José Maria Oscar Rodolfo Bernardelli (Guadalajara, Mexico 1852 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1931)
Sculptor and teacher.
Brother of painters Henrique Bernardelli (1858-1936) and Felix Bernardelli (1862-1905), leaves Mexico, with his family, to settle in Rio Grande do Sul, around 1866. He moves to Rio de Janeiro with his parents, futures Preceptors of Princesses Isabel (1846-1921) and Leopoldina (1847-1871), at the invitation of Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825-1891). Between 1870 and 1876, he attended the sculpture classes of statuary of Chaves Pinheiro (1822-1884) and a live model design at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - AIBA. As a pensioner, he remained in Rome from 1877 to 1884, he studies with the masters Achille d'Orsi (1845-1929) and Giulio Monteverde (1837-1917). Back in Brazil, he is a sculpture teacher at Aiba, replacing Chaves Pinheiro. Considered one of the reformers of artistic education in Brazil, Rodolfo Bernardelli is, between 1890 and 1915, the first director of the newly established National School of Fine Arts - ENBA. In his administration, he creates the category of free student and the Superior Council of Fine Arts and proposes the construction of the new headquarters on Avenida Rio Branco. In 1919, in Madrid, he was proclaimed an honorary academic at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando. In 1931, in Rio de Janeiro, the Bernardelli Nucleus was founded in honor of the brothers Rodolfo and Henrique.
Critical Comment
Rodolfo Bernardelli comes to Brazil in 1866, in the company of the family, passing for Chile and Argentina and settled in Rio Grande do Sul. At the invitation of Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891), his parents moved to Rio de Janeiro to be preceptors of Princesses Isabel and Leopoldina. From 1877 to 1885, he remains in Rome as a scholarship holder at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts - AIBA, in Rio de Janeiro. In Italy, he studies with Giulio Monteverde (1837 - 1917). During this period, he carries out several works, such as the relief Fabíola, 1878 and the sculpture Santo Estevão, 1879, allied to the Verismo of contemporary European sculpture.
In his return from Italy, the sculptor reaches a position so highlighted in the republican circle that leads him to assume the maximum position of the main art institution in Brazil - the National School of Fine Arts - ENBA -, in which it remains until 1915. Among the reasons for this would be the relevance and dissemination given by the press to the sculptor's works, especially by Angelo Agostini (1843 - 1910), in the magazine Illustrada.
Bernardelli leaves an extensive production, which includes numerous busts of public personalities, tomb works and several commemorative monuments, carried out mainly for the city of Rio de January, like those dedicated to General Osório, 1894, to Duque de Caxias, 1899, to José de Alencar, 1897 and the sculptural group Descobrimento do Brasil, 1900. The artist also performs the statues that They decorate the Municipal Theater building, CA.1905, the Monument to Carlos Gomes, 1905, in Campinas, and the statue of Dom Pedro I, 1921, for the Paulista Museum of the University of São Paulo - MP/USP, in São Paulo.
Criticism
"The academy statutes required precisely delimited obligations from artists under study abroad. Every year, works should be sent to Brazil, which could be copies of famous works or own compositions, passing through a whole range of studies of increasing difficulties. The relief Adam and Eve and the copies of the Venus of Medici and Venus Calipigia are works that demonstrated the extraordinary effort required by the congregation. They really reveal knowledge in the specific treatment of marble.
Other Italian works by the author are among his best creations. In the busts, Bernardelli achieved full conceptual and technical mastery, especially in Czech, in Dr. Montenovesi, in the Viscount of Araguaia, in Christ and in the artist's servant, in which he expressed, in addition to figurative representation, a certain pleasure in the execution itself, that We will notice in other portraits made in Brazil with the same pleasant simplicity already observed. Among these, we will mention the bust of the painter Oscar Pereira da Silva.
Formed under the neoclassical orientation, Bernardelli absorbed this spirit and his first productions are typical. In Santo Estêvão we will find a figure in the four-center Florentine Renaissance style, with elongated limbs and a refined finish.
The artist had a preference for this work, chosen by him to top up his tomb.
ao Return, his sculptures were very well received, precisely at the time of profound changes in Brazilian society, due to the liberation of slaves and the proclamation of the Republic. The new ruling class claimed an artist who corresponded and represented the progressive exaltation of the moment. Bernardelli, in the sculpture, attended to those aspirations.
Rodolfo Bernardelli, in his didactic performance, will be one of the reformers of artistic education in our midst and the first director, in the Republic, of the newly named National School of Belas Arts.
His leadership is noted especially when the school is built and transferred to the Avenida Central building, in a privileged location, whose risk belongs to Adolfo Morales de Los Rios".
Luiz Rafael Viera Souto
SOUTO, Luiz Rafael Viera. Text transcribed from the Bulletin of the MNBA, Jul./Aug./Sep. 1980.
"If, in fact, the productions of Bernardelli and Chaves Pinheiro were compared, It would seem obvious that the magazine was right to consider the first as a parameter for Brazilian sculpture. Take, for example, the faceira, by Bernardelli, and Índio, an allegorical figure of the Brazilian Empire, by Pinheiro. The explicitly allegorical character of the second work in no way justifies the hieratism of the figure of the Indian, who ends up reinforcing the excessive connections of Chaves Pinheiro with the most conservative European statuary. Already cheeky, with its structural sinuosity that further enhances the sensuality of the figure that naturalistically represents an India, well demonstrates Bernardelli's freedom to dose the cold repertoire of the Carioca statuary of the Second Empire with his individuality.
