Natureza Morta com Maças e Peras (Still Life with Apples and Pears / Grosses Pommes) - Paul Cézanne

 

Natureza Morta com Maças e Peras (Still Life with Apples and Pears / Grosses Pommes) - Paul Cézanne
Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Nova York, Estados Unidos
OST - 44x58 - Circa 1891-1892

Natureza Morta com Maçãs (Still Life with Apples / Pommes) - Vincent van Gogh

 

Natureza Morta com Maçãs (Still Life with Apples / Pommes) - Vincent van Gogh
Museu Van Gogh, Amsterdã, Holanda
OST - 45x60 - 1887


This painting is an explosion of colour. Virtually all of the shades of blue and green in Van Gogh's palette are included in the background of this still life. Over that, Vincent van Gogh added brushstrokes in contrasting colours: yellow, orange, red and pink. He used the same colour combinations for the apples in the foreground, but then in reverse: first the warm tones, followed by the cool green and blue accents. This is how Van Gogh created unity in the picture.

Ameixas e Damascos (Prunes et Abricots) - Claude Monet

 

Ameixas e Damascos (Prunes et Abricots) - Claude Monet
Coleção privada
OST - 18x38 - Circa 1882-1885


Painted in the 1880s, this vibrant depiction of plums and peaches demonstrates the artist's ability to adapt his technique, developed through painting en plein air, to a different genre. He painted the present work paying close attention to capturing the effects of light, setting a plate of fruit against a neutrally coloured background suggestive of a table top. Monet combined this natural display with quick, fluid brushstrokes that lend the painting freshness and a sense of spontaneity. Discussing Monet’s still lifes, Stephan Koja describes his ‘unconventional and unpretentious approach to his subjects’, writing: ‘There is nothing artificial about his arrangements, nor are they welded to a spatial context. [...] Once again, he relied entirely on the effect of colour, endeavouring to apply the stylistic vocabulary he had evolved in his landscape paintings, with its typical short brush-strokes’ (S. Koja in Monet (exhibition catalogue), Belvedere, Vienna, 1996, p. 92).
The 1880s were, in part, years of great change for the artist. Following the death of his wife Camille in 1879, Monet settled with Alice Hoschedé and their children in Poissy in 1881. Following years of financial hardship, Monet was now able to sell paintings to the Paris-based dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who had become aware of his work at the Impressionist exhibitions of the late 1870s. In May 1882, Durand-Ruel commissioned a unique group of works for the grand salon of his apartment at 35, rue de Rome in the eighth arrondissement. The project envisaged thirty-six decorative panels depicting flowers and fruit to adorn the six double doors of his drawing room. Prunes et abrictos was not in fact intended as one of the thirty-six panels, but painted in its own right at the same time, its format similar to that of the central panel of the doors.
The Durand-Ruel commission occupied Monet from 1882 to 1885, and the set of charming still lifes were sufficiently important for him to spend considerable time and energy on their completion. As he wrote in a letter to Durand-Ruel: ‘To finish these panels, how many did I need to destroy. More than twenty, perhaps even thirty’. Unlike the examples that the artist felt compelled to destroy, he was evidently satisfied with the present composition, which he considered a complete painting in its own right, and which Durand-Ruel purchased and later exhibited at his New York gallery in 1935.
In addition to the financial success of still lifes, Monet was similarly aware of the art historical significance of the subject matter. While pictorial representations of objects existed from Antiquity, it was not until the Renaissance that the subject became a genre in its own right. Artists such as the eighteenth-century French painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, were particularly noted for mastering this genre and elevating its status to co-exist with traditionally more highly ranked subjects such as portraiture or history painting. Modern masters such as Paul Cézanne, used still lifes as the basis for their formal experimentation, in Cézanne’s case, for his investigation of perspective. It was only a few years later in 1887, when van Gogh visited Paris, that he was taken by this subject matter and produced his own rendition of the motif, leaning heavily on Cézanne’s lessons in perspective.
Monet’s ever present search for spontaneity and desire to capture the atmosphere around an object in addition to the object itself, means that his works present some of the most radical challenges to the long-standing still life tradition. Discussing these works, John House writes, ‘In these paintings, Monet explored various ways of breaking down the traditional rigidity of the genre. Fruit is scattered informally across table tops which are tipped up toward the viewer, creating a rich weave of color and texture. Courbet's fruit still-lifes of the early 1870s had rejected more conventional arrangements in order to emphasise the physical palpability of the fruit itself, but it was Monet's still-lifes of around 1880 that more systematically undermined the conventions of the then-dominant Chardin tradition [...] Monet played down the physicality of the objects in favor of emphasizing their optical effect, with the informality of their grouping suggesting that this effect has been rapidly perceived, rather than carefully ordered’ (J. House, Monet: Nature into Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 42).
Monet experimented with still-life painting at various intervals during his career, beginning as early as 1872, yet his most extensive and searching foray into the genre occurred during the three-and-a-half years that he lived at Vétheuil, from August 1878 until December 1881, and during the Durand-Ruel commission. This was a decisive period of artistic reassessment and renewal for Monet, who was then entering middle age. At Vétheuil, he entirely abandoned the scenes of modern life and leisure that had dominated his work previously at Argenteuil and began to focus instead on conveying the most fugitive elements of light and colour. In his still lifes of this period, likewise, his foremost goal was to capture the highly dynamic surface effects that were created as light flickered over arrangements of fruit and leaves. As Richard Thomson writes: ‘Monet painted such canvases with a flourish, confident in his ability to animate any still-life motif with the vivacity of his brushwork, unity of his light, and coherence of his chromatics’ (R. Thomas, in ibid., p. 76).

