The Caetano Prospect: An Eighteenth-Century View of Recife in Brazil

Abstract

No city of south america has been more frequently or more carefully depicted in views of all kinds than Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, a port on the northern coast of Brazil, which this year is celebrating the 300th anniversary of one of the great events in its history. The iconography of Recife begins with the Dutch, who are responsible for its growth as a town. Before their conquest of Pernambuco in 1630, Recife had been only a village of fishermen dependent upon the old Portuguese town of Olinda, located a short distance to the north. Olinda, however, lacked port facilities, for it was built on hills dominating an open beach. Recife, on the other hand, is located at the confluence of the rivers Beberibe and Capibaribe, where there is a deep harbor protected from the sea by reefs of sandstone, which gives the place its name. The situation was, therefore, ideal for the needs of the Dutch West Indies Company, which for commercial purposes had brought about the conquest of the rich sugar and dye-wood-producing Portuguese colony of Pernambuco.