Even in the group Sculptural Christ and the adulteress, from 1885, Bernardelli managed to give individuality to the work, despite all the conventionalism required by the theme itself. The fundamental contrast between the stripped-down and vigorous treatment of the figure of Christ - evidenced by the almost non-existence of drapings in his robes, which gives him even more strength - and the refined dramatic sense achieved in the posture and treatment of the surface of the figure of the adulteress, gives the Bernardelli a quality as a sculptor who put him, in fact, well above his Brazilian peers.
The admiration of the magazine for Bernardelli's productions gradually became unconditional adhesion. She became the great defender of the artist, either in the continuity of the repeated praise she gave him, or with the intention of always wanting to demonstrate that Bernardelli was the best Brazilian sculptor".
Tadeu Chiarelli
CHIARELLI, Tadeu. Rodolfo Bernardelli. Skultura, São Paulo, n.31, Winter of 1990.
"Christ, by Bernardelli, is a Jewish, human, real type; It does not in any way recall the old creations of sculpture; it is not an inspiration of the Catholic faith according to the imposition of dogmas; He is not a mystical type transcendent, as he had created Leonardo da Vinci or imagined him the beatific Fiesole. Here goes the value of your statue. In order to do so as the masters of the past and the Renaissance were idealized, it was necessary that the current environment in which the artist lives had decayed to the fervent faith of the time of the martyrs, and, therefore, that Bernardelli was a very original stationary. But also, it is not a creation properly its own, a kind of unleashed from the thick layers of the times and resurfaced in our eyes by the Fiat Creator of extraordinary talent. Thus, as we see it there, many masters had already conceived him, becoming more remarkable among all the famous Delacroix.
The composition of this group is beautiful and modern. The figure of the Christ, presented in superior to the natural grandeur, has a lot of grandeur and serenity, the expression of his face, the gestures of his arms are true and denotes much observation.
The cut is safe, delicate, meticulous; In the smallest contours, in the most difficult, more subtle lines, in the thinner masses, there is no fault, and, therefore, the detail forms one of the characters of his work.
The chlamide that Christ wears was so meticulously cut, was so scrupulously observed, that the illusion is complete; Carnation reaches the highest degree of the modeling to which it is possible to reach sculpture.
Then it follows that Bernardelli is a realist, having as his only concern the truth, a quality that manifests itself in the same way in the sketch in plaster of the saint. Estêvão".
Gonzaga Duque
DUQUE, Gonzaga. Brazilian Art. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 1995. p.244-245.
Collective exhibitions
s.d. - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Galeria Irmãos Bernardelli, at MNBA 
1870 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 21st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1872 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 22nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA - Silver Medal
1875 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 23rd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA - Gold Medal
1876 - Philadelphia (United States) - International Exhibition of Philadelphia - Awards with the works Saudade da Tribo e Espreita
1876 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 24th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA - Award for travel abroad and 1st Medal Gold
1878 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Fluminense Industrial Exhibition, presents the work David, winner of Goliath
1879 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 25th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1883 - Rome (Italy) - Esposizione Artística Internazionale di Roma
1884 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 26th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at AIBA
1884 - Turin (Italy) - Turin Exhibition
1890 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1893 - Chicago (United States) - Chicago Exhibition - Palma de Louro, with the work Christ and the adulteress
1894 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1895 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 2nd General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1897 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1898 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 5th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1901 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1903 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 10th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
1904 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 11th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA
1908 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 15th General Exhibition of Belas Artes, at Enba
1909 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 16th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1919 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Carioca Exhibition of Engraving and Strongwater
1927 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 34th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at ENBA - Medal of Honor
1928 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 35th General Exhibition of Fine Arts, at Enba
1928 - São Paulo SP - Grupo Almeida Júnior, at Palácio das Arcades
Posthumous exhibitions
1952 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Retrospective exhibition of the Bernardelli brothers in celebration of the centenary of the sculptor Rodolfo Bernardelli's birth 1970 - São Paulo SP - Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo 1970
1978 - São Paulo SP - The art and its processes: the paper as a support, in the Pinacoteca do Estado
1982 - São Paulo SP - A century of sculpture in Brazil, in the MASP
1986 - São Paulo SP - Nineteenth century: a turn in the century, in the state's Pinacoteca
1990 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Shows, in the Dorival Room of Prado Valladares, in the MNBA
1991 - São Paulo SP - Desire in the Academy: 1847-1916, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1994 - São Paulo SP - A critical look at the collection of the 19th century, at the Pinacoteca do State
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Negotiated Images: Portraits of the Brazilian Elite, at CCBB
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian sculpture: from the Pinacoteca to Jardim da Luz, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
2002 - Brasília DF - Barão do Rio Branco: his work and his time, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Palácio do Itamaraty
2002 - São Paulo SP - Image and identity: a look at the history in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, at the Banco Santos Cultural Institute
Source: Itaú Cultural
