Materials Analysis of Two Nineteenth-century Brazilian Polychrome Sculptures to Reveal Their History and Significance

A pilot project is presented, in which two metal sculptures involved in a real case managed by the Brazilian Federal Police underwent microscopical examination and analysis by forensic scientists, including Raman and XRF spectroscopies and SEM-EDX, made possibly by damage sustained when they were vandalized. The findings are interpreted from the points of view of both materials history and material culture. Both sculptures had previously been described as patinated bronze but were found to have been cast in zinc, a popular material for sculpture in the nineteenth century, with their original patination later removed. The investigation showed that the bronze-colored polychromy then applied consisted of materials used by Brazilian Concrete artists of the 1950s and 1960s, and could be related to the re-siting of the capital of Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia in the same period.