Almirante Barroso, Praia do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (Almirante Barroso, Praia do Flamengo) - Felisberto Ranzini

 

Almirante Barroso, Praia do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (Almirante Barroso, Praia do Flamengo) - Felisberto Ranzini

Rio de Janeiro - RJ

Coleção privada

Óleo sobre madeira - 16x10 - 1947

Jardim da Casa de Campo (Bauerngarten) - Gustav Klimt

 

Jardim da Casa de Campo (Bauerngarten) - Gustav Klimt
Coleção privada
OST - 1907


Painted in 1907 during the golden period of Klimt’s career, Bauerngarten is a masterpiece of Viennese fin-de-siècle art. This remarkable landscape is rooted in the natural world yet simultaneously reaches towards the symbolic, decorative avant-garde. It is this synthesis of natural beauty and harmonious regularity which lends the work its profoundly moving quality. During the summer months, from 1900 onwards, Klimt travelled out of Vienna to Litzlberg on the Attersee with his friends and family to relax and paint. In the rustic garden of the Mayr-Hof Klimt found inspiration for the present work, with its informal profusion of poppies, daisies, zinnia and roses, and transformed it into a shimmering array of colour.
Celebrated since its very first exhibition in Vienna in 1908 Kunstschau, Bauerngarten is regarded as one of the artist’s finest landscapes. The exhibition caused a sensation, with critics claiming that Klimt had endowed his works with an almost mystical quality, and declaring him a master landscape painter. Writing a review of the show Josef August Lux stated: ‘The flower meadows are even more beautiful since Klimt has painted them; the artist gives us an eye with which to see the radiant glory of their colours. We never learn to seize nature in her magical beauty other than through art, which always renews her appearance’ (J.A. Lux quoted in Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 115). The 1908 exhibition came at an important time for Klimt, having left the Secession in 1905 taking with him an eponymously named splinter group, and he had not had a public showing of his work for three years. The Kunstschau was a comprehensive exhibition of avant-garde Viennese art in rooms designed by Josef Hoffmann, and Klimt was given a room to himself in which were hung sixteen pictures including Bauerngarten. In his opening address at the Kunstschau he declared: ‘We have not been idle - on the contrary - perhaps just because we have been freed from worries about exhibitions, we have worked all the more assiduously and intensely on the on the development of our ideas’ (the artist quoted in Christian M. Nebehay, op. cit., 2007, p. 169).
Though publically known from the outset of his career for his allegorical compositions and female portraits, in the 1890s and afterwards landscape painting became an increasingly important outlet for Klimt’s creativity eventually accounting for nearly a quarter of his œuvre. The development of his landscape style mirrored and motivated the technical changes found in his figure paintings - initially employing both Impressionist and Pointillist techniques, and latterly engaging in more expressive brushwork and colour. These stylistic changes also reflected his intellectual concerns - at the turn of the century he painted en plein air like his Impressionist contemporaries in France which endowed his early work with a level of naturalistic fidelity. However, as Johannes Dobai explains: ‘Klimt, unlike the Impressionists, was not fascinated by a form of art which represented, ultimately, the perfection of naturalism, and hence the artistic apogee of an empirically positivist view of the world. Instead Klimt’s inner passion was for making his understanding more real – focusing on what constituted the essence of things behind their mere physical appearance […]. The development of his treatment of the picture surface reveals that Klimt must have been well acquainted with the techniques of Impressionism and Pointillism, although he did not set pure colours next to one another. He graded his colours in a way which bears comparison to Monet and Seurat, although his – Klimt’s – work is more refined… the artist wished to create a ‘mood’ painting’ (J. Dobai, Gustav Klimt, Landscapes, London, 1988, pp. 12-15).
In the mid-1910s this changed and working primarily inside his studio he pioneered a decorative intensity and symbolism of his own devising, and which was to become his greatest contribution to the history of art. This shift was in part inspired by a major exhibition of paintings by Van Gogh at the Galerie Miethke in Vienna which Klimt visited and greatly admired. Seeing Van Gogh's ability to render brilliantly coloured landscapes using pure paint and few traditional techniques emboldened Klimt and he began using much thicker brushwork. These works reached their zenith in the flower paintings of 1905-1908 wherein, as Frank Whtiford explains: ‘His paintings are faithful to what he saw, yet at the same time they go beyond it. They use design and texture, pattern and colour, in order to make the transitory permanent, to arrest the fleeting, to transform and fix a world that is constantly changing and decaying into an immutable paradise’ (F. Whitford, Klimt, London, 1990, p. 184).
