Seduta del Consiglio di Stato

Georgina de Albuquerque painted this in 1922 for the hundredth anniversary of Brazil's independence, and she made a pointed choice about who to put at the centre. History painting was almost entirely a man's field, and the usual hero of 1822 was Emperor Pedro. Instead she staged the State Council meeting of that September, with Princess Leopoldina presiding at the table, listening as the statesman Jose Bonifacio lays out the case for breaking with Portugal. Leopoldina had signed the decree while Pedro was away, and here she sits in soft, light-filled brushwork closer to Impressionism than to stiff academic history painting. The canvas won a prize at the official centenary exhibition and hangs today in Rio's National Historical Museum.