This article deals with writings about art, particularly the sort of "artists’ lives" and their role in the formation of the artistic environment in Lisbon and in Rio de Janeiro. As in their origin, in the Italian sixteenth century, the "artists’ lives" have been articulated to the establishment of Academies, and they had an important role in the artists elevation as a social group, which was possible with the concomitant elevation of the drawing arts to the condition of liberal arts. This change of state always depended on a double discursive articulation. For one side, that one which in the biographic perspective individualizes the artist and, by the praise, confers him the nobility of the merit; for the other side, that one which inscribes him in the tradition of the city or, later, in national traditions, giving to his art a historical perspective that mixes his achievements with the achievements of the city in arms, letters, sciences, and other virtues.
Lives of artists; Academies; Liberal arts; Portugal; Brazil