The square-canvas format chosen by Klimt for the present work heightens its visual impact and creates a marked difference to traditional landscape painting. Klimt started to use this type of support exclusively for landscapes in 1899, with the format used to impart two specific effects; the symmetry denies the dominance of either horizontal or vertical elements in the picture, thus containing the scene with a tighter efficience, and secondly the square increases the sense that these are objects for contemplation - they emanate atmosphere. Significantly Claude Monet had started to use the square format in 1898 until 1916 to depict his waterlily ponds at Giverny. Monet was attempting to increase the impact of the surface of his paintings; the square negated the traditional emphasis on perspective and gave his daring brushwork a stable support upon which to play. Both Klimt and Monet used this technical innovation to make a break from the accepted form of landscape art. Frank Whitford has suggested that one particular characteristic of Klimt’s landscapes was that ‘the majority have an extremely high horizon line, or lack one altogether, so that their subjects, whether flower beds, woods or meadows, seem to unfurl before the eye from top to bottom of the canvas, more like tapestries or rugs than paintings’ (ibid., p. 184).
The unconventional composition of the Bauerngarten is also key to its visual and symbolic potency. Discussing the present work, Johannes Dobai wrote: ‘In Flower Garden the basic motif is a kind of floral pyramid; the triangular shape - which tends to have a condensing effect - contains an abundance of flowers and leaves, all of varying size, colour, luminosity and characteristics; it contains a 'multiplicity in simplicity'. The positioning of these elements follows the 'rule' of uncultivated, untamed nature - accident and agglomeration. Just as the seeds are carried away at the whim of the wind, so the blossoms grow in distorted clusters, although occasionally there is as rigorous a geometry about them as there is about the square of the painting itself. Bottom right, for instance, there is a group comprising four flowers; three of them lie horizontally at equal distance from one another, while above the third flower on the right there floats a fourth of the same species. In other clusters there is a similar dialectical interplay between geometry and disorder. Now and again within the pyramid individual flowers appear, almost like surprise special effects, in this firework display of summer heat’ (J. Dobai, Gustav Klimt Landscapes, Boston, 1988, p. 19).
The triangular arrangement of the uppermost flowers enrobed by poppies and zinnias bears some striking visual similarities to that of several figurative paintings that were executed during the same period. This direct comparison can provoke certain allegorical readings of the work, as well as offering a more human interpretation of its floral display. As Thomas Zaunschirm has written about Bauerngarten: ‘The flowers are composed in an almost anthropomorphic manner on what is still a flickering green surface of obsessive detail’ (T. Zaunschirm quoted in A. Weidinger (ed.), op. cit., 2007, p. 285). Furthermore, Johannes Dobai believed that ‘the locus of Klimt's thematic material is the erotic, which branches into its sexual and biological aspects. The predilection toward the erotic can be noted both in figural compositions and in landscape’ (J. Dobai, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, New York, 1965, pp. 23-24).
During the years 1905-1908 Klimt painted some of his most celebrated and innovative figurative works, including Der Kuss, Der Hoffnung II and his golden portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. The compositions of these major works all reference the bejewelled studies of flowers worked on during the summer months, and their dazzling intensity is mainly derived not from his use of gold and silver pigments, but their sections of superb brushwork depicting brightly coloured flowers. Richard Muther was one of the earliest critics to identify the close connection between Klimt’s landscape paintings and the golden figurative works, writing: ‘In addition to the feeling for form, there is an amazing sense for the voluptuous atmosphere power of colours... A miserable nature, a nature working in the service of man, a sedate nature, peaty bogs and steaming fields were never painted by Klimt. In his work, even the lake is not threatening or gloomy. It resembles a beautiful woman’s silk gown, shimmering and flirtatiously sparkling with blue, grass green, and violet tones’ (R. Muther, quoted in Gustav Klimt Landscapes (exhibition catalogue), op. cit. p. 68). This sentiment is particularly prescient considering Klimt’s close friendship with the fashion designer Emilie Flöge, with whom he had an intense personal and artistic relationship and with whom every year he spent holidays in the Salzkammergut countryside. Intriguingly Klimt also designed dresses for Emilie, many of which were decorated with stylised flower patterns enabling life to imitate his art.
The present work was acquired by the Národní Galerie in Prague in 1910 where it remained until 1968. It was first exhibited in Prague at the Deutsch-Böhmischer Kunstlerbund in 1910, where it received a great deal of praise and attention, including the reviewer in the Prager Tagblatt, who praised ‘this gloriously luminous country meadow that, like the sky in summer, glitters with hundreds of stars’ (quoted in T. Natter (ed.), op. cit., p. 603).

