia empregados no Arsenal Real do Exército’, ‘Summary of the Masters, Counter-Masters and Labourers employed in the Offices of the three Departments of the Royal Army Arsenal’ and ‘List of the Masters, Counter-Masters and Labourers employed in the Offices of the three Departments of the Royal Army Arsenal, with a summary of the work they have done and are doing after the departure of the French’.

Just at the end of September, the tone of the correspondence changed. In two letters to Pereira Forjaz, Julião, signing only ‘Colonel’ and no longer ‘Colonel Inspector’, expressly asks to be relieved of the ‘impracticable task of inspector’.

The reasons given in the first letter were the issuing of an order to the master of a workshop at the Arsenal that went against an express order of his, as well as the appointment of craftsmen to the workshops without any consultation with him, which would inevitably provoke ‘ absolute independence and insubordination’ among his subordinates.

In the second letter, the issue of the official appointment requested earlier comes up again. Julião feels insulted, since ‘there are those who say publicly that I am no longer Inspector because the six months during which I could only serve by appointment of the Royal Treasury Board are over’.

He justifies himself by claiming that the ordinance appointing him did not specify the validity of the position and that if the term had in fact expired, it was the Junta ‘s duty to appoint him again, or another officer to replace him. He even makes accusations against the Deputy-Intendant, who ‘out of a spirit of monopoly, wants to unite his office with that of Inspector, which he has perfectly succeededin doing’.

He concludes by reaffirming his correct behaviour, since

‘Not considering myself (…) appointed by the Royal Board, but rather by the Excellency General of Arms (who, due to the authority of his post, could directly receive an Order from H.A.R. at the time of his departure), I consider myself to have been appointed Inspector until the Supreme Court of the Regency sees fit to discharge me, which I have begged and pleaded for with such fervour’.

He was granted the dispensation and Julião went on to carry out his duties as a colonel at the Santa Clara headquarters.

In the few documents located relating to this period, the officer reports, on one occasion, the sinking of a boat loaded with war material in front of the Madre de Deus convent.

Shortly afterwards, he requested that the Arsenal be ordered to make beds for the invalids who had been transferred from São Julião da Barra to the Santa Clara barracks.

The approach of his 70th birthday, however, seemed to make things more difficult for our officer. He asks, for example, for an assistant to be appointed for the ‘various tasks that the Qual General has to fulfil and I need someone to help me because I have no one’, which ‘at this time I really need’.

He also complains about the delay in paying his wages, which hinders him in carrying out his duties as artillery commander of one of the brigades defending Lisbon, an activity to which he had been appointed by Marshal Beresford (1768-1854) and which

‘Obligation to the Superintendent to attend the exercises of the various Batterias of the teaching, and repeatedly to the House of the General of the Province, and of the Brigadier in charge of the defence, not being able to go on foot due to his advanced age, and lacking the means to go otherwise.’.

On 26 May 1811, Julião was retired with the rank of army brigadier. The letter of rank, signed by Prince Regent João in Rio de Janeiro, would only be confirmed on 19 January 1813.

For Julião, however, it was rather late. Just over a year earlier, Manuel Ribeiro de Araújo, the former director of the Oporto Arsenal and his successor as inspector of the Royal Arsenal, had sent a communication to Pereira Forjaz, dated 19 November 1811 from Lisbon.

‘In this document, Araújo reported the death the previous night of artillery colonel Carlos Julião, an officer who had ‘always devoted his talents unselfishly, as is well established; adding to this quality that of being an honourable and faithful vassal of H.R.H.; for which reasons his loss is appreciable.’