Usina Viterra Unidade Rio Vermelho, Junqueirópolis, São Paulo, Brasil

Usina Viterra Unidade Rio Vermelho, Junqueirópolis, São Paulo, Brasil
Junqueirópolis - SP
Grupo Viterra
Fotografia

Nota do blog: Antiga Usina Rio Vermelho.

 

O Triste Fim do Avião Vickers Viscount da VASP do Salão da Criança, São Paulo, Brasil

 

O avião na década de 70 no Aeroclube de São Paulo/SP.

Publicidade do Salão da Criança em 1972.

Pessoas admirando o avião na década de 70 em São Paulo/SP.

O avião no Campo de Marte no ano de 1975, São Paulo/SP.

O avião no Aeroclube de São Paulo/SP.

O avião no Aeroclube de São Paulo/SP.

O avião destruído no Morro do Cristo em Pedreira/SP.

Aeronaves Viscount da VASP em Congonhas no ano de 1970.

O Triste Fim do Avião Vickers Viscount da VASP do Salão da Criança, São Paulo, Brasil
São Paulo - SP
Fotografia

Já vimos em outros artigos que os monumentos de São Paulo têm a característica única de se movimentarem pela cidade, de serem desmembrados, de até sumirem, como o caso do “sequestro” – ainda não solucionado – do busto de Henry Ford.
Mas não são somente os monumentos esculturais que têm esta dinâmica, pois os aviões que se tornaram monumentos também adquiriram esta característica e literalmente “saíram voando” por aí. Alguém se lembra do caça da FAB que ficava na Praça 14 bis? Mas esta é outra história…Mas existia outro avião exposto na cidade que ficou bastante conhecido por fazer parte de um dos programas familiares de final de semana e dos estudantes que, durante a semana, podiam conhecer de perto a máquina voadora.
Vamos voltar um pouco no tempo para que possamos sentir melhor o prazer de voar nesta história.A VASP – Viação Aérea São Paulo – era a empresa paulista de aviação que desde 1933 levava o nome de São Paulo pelos ares do Brasil. Operou diversos tipos de aeronaves, entre elas os primeiros turboélices em operação no Brasil, os Vickers Viscount de fabricação inglesa.
A VASP operou 16 Viscounts, sendo seis do modelo 827 com capacidade para 56 passageiros comprados novos e cuja chegada se deu a partir de novembro de 1958 e 10 usados do modelo 710, menores, com capacidade para 44 passageiros. Carinhosamente e para diferenciarem uns dos outros, os aviões passaram a ser conhecidos como “Vaiquinho”, o 710 e “Vaicão” o 827.
Os aviões eram muito confortáveis e faziam sucesso entre os passageiros, porém, um acidente ocorrido com um Viscount 710 da empresa australiana M.M.A. em 31 de dezembro de 1968, demonstrou que havia fadiga de material no suporte das asas. Diante disso, as autoridades britânicas proibiram o voo destas aeronaves e o custo dos reparos necessários tornariam a volta das operações financeiramente inviável.
Imediatamente, no início de 1969, a VASP decide pela desativação, de quase todos seus modelos 710, uma vez que também seria necessário efetuar caríssimos reparos estruturais nas longarinas das asas de seus aparelhos com mais horas de voo por recomendação do fabricante, depois do acidente na Austrália.
Entre os primeiros a saírem de serviço está o personagem principal desta história, o Viscount 701, prefixo PP-SRN, que deixou a operação em 27 de janeiro de 1969 com 24.981 horas voadas.
Muitos dos aparelhos desativados passaram a ser cedidos para entidades diversas, mas poucos sobreviveram, mesmo que o intuito fosse preservá-los como monumentos.
O nosso personagem, porém, ainda faria história quando, na madrugada de 25 de setembro de 1972, num verdadeiro acontecimento, foi transportado do aeroporto de Congonhas para o Parque Anhembi, onde foi inteiramente montado bem no centro do pavilhão de exposições para fazer a alegria das crianças; tudo isso porque no dia 7 de outubro daquele ano seria aberto o XII Salão da Criança.
Aqui vale uma ressalva: só quem viveu um Salão da Criança sabe o espetáculo que era aquele encontro com tudo o que fazia a alegria da criançada, atrações diversas, fabricantes de brinquedos, doces… Uma festa para toda a família em uma São Paulo muito diferente de hoje.
Mas voltando ao avião, no espaço onde ele estava, foi montada uma área de embarque e desembarque, um verdadeiro miniaeroporto dentro do Anhembi. Conhecer um avião por dentro naquele tempo era um sonho! Não é preciso dizer qual era a principal atração do salão…
A ida da aeronave para o Salão da Criança daquele ano foi uma feliz (ou programada) coincidência, pois o PP-SRN havia sido cedido para o Aeroclube de São Paulo e, depois do salão, ficou exposto em frente ao hangar principal. Como o aeroclube fica bem em frente ao pavilhão do Anhembi, a operação acabou sendo facilitada, daí se concluir que foi uma operação planejada.
O Viscount ficou exposto no Aeroclube durante muitos anos e foi, em 1974, sublocado para um particular que deveria respeitar o contrato entre a VASP e o aeroclube onde, entre outras coisas, teria que adaptar aparelhagem e todo material necessário à realização de voos simulados, com exibição de filmes educativos, entre outras ações, que visavam despertar o interesse pela aviação entre os visitantes.
Segundo duas reportagens na revista Flap (especializada em aviação), publicadas a partir de outubro de 1978, havia problemas entre o explorador da atração e o aeroclube, apesar de que, pelo que se entende, o avião estava em perfeito estado de conservação uma vez que a matéria termina com o seguinte parágrafo: “…Perfeito mesmo resta somente o PP-SRN que foi cedido ao Aeroclube de São Paulo. Conservá-lo no lugar onde está nas cores da VASP, senão uma obrigação, seria, pelo menos, uma questão de honra para os filhos do Estado mais rico deste País.”
Em fins de 1981, o avião foi retirado do espaço do Aeroclube de São Paulo e levado para ser atração turística na cidade paulista de Pedreira, mais exatamente num local chamado Complexo Turístico do Morro do Cristo, na administração do prefeito Gino Bellix (Hygino Amadeu Bellix, que cumpriu dois mandatos, 1977-82 e 1989-92).
Apesar de ser uma importante atração turística da cidade, não havia qualquer esquema especial de segurança o que culminou em uma triste situação, quando em 16 de maio de 1993 dois jovens “por brincadeira”, segundo um site da cidade, atearam fogo nas cortinas do avião. O resultado trágico foi a propagação do fogo que em poucos minutos destruiu a aeronave.
Assim termina a triste história de mais um monumento da cidade de São Paulo. Desta vez, longe da cidade e reduzido a cinzas.
Observação 1: PP-SRN: Viscount V701C – c/n 62. Entregue à BEA – British European Airways em 20/11/1954, como G-ANHB, batizado de “Sir Henry Stanley”. Vendido à Vasp em 30/08/1962, voou para o Brasil em 24/04/1963, junto com o PP-SRO. Voou na Vasp por quase 6 anos, e foi desativado e estocado em Congonhas/SP, em 27 de janeiro de 1969, com 24.981 horas de voo. Em 20/10/1972, foi cedido para o Aeroclube de São Paulo/SP, no Campo de Marte. Foi levado depois, em 1981, para Pedreira/SP, onde foi incendiado e destruído por vândalos em 16/05/1993.
Observação 2: O XII Salão da Criança aconteceu entre 7 e 22 de outubro de 1972. Texto de José Vignoli.
Nota do blog: Aproveitando o gancho desta matéria, a não utilização de aviões retirados de serviço da FAB como atração em praças, parques, aeroportos, canteiros de rotatórias e avenidas, além de outros dispositivos públicos, é uma das coisas que não entendo nesse País. Me parece uma completa idiotice o governo preferir vender essas aeronaves desativadas a preço de banana, aeronaves essas que pagaram milhões de dólares quando compraram, ao invés de colocarem as mesmas nos lugares que citei (a título de exemplo, recentemente a FAB vendeu um lote de 9 caças franceses Mirage 2000 desativados por US$ 452 mil, caças esses que o governo comprou, já usados, por US$ 22,5 milhões cada). Uma vez desativados, seria muito mais inteligente expor para que a população as conheça, tirem fotos, torná-las uma espécie de atração turística do local. Isso é uma coisa que o mundo inteiro faz, só aqui é diferente...

A Rua Florêncio de Abreu Através dos Tempos, São Paulo, Brasil

A Rua Florêncio de Abreu Através dos Tempos, São Paulo, Brasil
São Paulo - SP
Fotografia



A Rua do Senador Florêncio de Abreu — antiga da Constituição e atual Florêncio de Abreu, nas proximidades do popularmente chamado Beco das 7 Voltas (visto à esquerda das imagens) — em mapa de 1881, o beco era nomeado como Ladeira Florêncio de Abreu; em 1895, como Ladeira da Constituição e atualmente é a Rua da Constituição, terminando na Rua 25 de Março. Mais adiante, à direita, a torre antiga da Igreja de São Bento situada no largo homônimo.

 

Largo do Rosário, 1902-1903, São Paulo, Brasil

 

Largo do Rosário, 1902-1903, São Paulo, Brasil
São Paulo - SP
Fotografia

À esquerda, parte da Igreja Nossa Senhora do Rosário, meses antes de sua "apressada" demolição em 1904. Ao lado, o sobrado de José Joaquim Raposo e esposa — que também foi desapropriado, a exemplo de outros, em virtude da remodelação do então Largo do Rosário, atual Praça Antônio Prado.
O prefeito da época, o conselheiro Antônio Prado, entrou em acordo com a irmandade: inicialmente ofereceu 180 contos (a igreja pedia 500) sendo ajustado em agosto de 1903, o valor de 250 contos e o terreno em comodato na área problemática e encharcada do Largo do Paissandu — onde foi erigida (sob protestos da vizinhança), a nova Igreja Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Pretos, que após enfrentar dificuldades na obra, foi inaugurada em 22/04/1908.
À direita da foto, o prédio onde funcionou entre 1877 a 1906, as instalações do jornal "O Estado de São Paulo", na Rua da Imperatriz, atual XV de Novembro. O imóvel contíguo parece ser uma distribuidora de cerveja e depósito de gelo da Companhia Antarctica Paulista.
O terreno da igreja foi "cedido" para que no espaço fosse erguido o primeiro prédio de escritórios da cidade — projetado por Ramos de Azevedo, a pedido de Antônio Prado. A bela construção foi nomeada como Palacete Martinico Prado, não por acaso, irmão do...prefeito. Em 1906, o jornal "O Estado de São Paulo" transferiu-se para o imponente edifício, onde permaneceu até 1929.

Largo da Sé, 1911, São Paulo, Brasil

 

Largo da Sé, 1911, São Paulo, Brasil
São Paulo - SP
Fotografia

O cotidiano no então pacato Largo da Sé. À esquerda, o início da Rua Direita; no centro, o da Rua XV de Novembro, anteriormente denominada como Rua da Imperatriz. Na confluência destas ruas — onde era um velho sobrado —, instalou-se em 1858 a Casa Lebre que seria reconstruída em 1906 tornando-se o belo prédio da cena. O estabelecimento comercializava principalmente ferragens, além de outros artigos.